Here's Piety in Your Eye
Martin McKenzie-Murray's 2026 essay for The Monthly using Mailer's The Gospel According to the Son and his risk-taking ego to argue against the 'moral hygiene' of contemporary Australian literary culture. An about-Mailer clipping.
Read an excerpt (rights pending)
Martin McKenzie-Murray. “Here’s Piety in Your Eye.” The Monthly, 27 April 2026. https://www.themonthly.com.au/martin-mckenzie-murray/2026-04-27/heres-piety-your-eye
An essay on Mailer’s “infamously and comically pungent” ego as a model of creative risk. McKenzie-Murray reads The Gospel According to the Son (1997) — Mailer’s first-person novel in the voice of Jesus — as “six pounds of audacity in a four-pound bag,” noting Mailer’s claim that his own celebrity gave him a “double nature” through which to approach Christ, and the savage reviews (Kakutani, James Wood) that followed. From there he turns the contrast on Australia’s “mediocre literary culture,” arguing it prizes “moral hygiene” over the willingness to risk humiliation in pursuit of original work. The Society reposted the piece as “Piety vs. Artistry” (recorded here as an alias). The full text is held in the working archive (rights not yet cleared); see Here's Piety in Your Eye under texts.