The Writer's Imagination and the Imagination of the State
Mailer's address opening the 48th International PEN Congress on 12 January 1986, setting out the conference theme of the writer's imagination against the state's. Published with Nadine Gordimer's companion statement as 'Two Views' in the New York Review of Books.
“The Writer’s Imagination and the Imagination of the State” is Mailer’s address opening the 48th International PEN Congress in New York on 12 January 1986 — the day he was elected president of American PEN by acclamation. It set out the conference theme he had chosen: the opposition between the writer’s imagination and the imagination of the state, and the writer’s freedom against state power. The address was published, with Nadine Gordimer‘s companion statement from the 13 January panel “How Does the State Imagine?”, as “‘The Writer’s Imagination and the Imagination of the State’: Two Views” in the New York Review of Books on 13 February 1986 (23–25).
The theme itself drew fire: George Steiner attacked it in “Language Under Surveillance: The Writer and the State” (New York Times Book Review, 12 January, 12, 36). The address is best read beside the Congress’s two great controversies — the invitation to Secretary of State George P. Shultz and the women writers’ protest — which together made the week the most contentious literary event of the decade (see the 1986 Days page and bibliography).
Related pages
- Letter to the Guests of Honor and the PEN Delegates (86.3) | PEN American Center | Nadine Gordimer
- 1986