Roger’s Rules sums up the shabby career of a recently deceased writer whose name deserves to disappear. He could have simply reduced it to this sentence:
In fact, like almost all of Mailer’s books, The Armies of the Night is badly written—almost preposterously so.
I tried reading two of the buffoon’s novels many years ago. They remain among the very small minority of books that made me snort with contempt and put them down, unfinished and quickly forgotten. Like Tom Robbins, Norman Mailer will be one of those once-popular writers whose works will be regarded with confusion by the few readers of the future who happen to be so unfortunate as to accidentally pick up a copy.
Naturally, Christopher Hitchens thinks he was just spiffy. It figures. Both of them are the sort of loud-mouthed public bullies that I occasionally regret my hermit-like existence precludes me from encountering.