The Spooky Art by Norman Mailer Page B

“Tell me all about your book.” After you’ve answered that a few times, you begin to feel as if the limousine in which you are traveling is out of gas and you have to push it up the hill.
    For literary people who are on a tight budget, buying a good hardcover book does bear some slight relation to a sacramental act, so it’s best if they feel a certain respect, even a touch of awe, for you as the author. If you’re unsavory in public life, it doesn’t matter that everyone knows your name—you are not going to sell as many hardcover books as you should. The good authors who do well are usually careful not to be in the public eye—Saul Bellow and John Updike for two. Very few can flout that law. Capote has. So has Vidal. I certainly haven’t.
    Every time a story about me appears in a newspaper, I am injured professionally. I don’t think there’s anything to do about it. One of the reasons I’m in all the time is that the columns keep using the same people. It’s a game, and there may not be many more than a few hundred players on the board. If I were in a Tarot deck, I’d be the Fool. I used to try to keep a stern separation between the public legend and myself, but you know, you get older, and after a while, you can feel at times like an old gink in Miami with slits in his sneakers. At that juncture, it’s pointless to fight the legend. The legend has become a lotion for your toes.
    If you are ever in a situation where you’ve had enough commercial success to be dealing with a movie company—don’t worry about the number-one man or woman. Do your best to have Number Two approve of what you’re doing. Because if Number One likes what you offer him and Number Two doesn’t, Number One will almost never give the go-ahead. It’s to his or her advantage to go along with Number Two’s declared opinion.
    We can approach it as a logical proposition. If One insists on doing your book and the movie that comes out doesn’t do well,then Two now has a real edge. Conceivably—if the stakes have been high—he or she might someday be in a position to take over One’s job. On the other hand, if One was right in going ahead with you and your property does well for the company, then Two may never forgive One for exhibiting superior acumen.
    On the other hand, if One turns to Two and says, “Okay, we won’t take it on,” and the film that is made by others from your book or script does not do well, then Two can feel genial enough to say, “I’m working for a pretty good guy. He pays attention to me; he respects me. That is because he knows I’m usually right.” Of course, if the company who picks it up makes real money, Two is left at a whole disadvantage.
    Ergo, the rule suggests: Get to the number-two man and hope he likes your work.
    On the other hand, if you’ve written your best, forget about these matters. It’s taken me fifty years to learn this sort of thing. In that sense, it’s not worth learning. After all, I still have to find out how to get to Number Two.
    On this practical note, let me add another tip:
An American Dream
was originally published in
Esquire
in 1964 and had a scene where a black man said
shit
about twenty times. Now, I didn’t really need all twenty. Twelve would have been better, but I also knew that if I put in twelve, the editors would take out five, so I put in twenty. And the editors screamed, but I ended up with my twelve. They were happy and I was happy.
THE BITCH
    I remember, years ago, talking about the novel with Gore Vidal. We were reminiscing in mutually sour fashion over the various pirates, cutthroats, racketeers, assassins, pimps, rape artists, and general finks we had encountered on our separate travels through the literary world, and we went on at length, commenting—Gore with a certain bitter joy, I with some uneasiness—upon the decline of our métier in recent years. We were speaking as trade unionists. It was not that the American novel was necessarily less