Volume 8, Number 7 · April 20, 1967
Catching Up on Mailer
By John Thompson
Cannibals and Christians
by Norman Mailer
The Dial Press, 399 pp., $5.95
The Deer Park
A Play by Norman Mailer
Theatre de Lys
Some books, perhaps some authors, resist the reviewer if not the reader. The reviewer, that show-off drudge, is perhaps a man who hates to make up his mind and thus compulsively gets into positions where he has to do it. And the reviewer also thinks he ought to be a critic. He ought to have the further nerve to become conscious of his like or dislike. This is not so easy as it might seem to us when we think we are doing it in conversation: 'How did you like it?' The reviewer wants to describe a book, analyze it, say where it belongs in the range of the author's work and in the range of literature; he wants to say why it is there, where it came from, and where it seems to be going. Books can't be put through a quantitative analysis, and the road test of a play is not the same as the road test of a new kind of automobile.
Review, 1360 words
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