“Probably I was in the war. There is the mark of a wound behind my ear, an oblong of unfertile flesh where no hair grows. It is covered over now, and may be disguised by even the clumsiest barber, but no barber can hide the scar on my back. For that a tailor is more in order. When I stare into the mirror I am returned a face doubtless more handsome than the original, but the straight nose, the modelled chin, and the smooth cheeks […]

One of my pseudo-white whales I realized once I got going with it and thought back on my orientation toward this novel. It’s on the MLA top 100, so I bought it once long ago and began reading it and stopped not that far into it. I mentioned this once to a grad school colleague and got yelled at, and didn’t know why or like that. It was my first understanding of that kind of passion that Mailer sometimes inspired in people. He obviously has […]