I’m beginning to feel that Norman Mailer might have made a strategic mistake in recent interviews plugging his new book on writing, The Spooky Art. A strategic mistake in conspicuously low-balling his life’s work, his achievements as opposed to his once-grand expectations of himself.
He told The Times, for instance, “I may last or I may not last … part of the ability to keep writing over the years comes down to living with the expectation of disappointment.”