The Spooky Art: Some Thoughts on Writing - Hardcover

Mailer, Norman

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0394536487 ISBN 13: 9780394536484

Publisher: Random House, 2003

Synopsis

“Writing is spooky. There is no routine of an office to keep you going, only the blank page each
morning, and you never know where your words are coming from, those divine words.”
In The Spooky Art, Norman Mailer discusses with signature candor the rewards and trials of the writing life, and recommends the tools to navigate it. Addressing the reader in a conversational tone, he draws on the best of more than fifty years of his own criticism, advice, and detailed observations about the writer’s craft. Mailer explores, among other topics, the use of first person versus third person, the pressing need for discipline, the pitfalls of early success, and the dire matter of coping with bad reviews. While The Spooky Art offers a fascinating preview of what can lie in wait for the student and fledgling writer, the book also has a great deal to say to more advanced writers on the contrary demands of plot and character, the demon writer’s block, and the curious ins-and-outs of publishing. Throughout, Mailer ties in examples from his own career, and reflects on the works of his fellow writers, living and dead—Twain, Melville, Faulkner, Hemingway, Updike, Didion, Bellow, Styron, Beckett, and a host of others. In The Spooky Art, Mailer captures the unique untold suffering and exhilaration of the novelist’s daily life and, while plotting a clear path for other writers to follow, maintains reverence for the underlying mystery and power of the art.

About this title

From the Back Cover:

Norman Mailer in The Spooky Art

On the writer’s ambition:
People don’t become authors solely to benefit humanity. They’re in the same position as priests. Part of them wants to be good to others; the other side wants, one way or the other, to have some sort of acquaintance with power.

On crafting characters:
It is not easy to write in the first person about a man who’s stronger or braver than yourself. It’s too close to self-serving. All the same, you have to be able to do it. Because if every one of your characters is kept down to your level, you do not take on large subjects. You need people more heroic than yourself, more enterprising, less timid, sexier, more romantic, more tragic.
On experience:
A very young writer sits on a park bench with his girl. He kisses her. He’s seventeen. He’s never had such a kiss before.
Later that night, he tries to capture the event. He writes:
I love you, he said.
I love you, she said.
He stops, throws down his pen, and says, “I’m a great writer!”
Sometimes, you have to wait.

On stamina:
Over the years, I’ve found one rule. It is the only one I give on those occasions when I talk about writing. A simple rule. If you tell yourself you are going to be at your desk tomorrow, you are by that declaration asking your unconscious to prepare the material. You are, in effect, contracting to pick up such valuables at a given time. Count on me, you are saying to a few forces below: I will be there to write.

About the Author:

Norman Mailer was born in 1923 and published his first book, The Naked and the Dead, in 1948. The Armies of the Night won the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize in 1969; Mailer received another Pulitzer in 1980 for The Executioner’s Song. He lives in Provincetown, Massachusetts, and Brooklyn, New York.

About this edition

• Publisher: Random House
• Publication date: 2003
• ISBN 10: 0394536487
• ISBN 13: 9780394536484
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 330