Interviewer: In writing your novels, has any particular formal problem given you trouble— let's say a problem of joining two parts of a narrative together, getting people from point A to point B?

Mailer: You mean like getting them out of a room? I think formal problems exist in inverse proportion to one's honesty. You get to the problem of getting someone out of the room when there's something false about the scene.

Interviewer: Well, then, what can ruin a first-rate writer?

Mailer: Booze, pot, too much sex, too much failure in one's private life, too much attrition, too much recognition, too little recognition, frustration. Nearly everything in the scheme of things works to dull a first-rate talent. But the worst probably is cowardice —as one gets older, one becomes aware of one's cowardice, the desire to be bold which once was a joy gets heavy with caution and duty. And finally there's apathy. About the time it doesn't seem to be important any more to be a great writer you know you've slipped far enough to be doing your work now on the comeback trail.

Interviewer: Do you enjoy writing, or is such a term irrelevant to your experience?

Mailer: Oh, no. No, no. You set me thinking of something Jean Malaquais once said. He always had a terrible time writing. He once complained with great anguish about the unspeakable difficulties he was having with a novel. And I asked him, "Why do it? You can do many other things well. Why do you bother with it?" I really meant this. Because he suffered when writing like no one I know. He looked up in surprise and said, "Oh, but this is the only way one can ever find the truth. The only time know that something is true is at the moment I discover it in the act of writing." I think it's that. I think it's this moment when one knows it's true. One may not have written it well enough for others to know, but you're in love with the truth when discover it at the point of a pencil. That, in and by itself, is one of the few rare pleasures in life.