3.5
On God
ByPublisher Description
“I see God,” wrote Norman Mailer, “as a Creator, as the greatest artist. I see human beings as His most developed artworks.” In these moving, amusing, and probing dialogues conducted in the years before his death, Mailer establishes his own system of belief, rejecting both organized religion and atheism. He avows that sensual pleasures were bestowed on us by God; he finds fault with the Ten Commandments; and he holds that technology was the Devil’s most brilliant creation. In short, Mailer is original and unpredictable in this inspiring journey, in which “God needs us as much as we need God.”
Praise for On God
“[Norman Mailer’s] theology is not theoretical to him. After eight decades, it is what he believes. He expects no adherents, and does not profess to be a prophet, but he has worked to forge his beliefs into a coherent catechism.”—New York
“The glory of an original mind in full provocation.”—USA Today
“At once illuminating and exciting . . . a chance to see Mailer’s intellect as well as his lively conversational style of speech.”—American Jewish Life
“Remarkable . . . [Mailer’s] a believer—in his own fashion. . . . He has made [God] into a complex character.”—The Globe and Mail
Praise for Norman Mailer
“[Norman Mailer] loomed over American letters longer and larger than any other writer of his generation.”—The New York Times
“A writer of the greatest and most reckless talent.”—The New Yorker
“Mailer is indispensable, an American treasure.”—The Washington Post
“A devastatingly alive and original creative mind.”—Life
“Mailer is fierce, courageous, and reckless and nearly everything he writes has sections of headlong brilliance.”—The New York Review of Books
“The largest mind and imagination [in modern] American literature . . . Unlike just about every American writer since Henry James, Mailer has managed to grow and become richer in wisdom with each new book.”—Chicago Tribune
“Mailer is a master of his craft. His language carries you through the story like a leaf on a stream.”—The Cincinnati Post
Praise for On God
“[Norman Mailer’s] theology is not theoretical to him. After eight decades, it is what he believes. He expects no adherents, and does not profess to be a prophet, but he has worked to forge his beliefs into a coherent catechism.”—New York
“The glory of an original mind in full provocation.”—USA Today
“At once illuminating and exciting . . . a chance to see Mailer’s intellect as well as his lively conversational style of speech.”—American Jewish Life
“Remarkable . . . [Mailer’s] a believer—in his own fashion. . . . He has made [God] into a complex character.”—The Globe and Mail
Praise for Norman Mailer
“[Norman Mailer] loomed over American letters longer and larger than any other writer of his generation.”—The New York Times
“A writer of the greatest and most reckless talent.”—The New Yorker
“Mailer is indispensable, an American treasure.”—The Washington Post
“A devastatingly alive and original creative mind.”—Life
“Mailer is fierce, courageous, and reckless and nearly everything he writes has sections of headlong brilliance.”—The New York Review of Books
“The largest mind and imagination [in modern] American literature . . . Unlike just about every American writer since Henry James, Mailer has managed to grow and become richer in wisdom with each new book.”—Chicago Tribune
“Mailer is a master of his craft. His language carries you through the story like a leaf on a stream.”—The Cincinnati Post
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Meet readers like you in the Fable For You feed, designed to build bookish communities3 Reviews
3.5
SydneyOM
Created almost 5 years agoShare
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Chris Winters
Created almost 8 years agoShare
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“Here lie the rantings of a would-be cult leader, if he had any ambition to convert others to his ways of thought.
Okay, I'm just going to lay out the basics of Mailer's theology here:
1) God is a creative god (i.e., God as novelist), limited in goodness, power, and knowledge.
2) The devil is another god, in a constant war against God, though they may work together at times with a common aim.
3) When we die, we are reincarnated by God into new bodies, usually but not necessarily human.
That's pretty much all that Mailer will say definitely; everything else is unknowable. There is a lot of speculation, but he's always careful to say that he's uncertain about most everything. For example, Mailer theorizes that humans were ultimately meant to develop telepathy, but the devil uses technology to dampen our telepathic senses, to thwart the intentions of God. He's fascinated by the logistical nightmare of trying to reincarnate millions of souls in such a short amount of time after, say, the Holocaust or the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima. He also thinks that dogs probably have souls and that we might be reincarnated as dogs every now and then, and that wouldn't be so bad.
The reason for this last theory of dogs with souls, of course, is that Mailer likes dogs. That's what all of Mailer's ideas come down to. Mailer likes to think of God as a novelist because he is himself a novelist. He likes the idea of reincarnation because that's what makes him feel better in his old age, as opposed to disappearing into the dirt. One time he said some phrase at the exact same moment as someone else, so he likes to think that was a hint of telepathy.
These are just the wishful and dotty ramblings of an (admittedly, very smart) old man, but I'll allow it, because ridiculous as they are, it's all pretty entertaining.”
Emily Barbian
Created over 12 years agoShare
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About Norman Mailer
Born in 1923 in Long Branch, New Jersey, and raised in Brooklyn, New York, Norman Mailer was one of the most influential writers of the second half of the twentieth century and a leading public intellectual for nearly sixty years. He is the author of more than thirty books. The Castle in the Forest, his last novel, was his eleventh New York Times bestseller. His first novel, The Naked and the Dead, has never gone out of print. His 1968 nonfiction narrative, The Armies of the Night, won the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award. He won a second Pulitzer for The Executioner’s Song and is the only person to have won Pulitzers in both fiction and nonfiction. Five of his books were nominated for National Book Awards, and he won a lifetime achievement award from the National Book Foundation in 2005. Mr. Mailer died in 2007 in New York City.
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