In Memoriam #5, America #28

Norman Mailer

(1923-2007)


Since the First World War Americans have been leading a double life, and our history has moved on two rivers, one visible, the other underground; there has been the history of politics which is concrete, factual, practical and unbelievably dull if not for the consequences of the actions of some of these men; and there is a subterranean river of untapped, ferocious, lonely and romantic desires, that concentration of ecstasy and violence which is the dream life of the nation.

"Superman Comes to the Supermarket," Esquire, November 1960

Photograph, Carl van Vechten (1948)