Mind of an Outlaw by Norman Mailer Read Free Book Online Page A

theologians to the side (for I frankly am all but ignorant of theology) I would argue most seriously that growth is a greater mystery than death. All of us can understand failure, we all contain failure and death within us, but not even the successful man can begin to describe the impalpable elations and apprehensions of growth.When we can all agree, including odd dialectical idealists like myself, that history is not foreseeable and the future is unknown, we must also agree that although society is a machine, it does not determine man’s fate, but merely processes nine-tenths of his possibilities on the basis of what society has learned from the past. Since we are all in the process of changing, since we are already in the privacy of our minds far ahead of the life we see around us (for civilized man has always been outraged by what he sees, or else there would be no civilization)—since we are all advanced in our dreams beyond the practical social possibilities open to our immediate time, that present
living
time which is all but strangled by the slow mechanical determinations of society, we know and feel that whatever happens to us will happen as the reaction between our urgent desires to express ourselves, to discover the passionate attachment of our lives, and the resistant, mechanical network of past social ideas, platitudes, and lies.
Power
    Only it is difficult to express oneself. The act of writing something (which one expects or hopes will be published) is a social act, it becomes—even at its best—all but a lie. To communicate socially (as opposed to communicating personally or humanly) means that one must accept the sluggish fictions of society for at least nine-tenths of one’s expression in order to present deceptively the remaining tenth which may be new. Social communication is the doom of every truly felt thought. (Naturally, all men who wish to communicate seek social communication nonetheless, for it is the only way to influence great numbers of people in a relatively short time.)
    To communicate socially is to communicate by way of the mass media—movies, radio, television, advertising, newspapers, best-selling novels, etc.—which is to communicate by way of the largest and most debased common denominator—which in turn is equivalent to communicating very little, for procedurally one becomes part of a machine which is antithetical to one’s individualexistence. Antithetical, I say, because this machine attempts to direct the fortunes of men by the obsolete and hence impractical results of the past. As one writes, one enters an external network of expectations, consequences, fears, cupidities, social fashions: in short, reward or punishment turns the language and alters the thought. This is true even of the most serious attempts to communicate, by artists let us say, or the occasional creative scholar. Once one enters the land of massive social communication, of network communication, once one becomes attached to the machine belt of the mass media—specifically, in our case, the assembly line of the columnist—there is no desire to retain even the father’s ghost of a thought. There is only power for the sake of power, and it is cowardly power for it masquerades in coy and winsome forms. On the surface there is only the attempt to entertain in a conventional way. (Obviously, to entertain and yet say nothing new is quite a difficult game, which is why perhaps columnists, commercial writers, and so forth are paid so well.)
    Therefore, I propose to try something I do not believe I can accomplish. I will try to write for you (this column to the contrary) as if I were talking in my living room, or in yours. So my opinions will be half-formed, if not totally inarticulate, but at least they can be awkwardly close to the questions I am really thinking about.
Obscenity
    Even so, I promise very very little. For example I will be able to use no obscenities, and obscenities communicate a great deal in the