Lipton’s Journal/Correspondence of Robert Lindner and Norman Mailer/November 24, 1952

::::::::::::::::::::To Norman Mailer
:::::::::::::::::::: November 24, 1952
Dear Norman (the way you close your letter permits this):
I was very glad to hear from you about your impressions of Rx, but I wish you had written when—as you say—you were more passionate about this book. As it stands now, I can hardly make out your meaning. You raise hell with me in one place for being too ambitious in this book, and in another for not committing myself to absolute statements on the nature of our society and my position on every social matter conceivable. As to the latter, either you’re a poor reader or I’m a lousy writer—for I believe my attitudes on all of these matters are absolutely clear and unequivocal. Certainly, they are very much like yours—but in my case not (I think) founded on faith.
To answer your statement that I am writing of things of which I have no knowledge—this I must deny. My reading and study have been, I suspect, about the same or more extensive than yours, and if you will inquire among mutual friends (I’m sure we have many) you will learn of my participation since 1932 in every progressive movement on the record short of the Party.The Communist Party, which many American leftists joined in the 1920s and 1930s. But, of course, this is an absurdity—your throwing one book at me, and I shouting, “I read it and this one, too.” The point is that I’ve honestly made a deep study of the matters I’ve written about and my decision to reject Marxism (among other things) was determined by knowledge and whatever uses of reason I’ve been capable of.
You have made a major point when you object to the way in which I handle the two chapters on theory of history. I am not speaking of your dismissal of the worth of this theory because of the brevity of treatment—we both know that length and validity are not independent. That brevity, however, was determined by the fact that I had to present the theory—to me it seems intrinsic to my purpose in the book—but avoid turning my book into a study of history. In the condensation, however, I made enough mistakes of presentation to justify your criticism.
My pique with you, Norman, comes from your easy dismissal of the prescriptive part of the book. You burn me up when you compare these pages with Liebman’s Peace of tripe. In 1946 Liebman (1907-1948), a reform rabbi, published the best-selling self-help book, Peace of Mind. The book, a synthesis of religious wisdom and psychoanalytic practices, grew out of his sermons. I think what you want from me here is the substitution of propositions and proposals lifted from the body of what I am convinced is half-assed social theory and grafted onto or in to the personalities of men and their social structures. I can’t do this that you seem to want of me because I’m convinced against these items as solutions—and to me they are the unpsychologic formulas my prescriptive ingredients appear to you.
There’s lots and lots more to say. I’ll wait for a further note from you or, lacking that, my next visit to New York. I get there every month or so and will be coming up soon. You can be sure I am eager to talk about all of this and more with you. As you write, there are not many of us and the few we are should be particularly hard and demanding on each other. If we are going to make of ourselves any kind of instrument for tomorrow, the refining process has to be done by us or else it will be done to us.
::::::::::::::::::::Best wishes,
::::::::::::::::::::::Boly
::::::::::::::::::::::Robert Lindner
P.S. Send me a copy of Barbary Shore. You refer to it in your letter, but I never read it. By the way, I’m doing a book now of which the first section is devoted to a discussion of Marxism and the psychoanalysis I made of a party member not long ago.