Of a Small and Modest Malignancy, Wicked and Bristling with Dots
Mailer's Esquire essay-memoir (under 'The Big Bite') recalling his television appearances with Mike Wallace, Truman Capote, Dorothy Parker, Gore Vidal, and Dick Cavett, and arguing television's deadening effects.
“Of a Small and Modest Malignancy, Wicked and Bristling with Dots,” an essay-memoir in Esquire (November 1977), listed under the running head “The Big Bite” (see 62.18). Mailer recalls his appearances on television with Mike Wallace (58.2, 58.7, 73.19, 73.23), Truman Capote and Dorothy Parker (59.3, 73.22), Gore Vidal, Dick Cavett, and others, advancing his case for television’s deadening effects, and quotes in full his 1970 Women’s Wear Daily letter about Vidal (70.13a). Reprinted in a limited Lord John Press edition (1980; 80.25) and in Pieces and Pontifications (82.16); six excerpts are scattered through The Time of Our Time (98.7), complete in Mind of an Outlaw (13.1).
Related pages
- The Mailer–Vidal fight (77.4–77.9) | Gore Vidal | Mike Wallace | Truman Capote
- 1977
- The "Big Bite" (62.18) | Mike Wallace Asks: Norman Mailer (58.2) | Norman Mailer (in Mike Wallace Asks) (58.7) | Capote, Mailer and Miss Parker (59.3) | The Capote Perplex: An Open Letter from Norman Mailer (73.22) | Letter to the Editor (Women's Wear Daily) (70.13a) | Of a Small and Modest Malignancy, Wicked and Bristling with Dots (Lord John Press) (80.25) | Pieces and Pontifications (82.16) | The Time of Our Time (98.7) | The Mind of an Outlaw: Selected Essays of Norman Mailer (13.1)