“For someone as cautious, culturally limited, and socially corner-pocketed as I was (I could relate to the character in Barry Levinson’s Diner who muses, ‘You ever get the feeling there’s something going on we don’t know about?’), Mailer dynamited a way open, revealed a combat mode any writer could emulate if he could pry himself free of all those inhibitions handed down from loving parents and kind teachers to keep you in line.”
–James Wolcott. “Norman Mailer Sent Me.” Vanity Fair November 2011: 122-134. Quote on page 128.