Algis Valiunas at Commentary writes on the legacy of Norman Mailer.

Capote showed Mailer the way by sympathetically detailing the character of one of the murderers, who like Gilmore seemed fated to suffer and inflict hell on earth; but Capote also did what Mailer did not, which was to portray the victims in their appealing humanity, to render the full horror of their final moments, and to emphasize what was lost by their deaths. With the rapt intensity of a man staring into a cobra’s eyes, Mailer gazes into and cannot look away from human malignancy, which seems the most riveting subject a writer can have and which he congratulates himself for searching so boldly again and again. If only he did not love it so.

I just wish Valiunas would stop holding back, and tell us what he really thinks of Mailer.

Caution for disturbing subject matter.

Tip: The Paragraph Farmer.