Pynchon/Roth/Bellow/Updike on the 1960s

[Robin Landseadel]

On Feb 26, 2009, at 2:02 PM, malignd at aol.com wrote:

> Much as I loved him, he wasn't in a category with the above purely  
> as a novelist, but Mailer's the guy of that generation who was  
> generally most interesting about the sixties.

The only Mailer that I've read was "Armies of the Night", but it left  
a powerful impression. Alfred Kazin's NYT review gets to the heart of  
the matter

	Of course Mailer presents this book as his nonfiction novel--he
	simply cannot stop dreaming about himself as a novelist. But it
	is a fact that only a born novelist could have written a piece of
	history so intelligent, mischievous, penetrating and alive, so
	vivid with crowds, the great stage that is American democracy,
	the Washington streets and bridges, the Lincoln Memorial, the
	women, students, hippies, Negroes and assorted intellectuals
	for peace, the M.P.'s and United States marshals, the American
	Nazis chanting "We want dead Reds."

http://www.nytimes.com/books/97/05/04/reviews/mailer-armies.html