At the 'Filth Barrier' with Norman Mailer
Edmund Fuller's scathing Wall Street Journal review of Why Are We in Vietnam? (21 September 1967), dismissing the novel as 'a 208-page compulsive rant' straining to 'break the filth barrier' and calling for a satirical genius the book fails to be. Full text held (rights pending).
Read an excerpt (rights pending)
Edmund Fuller. “At the ‘Filth Barrier’ with Norman Mailer.” The Wall Street Journal, 21 September 1967, p. 16.
A scathing review of Why Are We in Vietnam? — Fuller (“Peck’s Bad Boy is loose again”) reads the novel as “a 208-page compulsive rant” by a writer “frenziedly struggling to break the filth barrier,” finds its WASP-hatred and obscenity self-defeating, and contrasts it unfavorably with the satire of Barth and Sinclair. Full text on the full-text page (rights pending).