Is it no longer the case that “any publicity is good publicity”?
ironic that Norman Mailer, who’d deliberately hoped to provoke controversy, is being repudiated/ censored in an age in which “controversy” is unfashionable because it hurts some individuals’ feelings.
today, issues are not debated, just deleted. https://t.co/ViRY9hfxBx— Joyce Carol Oates (@JoyceCarolOates) January 3, 2022
A junior staffer can get a book cancelled over a controversial, 60-year-old essay that sparked a brilliant, nuanced and thoughtful response from James Baldwin when it was published. We studied both essays in grad school and you could never understand the one without the other… https://t.co/Sni94qr5rq
— Thomas Chatterton Williams (@thomaschattwill) January 3, 2022
EXCLUSIVE: Random House not moving forward with 2023 Norman Mailer book after staffer objects to his “White Negro” essay, from @MichaelWolffNYC @TheAnkler and confirmed by the author’s son Michael Mailer https://t.co/X261dOuB1Z pic.twitter.com/5WsnGHbB14
— Janice Min (@janicemin) January 3, 2022
Several orders of magnitude to be sure, given TCW’s shtick these days of being a “cancel culture” scold.