Mr Kimball,
I am not an american and I had never heard of you before. I have only read one half of a Mailer’s book (The Castle in the Forest). I expected more from the prose, but find the narrative wonderful. I say this, because I want to make clear that my motivation in writing to you is not to make a stand ─ for or against Mailer as a writer. My motivation comes from having read previous comments about this post.
For starts, I find it ridiculous that some of these people are criticizing you for stating your opinion about a recently deceased person. It’s the same as telling someone not to speak badly of the government while there are soldiers fighting a war. It is the sort of thing that signals a very simple mind.
Nevertheless what worries me the most are the people who state they are never going to read Mailer because of your portrait of him. I say of him because that’s what you really did. You define his work as awful, but what really seems to bother you is the man himself.
I have learned to mistrust people who evaluate an artist’s work in terms of his life. Readers of your post should do the same.
After reading it I felt more interested in Mailer’s work than before, not less. I cannot condone the praise of violence, I absolutely oppose it. I know nothing of the Abbott affair, had never heard of it. Still, your account of it reeks of moral righteousness, but I presume you wouldn’t consider this a bad thing.
All in all, after reading the post I have the feeling that Mailer, for all of his reported presumptuousness, was a very interesting person. For me anyone who has the courage to transcend the values of normalcy is interesting. Anyone who can envision the possibility of other cultures, other ways of being, is humble, not presumptuous.