I liked this piece — it’s a useful perspective. And funny.

But it’s marred by the author’s biases and assumptions w/regard to — among other things — the NYT, which he apparently chooses to think is still stuck in 1965. Has he actually read it since the late nineties? The National Review it ain’t, but update your thinking just a bit, so you don’t start to sound as dated as Mailer does. At the very least, the next time a Liberal Lion dies, don’t assume the NYT will be THIS one-sided!

Also, as has already been pointed out, who the heck even on the Left actually thinks of Mailer as one of the great American writers? I read a couple of his books on my own, and wasn’t impressed. But when I was an English major at Yale I took numerous contemporary literature courses, and he was never on the syllabus — not is novels, not his non-fiction, none of it. His non-fiction was regarded by many as being of far less merit than that of Tom Wolfe or Truman Capote. His novels weren’t even worth a mention. And Yale is no bastion on conservatism either. So methinks the continued existence of a so-called adoring liberal intelligencia is somewhat a straw man concocted by Mr. Kimball in order to stir the faithful.