Last thoughts on Mailer: While not a great writer, he certainly knew how to play the part of one. He has certainly inspired a lot of comments–mostly unfavorable but still a lot of comments. He was anti-war, pro drugs, and pro wanton sex. I suppose wanton sex is relatively harmless, but if great sex did all the wonderful things Mailer claimed, pornstars would be philosopher-kings. And as for drugs, well drug abuse–not warfare–has been the slayer of several generations of American youth. It was not some existential demon that made Mailer stab his wife. It was booze. I come from a lumpenprole background. It was not drugs and sex that delivered me from a hard life, but my embrace of steady work and middle class values. Norman Mailer, Hunter Thompson, Abby Hoffman, and any number of rock stars advocated a half-baked kind of liberation that was more tawdry than the values they despised. They sent more young Americans to their deaths that McNamara and Rumsfeld put together.