“Norman… I Hate to Talk About Norman”: The Art of the Insult and Literary Friendship, Circa 1960

Abstract

The essay rereads the literary field of the mid-twentieth century as structured by “the art of the insult”—a game the literati, exemplified by James Baldwin and Norman Mailer, are invested in. In essays and interviews, these writers engage in ad hominem verbal attacks to test the limits of the socially sayable, which are also the limits of personal friendship. Existing scholarship has shown how the fraught relation between Baldwin and Mailer was marked by gender, race, and sexuality. Drawing on under-researched and newly accessible material, the article makes the case that these differences are superseded by the shared identity as literati who ground literary innovation in social provocation. The alliance culminates in their closing ranks to censor and legitimize the underlying scandal: Mailer’s physical assault against his wife Adele, whose autobiography the article considers in closing.