This is pompous and wrongheaded. Who reads Mailer, who ever read Mailer, as a serious thinker? Who even reads him as a major novelist? But to be blind to the excellence of his journalism, or his purely literary gifts — that is quite an achievement.

When Mailer reported real-life events, whether or not they were political, he was not a blow-hard. Reporting on real-life events disciplined his mind and brought out some qualities that Mr. Kimball might emulate: a surprising fairness in describing people with different politics, an admiration for heroism wherever it appeared, and an extraordinary talent for metaphor. And one thing more: while Mailer was a provocateur, he was without cruelty or cowardice, something that cannot be said of Kimball who, as others have noted, waited for Mailer to be dead before he plunged in his dagger.