Homage to Daniel Shays

by Gore Vidal

  By and large, excepting “The White Negro,” I did not like the essays and the newspaper columns. Mailer is forever shouting at us that he is about to tell us something we must know or has just told us something revelatory and we failed to hear him or that he will, God grant his poor abused brain and body just one more chance, get through to us so that we will know. Actually, when he does approach a point he shifts into a swelling, throbbing rhetoric which is not easy to read but usually has something to do with love and sex and the horror of our age and the connection which must be made between time and sex (the image this bit of rhetoric suggests to me is a limitless gray sea of time with a human phallus desperately poking at a corner of it). He is at his best (who is not?) when discussing himself. He is a born defendant. The piece about getting The Deer Park published is especially good, and depressing for what it reveals about our society. But, finally, in every line he writes, despite the bombast, there is uncertainty: Who am I? What do I want? What am I saying? He is Thomas Wolfe but with a conscience. Wolfe’s motive for writing was perfectly clear: he wanted fame; he wanted to taste the whole earth, to name all the rivers. Mailer has the same passion for fame but he has a good deal more sense of responsibility and he sees that the thing is always in danger of spinning down into meaninglessness. Nothing is quite enough: art, sex, politics, drugs, God, mind. He is sure to get tired of Hip very soon. Sex will be a dead end for him, because sex is the one purely existential act (to misuse, as he always does, a fashionable adjective of the forties). Sex is. There is nothing more to be done about it. Sex builds no roads, writes no novels, and sex certainly gives no meaning to anything in life but itself. I have often thought that much of D. H. Lawrence’s self-lacerating hysteria toward the end of his life must have come out of some “blood knowledge” that the cruel priapic god was mad, bad and dangerous to know, and, finally, not even a palliative to the universal strangeness.

  Perhaps what has gone wrong in Mailer, and in many of our fellow clerks, is the sense that human beings to flourish must be possessed by one idea, a central meaning to which all experience can be related. To be, in Isaiah Berlin’s bright metaphor, hedgehog rather than fox. Yet the human mind is not capable of this kind of exclusivity. We are none of us hedgehogs or foxes, but both simultaneously. The human mind is in continual flux, and personality is simply a sum of those attitudes which most often repeat themselves in recognizable actions. It is naive and dangerous to try to impose on the human mind any system of thought which lays claim to finality. Very few first-rate writers have ever subordinated their own apprehension of a most protean reality to a man-made system of thought. Tolstoi’s famous attempt in War and Peace nearly wrecked that beautiful work. Ultimately, not Christ, not Marx, not Freud, despite their pretensions, has the final word to say about the fact of being human. And those who take solemnly the words of other men as absolute are, in the deepest sense, maiming their own sensibilities and controverting the evidence of their own senses in a fashion which may be comforting to a terrified man but disastrous for an artist.

  One of the few sad results of the collapse of the Judeo-Christian ethical and religious systems has been the displacement of those who are absolutists by temperament and would in earlier times have been rabbis, priests, systematic philosophers. As the old Establishment of the West crumbles, the absolutists have turned to literature and the arts, and one by one the arts in the twentieth century have become hieratic. Serious literature has become religion, as Matthew Arnold foresaw. Those who once would have been fulfilled in Talmudic debate or suffered finely between the pull of Rome and the Church of England have turned to the writing of novels and, worse, to the criticism of novels. Now I am not sure that the novel, though it is many things, is particularly suited to didacticism. It is certainly putting an undesirable weight upon it to use it as a pretext for sermons or the resuscitation of antique religious myths. Works of fiction, at best, create not arguments but worlds, and a world by definition is an attitude toward a complex of experience, not a single argument or theme, syllogistically proposed. In the nineteenth century most of our critics (and many of our novelists) would have been writing books of sermons and quarreling over points of doctrine. With religion gone out of the intellectual world they now write solemnly and uneasily about novels; they are clearly impatient with the vulgar vitality of the art, and were it not that they had one another’s books about books to analyze, I suspect many of them would despair and falter. The novelists don’t seem very bright to the critics whose commentaries seem irrelevant to the novelists. Yet each affects the other; and those writers who are unduly eager for fame and acceptance will write novels which they hope might interest “religious”-minded critics. The results range from the sub-literary bleating of the Beats to Mailer’s portentous cry which takes the form of: I am the way and the life ever after, crucify me, you hackers, for mine is a ritual death! Take my flesh and my blood, partake of me and know mysteries…! And the curious thing is that they will crucify him; they will partake of his flesh; yet no mystery will be revealed. For the priests have created the gods, and they are all of them ritual harvest gods.

  I was most struck by a comment of André Gide in the posthumous Ainsi Soit-il: “It is affectation that makes so many of today’s writings, often even the best among them, unbearable to me. The author takes on a tone that is not natural to him.” Of course it is sometimes the work of a lifetime for an artist to discover who he is and it is true that a great deal of good art results from the trying on of masks, the affectation of a persona not one’s own. But it seems to me that most of my contemporaries, including Mailer, are—as Gide suggests—desperately trying to convince themselves and the audience that they are something they are not. There is even a certain embarrassment about writing novels at all. Telling stories does seem a silly occupation for one fully grown; yet to be a philosopher or a religious is not easy when one is making a novel. Also, in a society such as ours, where there is no moral, political or religious center, the temptation to fill the void is irresistible. There is the empty throne, so…seize the crown! Who would not be a king or high priest in such an age? And the writers, each in his own way, are preoccupied with power. Some hope to achieve place through good deportment. Universities are filled with poets and novelists conducting demure and careful lives in imitation of Eliot and Forster and those others who (through what seems to have been discretion) made it. Outside the universities one finds the buccaneers who mean to seize the crown by force, blunt Bolingbrokes to the Academy’s gentle Richards.

  Mailer is a Bolingbroke, a born usurper. He will raise an army anywhere, live off the country as best he can, helped by a devoted underground, even assisted at brief moments by rival claimants like myself. Yet when all is said, none of this is the way to live. And it is not a way (at least it makes the way harder) to create a literature. If it helps Hemingway to think of literature as a Golden Gloves Tournament with himself pounding Maupassant to the mat or fighting Stendhal to a draw, then no doubt the fantasy has been of some use. But there is also evidence that the preoccupation with actual political power is a great waste of time. Mailer has had the honesty to confess that his own competitiveness has wasted him as he worries about reviewers and bad publicity and the seemingly spiteful successes of other novelists. Yet all the time he knows perfectly well that writers are not in competition with one another. The real enemy is the audience, which grows more and more indifferent to literature, an audience which can be reached only by phenomena, by superior pornographies or willfully meretricious accounts of the way we live now. No serious American novelist has ever had any real sense of audience. C. P. Snow made the point that he would, given a choice, prefer to be a writer in England to a writer in America because, for better or worse, the Establishment of his country would read him and know him as he knew them, as the Greek dramatists knew and were known by their city’s audience. One cannot imagine the American president, any American president, reading a work by a serious contemporary A
merican writer. This lack of response is to me at the center of Mailer’s desperation. He is a public writer, not a private artist; he wants to influence those who are alive at this time, but they will not notice him even when he is good. So each time he speaks he must become more bold, more loud, put on brighter motley and shake more foolish bells. Anything to get their attention, and finally (and this could be his tragedy) so much energy is spent in getting the indifferent ear to listen that when the time comes for him to speak there may be not enough strength or creative imagination left him to say what he knows. Exhausted, he becomes like Louis Lambert in Balzac’s curious novel of the visionary-artist who, having seen straight through to the heart of the mystery, dies mad, murmuring: “The angels are white.”

  Yet of all my contemporaries I retain the greatest affection for Mailer as a force and as an artist. He is a man whose faults, though many, add to rather than subtract from the sum of his natural achievement. There is more virtue in his failures than in most small, premeditated successes which, in Cynic’s phrase, “debase currency.” Mailer, in all that he does, whether he does it well or ill, is honorable, and that is the highest praise I can give any writer in this piping time.

  The Nation, January 2, 1960

  PRESIDENT KENNEDY

  Until last month (March, 1961), I had not been at the White House since 1957, when I was asked to compose a speech for President Eisenhower.*1

  At that time the White House was as serene as a resort hotel out of season. The corridors were empty. In the various offices of the Executive (wings contiguous to the White House proper) quiet gray men in waistcoats talked to one another in low-pitched voices.

  The only color, or choler, curiously enough, was provided by President Eisenhower himself. Apparently his temper was easily set off; he scowled when he stalked the corridors; the Smile was seldom in evidence. Fortunately, Eisenhower was not at the White House often enough to disturb that tranquillity which prevailed, no matter what storms at home, what tragedies abroad.

  Last month I returned to the White House (a defeated Democratic politician, full of pluck) to find the twentieth century, for good or ill, installed. The corridors are filled with eager youthful men, while those not young are revitalized.

  As Secretary of Commerce Luther Hodges (at sixty-two the oldest member of the Cabinet) remarked: “There I was a few months ago, thinking my life was over. I’d retired to a college town. Now…well, that fellow in there” (he indicated the President’s office) “he calls me in the morning, calls me at noon, calls me at night: Why don’t we try this? Have you considered that? Then to top it all he just now asks me: Where do you get your suits from? I tell you I’m a young man again.”

  In the White House press room reporters are permanently gathered. Photographers are on constant alert and television cameramen stand by, for news is made at all hours.

  The affection of the press for Kennedy is a phenomenon, unique in presidential politics. There is of course the old saw that he was a newspaperman himself (briefly, for INS) and also that he is a bona fide intellectual (on the other hand, the working press is apt to be anti-intellectual); but, finally, and perhaps more to the point, Kennedy is candid with the press in a highly personal way. He talks to journalists easily. There is no pomp; there is little evasion in his manner; he involves them directly in what he is doing. His wit is pleasingly sardonic.

  Most important, until Kennedy, it was impossible for anyone under fifty (or for an intellectual of any age) to identify himself with the President. The intellectual establishment of the country opted for “alienation,” the cant word of the 1940’s and 1950’s, and even those who approved of this or that president’s deeds invariably regarded the men set over us by the electorate as barbarians (Truman’s attack on modern painting, Roosevelt’s breezy philistinism, Eisenhower’s inability to express himself coherently on any subject).

  For twenty years the culture and the mind of the United States ignored politics. Many never voted; few engaged in active politics. Now everything has changed. From Kenneth Galbraith to Robert Frost the intellectual establishment is listened to and even, on occasion, engaged to execute policy.*2

  Close to, Kennedy looks older than his photographs. The outline is slender and youthful, but for his age the face is heavily lined. On the upper lip are those tiny vertical lines characteristic of the old. He is usually tanned from the sun, while his hair is what lady novelists call “chestnut,” beginning to go gray. His eyes are very odd. They are, I think, a murky, opaque blue, “interested,” as Gertrude Stein once said of Hemingway’s eyes, “not interesting”; they give an impression of flatness, while long blond eyelashes screen expression at will. His stubby boy fingers tend to drum nervously on tables, on cups and glasses. He is immaculately dressed; although, disconcertingly, occasional white chest hairs curl over his collar.

  The smile is charming even when it is simulated for the public. Franklin Roosevelt set an unhappy tradition of happy warriors, and ever since his day our politicians are obliged to beam and grin and simper no matter how grave the occasion. Recently, at a public dinner, I had a thoughtful conversation with Harry Truman. He was making a particularly solemn point when suddenly, though his tone did not change, his face jerked abruptly into a euphoric grin, all teeth showing. I thought he had gone mad, until I noticed photographers had appeared in the middle distance.

  As for Kennedy’s personality, he is very much what he seems. He is withdrawn, observant, icily objective in crisis, aware of the precise value of every card dealt him. Intellectually, he is dogged rather than brilliant.

  Over the years I’ve occasionally passed books on to him, which I thought would interest him (including such arcana as Byzantine economy). Not only does he read them but he will comment on what he’s read when I see him next (our meetings are casual, at long intervals, and I am happy to say that I have no influence).

  After his defeat for the Vice-Presidential nomination in 1956, he was amused when I suggested that he might feel more cheerful if every day he were to recite to himself while shaving the names of the vice-presidents of the United States, a curiously dim gallery of minor politicians. Also, somewhat mischievously, I suggested that he read Coriolanus to see if he might find Shakespeare’s somewhat dark view of democracy consoling. Mrs. Kennedy and he read it aloud one foggy day at Hyannisport. Later he made the point with some charm that Shakespeare’s knowledge of the democratic process was, to say the least, limited.

  On another occasion, I gave him the manuscript of a play of mine (The Best Man) whose setting was a nominating convention for the Presidency. He read the play with interest; his comments were shrewd. I recall one in particular, because I used it.

  “Whenever,” he said, “a politician means to give you the knife at a convention, the last thing he’ll say to you, as he leaves the room, is: ‘Now look, Jack, if there’s anything I can do for you, you just let me know!’ That’s the euphemism for ‘You’re dead.’ ”

  Kennedy’s relationships tend to be compartmentalized. There are cronies who have nothing to do with politics whom he sees for relaxation. There are advisers whom he sees politically but not socially. The only occasion where personal friendship and public policy appear to have overlapped was in his appointment of the perhaps not distinguished Earl Smith (our envoy to Cuba at the time of the Batista debacle) as ambassador to Switzerland. The Swiss, who were acting for the United States in Havana, complained loudly. To save the President embarrassment, Smith withdrew. With chilling correctness, Kennedy is reported to have called in the Swiss Ambassador to Washington and given him a lesson in international diplomacy (i.e. you do not criticize publicly an ambassadorial appointment without first apprising the Chief of State privately). The ambassador left the White House shaken and bemused. Immediately afterwards, an aide entered the President’s office to find him beaming. “That was very satisfying,” he said.

  Kennedy is unique among recent
Presidents in many ways. For one thing, he has ended (wistfully, one hopes forever) the idea that the presidency is a form of brevet rank to be given a man whose career has been distinguished in some profession other than politics or, if to a politician, one whose good years are past, the White House being merely a place to provide some old pol with a golden Indian summer.

  Yet the job today is literally killing, and despite his youth, Kennedy may very well not survive. A matter, one suspects, of no great concern to him. He is fatalistic about himself. His father recalls with a certain awe that when his son nearly died during the course of a spinal operation he maintained a complete serenity: if he was meant to die at that moment he would die and complaint was useless.

  Like himself, the men Kennedy has chosen to advise him have not reached any great height until now. They must prove themselves now. Government service will be the high point of their lives, not an agreeable reward for success achieved elsewhere. Few men have the energy or capacity to conduct successfully two separate careers in a lifetime, an obvious fact ignored by most presidents in their search, often prompted by vanity or a sense of public relations, for celebrated advisers.

  Nearly half the electorate was eager to find Kennedy and his regime “intellectual,” given to fiscal irresponsibility and creeping socialism. (There is, by the way, despite the cries of demagogues, no operative Left in the United States. We are divided about evenly between conservatives and reactionaries.) But now, having experienced his Administration, it is evident even to the most suspicious of the Radical Right that Kennedy is not an adventurous reformer of the body politic, if only because this is not the time for such a reformation, and he knows it.