Preview

Here are a few “facts” about the “problem” that led Random House to “cancel” a planned anthology of Norman Mailer’s political writings, expected to coincide with his 2023 centenary, due to the objections of a junior staffer (and possibly Roxane Gay) to the inclusion of Mailer’s 1957 essay “The White Negro.” The decision angered Mailer’s family.

At least, that’s what Michael Wolff has written on his Substack newsletter The Ankler.

However—
Random House did receive such a proposal from representatives of the Mailer estate. But its spokespeople say a decision was never reached to publish it and no contract was ever on offer.
There is no history of a “junior staffer” at Random House or any other major publishing house I know of who can get a book canceled. That takes a “senior staffer,” at least, or a powerful friend of someone who doesn’t want a book published (see under: “Allen, Woody”) or some new news story about relatively recent bad behavior on the part of the author (see under: “Roth, Philip, biography”).
Many, if not most, of Mailer’s books remain in print from Random House (and the Library of America), and the ones that are not in print are not in print because no one wants to buy them. They don’t exactly sell like metaphorical hotcakes, but they no doubt pay their freight and contribute to the prestige of the people who work there, which is another form of payment, albeit one that will not help you when you need to take a subway.
When originally contacted, Gay had no idea what anyone was talking about.
The family’s not mad.
The book in question will be published by Skyhorse (see, again, under: “Allen, Woody” and “Roth, Philip, biography”).

You can read, if you wish, “The White Negro” here. It’s kind of crazy, even for its day, and Irving Howe said in his memoir that maybe it was not such a hot idea for Dissent to publish it. When Mailer was good, though, he was really good. Joan Didion said of him, “It is a largely unremarked fact about Mailer that he is a great and obsessed stylist, a writer to whom the shape of the sentence is the story.” If you are unfamiliar, see if you can find his essay on the 1960 Democratic convention, “Superman Comes to the Supermarket,” which is behind Esquire’s paywall, here. I am also a great fan of his books The Armies of the Night and Miami and the Siege of Chicago (both of which are in the Library of America’s collection of his work from the 1960s), Advertisements for Myself, and The Executioner’s Song—though to be honest, Norman Mailer’s greatest work was the hard-to-believe life of Norman Mailer.

Here are a few conclusions one might draw from the above:

First, left-wing “cancel culture” may be real, and it may be a real problem in academia and the culture business, especially for those just starting out in those fields—I know it would be for me were I young and starting out. But even given the above, the problem is, more often than not, exaggerated way beyond its actual existence in the mainstream (and especially social) media, as has happened here, because so many conservatives have a vested interest in
(a) changing the subject from the far more prevalent phenomenon of right-wing cancel culture;

(b) as well as from the onset of fascism, which appears to bother them far less; and

(c) there is also the fact that, owing to their having experienced decades of being worked by the refs, many journalists and others are eager to prove to said right-wingers that they are not pushovers for the “woke” left and hence jump on any opportunity to do so, without bothering to check on the truth of the matter.
But also, the consolidation of the publishing industry is a real and growing problem, especially given the proposed combination of Random House, which already combined with Penguin, with Simon & Schuster. Those people who believe themselves to be on the left, but have no respect for free speech because they disagree with the content of what’s being spoken, are not really on the left. Hachette should not have canceled the publication of Woody Allen’s memoir and Norton should not have canceled the publication of Philip Roth’s biography. We cannot depend on a gadfly publisher like Skyhorse to save our freedom of discourse, especially since, while gadfly publishers can publish, they cannot command the kind of attention that Random House or Hachette does, nor can they pay writers sufficient advances to support themselves while they write.

Finally, don’t believe something just because Michael Wolff says it’s true.

Odds and Ends

I was looking forward to Mel Brooks’s memoir, but man, what a slog. I’m pretty sure nobody edited it and it is barely even copyedited. It’s incredibly unreflective and uninsightful; just one long pat on one’s back and valentines to everyone Mel has ever met. Patrick McGilligan’s biography, Funny Man, paints Brooks as a sad, mean, insecure man. I did not want to believe that when I read it. But this book does nothing to convince me otherwise. I don’t mind a 90-plus-year-old guy talking into a tape recorder and remembering his life with rose-colored glasses. I just mind paying to read it.

On the other hand, the new Library of America edition of John Williams: Collected Novels is a welcome surprise and an opportunity, if you have not already done so, to read his novel Stoner, which may be the best novel ever written about academia. It is almost certainly the best novel I recommend to people who say they have never heard of the novel I just recommended that they read. Williams, it turns out, wrote only three novels in his life. Butcher’s Crossing takes place in the Old West in the 1870s. The third, Augustus, set in Rome after the assassination of Julius Caesar in 44 B.C., is a tour de force of imaginative reconstruction. I will read those now. But Stoner, which Irving Howe called “serious, beautiful and affecting,” is all those things, and the Library edition has all the notes and lovely binding that make its books a pleasure to read before you even read them.

P.S.: I found that reading this article, saving it, and then tweeting about it to be … wait for it … a distraction.

It’s Really Old One-Hit Wonder Day on the Altercation playlist:

Here’s a fun video of “Take a Letter, Maria” by R.B. Greaves.

And one of “Worst That Could Happen” by Johnny Maestro & The Brooklyn Bridge.

The incredible Plastic Bertrand with the classic “Ça Plane Pour Moi.”

My all-time favorite one-hit wonder of all time with the lamest video—a song that, incidentally, got its own lyrics wrong in the title: “Reach Out of the Darkness” by Friend & Lover.

Runner-up in both categories: Norman Greenbaum’s “Spirit in the Sky.”

Not so fast, you say, Eric. What about Bobbie Gentry’s “Ode to Billie Joe”? Not at all a one-hit wonder, I reply. Many country hits, in fact even the girl from Chickasaw County, have massive box sets. OK, you retort. What about Jeannie C. Reilly’s “Harper Valley PTA”? Fine, I’d say, you win (extra points for that hair). There is no all-time favorite. It’s a silly notion. I apologize, but I do wonder if they are teaching critical race theory in Harper Valley these days …