Brenda was always gabbing and he was a good listener. They had a lot of fun. It is a largely unremarked fact about Mailer that he is a great and obsessed stylist, a writer to whom the shape of the sentence is the story. His sentences do not get long or short by accident, or because he is in a hurry. Men tend to shoot, get shot, push off, move on.
Women pass down stories.
She said it again to herself on the July morning in 1976 when her niece Brenda and her sister Ida called to say that Gary was under arrest in Provo on Murder One, two counts. I am the granddaughter and great granddaughter of pioneers on both sides. If they could live through it, I can live through it. This is the exact litany which expresses faith in God west of the 100th meridian. I think no one but Mailer could have dared this book.