MAILER, NORMAN. Typed letter signed to "Dear Mr. Cameron," [Brooklyn] 7 October [1946]. One page 4to, double-spaced on glossy white paper, about 500 words, the year and Mailer's Brooklyn address in pencil in the probable hand of the recipient, some folds, in pocket of slipcase with book noted below . "THE NAKED AND THE DEAD" An exceptional letter concerning the use of profanity in his first novel The Naked and the Dead (published in 1948): "...At the beginning of the novel, I was concerned with the profanity in it, and I decided that the only way to do it was to get the speech down and worry about editing it later. The profanity in the Army was dull and continual, it existed more as punctuation than for its direct meaning... If you take it out or if you edit it to a half or a third of its present incidence, you've got something else again--the swearing becomes sharp and distinct, it's cute, it suffers because it's 'clever dialogue.' No writer for my money has gotten across the American soldier in combat precisely because he's been too concerned with having the book easily palatable. On a completely personal level, I can't believe in a character while I'm writing him, unless I feel his speech is authentic. Gallagher and Wilson and Red would be unbelievable to me if their speech were expurgated... "When I'm done with the novel there will be places where the obscenities can be pruned. I have no doubt that if fug comes up three times in a sentence it is as annoying as say a word like 'restless' being repeated that much. I think what it comes to, Mr. Cameron, is whether we'll agree on the quantity of words to be cut out. I'm willing to go along with you editing here and there if you agree with me that a large part of that profanity has to remain, not only for its authenticity, but for the cumulative effect of 'work, misery, and death' to which it is a necessary corollary. After all, that is the most recurrent illumination or viewpoint in the novel." With: a copy of The Naked and the Dead , New York: Rinehart [1948], 8vo, original cloth, dust jacket (light wear at edges), cloth slipcase with above letter fitted in pocket , FIRST EDITION, FIRST STATE, of the author's first book, SIGNED BY MAILER. (2)
MAILER, NORMAN. Typed letter signed to "Dear Mr. Cameron," [Brooklyn] 7 October [1946]. One page 4to, double-spaced on glossy white paper, about 500 words, the year and Mailer's Brooklyn address in pencil in the probable hand of the recipient, some folds, in pocket of slipcase with book noted below . "THE NAKED AND THE DEAD" An exceptional letter concerning the use of profanity in his first novel The Naked and the Dead (published in 1948): "...At the beginning of the novel, I was concerned with the profanity in it, and I decided that the only way to do it was to get the speech down and worry about editing it later. The profanity in the Army was dull and continual, it existed more as punctuation than for its direct meaning... If you take it out or if you edit it to a half or a third of its present incidence, you've got something else again--the swearing becomes sharp and distinct, it's cute, it suffers because it's 'clever dialogue.' No writer for my money has gotten across the American soldier in combat precisely because he's been too concerned with having the book easily palatable. On a completely personal level, I can't believe in a character while I'm writing him, unless I feel his speech is authentic. Gallagher and Wilson and Red would be unbelievable to me if their speech were expurgated... "When I'm done with the novel there will be places where the obscenities can be pruned. I have no doubt that if fug comes up three times in a sentence it is as annoying as say a word like 'restless' being repeated that much. I think what it comes to, Mr. Cameron, is whether we'll agree on the quantity of words to be cut out. I'm willing to go along with you editing here and there if you agree with me that a large part of that profanity has to remain, not only for its authenticity, but for the cumulative effect of 'work, misery, and death' to which it is a necessary corollary. After all, that is the most recurrent illumination or viewpoint in the novel." With: a copy of The Naked and the Dead , New York: Rinehart [1948], 8vo, original cloth, dust jacket (light wear at edges), cloth slipcase with above letter fitted in pocket , FIRST EDITION, FIRST STATE, of the author's first book, SIGNED BY MAILER. (2)
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