American Notebook: A Program for the Nation
Mailer, Norman
Last August I received a letter from Esquire magazine. Its first two paragraphs read: Looking ahead to the 1960 presidential election, this magazine feels that it would be an interesting and...
...In the morning I thought to take another look at the letter from Esquire...
...As examples: 1. I would like to see a law passed which would abolish capital punishment, except for those states which insisted on keeping it...
...This would keep committeemen out of the project— it would also help in the search for a cure, since one may suspect that only a brave man living in the illumination of approaching death could brood sufficiently over the nature of disease to come up with a cure which was not worse than the illness...
...Over breakfast, I decided the hell with it, I was not going to answer, and went through the rest of the day without thinking any more about the letter...
...is misplaced...
...Such states would then be allowed to kill criminals provided that the killing is not impersonal but personal and a public spectacle: to wit that the executioner be more or less the same size and weight as the criminal (the law could here specify the limits) and that they fight to death using no weapons, or weapons not capable of killing at a distance...
...We believe that the publication of the opinions of leaders in fields other than politics will be a contribution to intelligent public discussion...
...It is possible that many people take heroin because they sense unconsciously that if they did not, they would be likely to commit murder, get cancer, or turn homosexual...
...Lucius Clay, Henry Ford II., Gen...
...Attached is a list of those who, like yourself, are being asked to participate...
...In the flabby American spirit there is a buried sadist who finds the bullfight contemptible—what he really desires are gladiators...
...While it would not necessarily be attractive to see a larger proportion of people destroy themselves with drugs, it must be recognized that the right to destroy oneself is also one of the inalienable rights, because others cannot know the reason for the self-destruction...
...Wernher von Braun, DeWitt Wallace, Hon...
...The audience, in turn, would experience a sense of tragedy, since the executioners, highly trained for this, would almost always win...
...2. Cancer is going to become the first political problem of America in twenty years...
...I happen to think that people who take drugs burn up the best part of their minds and gut their sex, but the same is true for those who drink too much, and alcohol is in a favored legal position because the liquor industries are so rich...
...Douglas MacArthur, George Meany, Edward R. Murrow, Dr...
...I was thinking about the letter from Esquire, and at three in the morning it seemed right to answer it...
...5. I would pass a bill abolishing all forms of censorship...
...Late that night, after a party, I tried to go to sleep half-drunk, and instead found myself awake with that particular intense and false clarity alcohol can give in the last thirty minutes before it starts to wear away...
...Cancer may well have proliferated because the medical minds pound out cures for other diseases which so violate the inner rhythms of the body that one's potential for cancer is increased—as for example the hoggish therapy of illness by antibiotics whose after-effects and psychic effects are still unknown...
...If our hucksters have been able in fifteen years to leech from us the best blood of the American spirit, they should be able to debilitate the Russians equally in an equivalent period...
...Yet, during the campaign there may be such concentration on the personalities of the candidates that issues to be debated and decided become neglected...
...Besides, pornography is debilitating to sex—the majority of people would stay away from it once they discovered how wan it left them...
...4. Since the Russians seem to have more vigor than we do at the moment, I would make every effort to pass them our diseases...
...There has been a fair attempt to select persons whose individual opinions are valued within their fields, and whose collective opinions will present a wide spectrum of response...
...But I doubt if a cure will be found until all serious cancer researchers, and most especially the heads of department are put under sentence of mortal combat (with a professional executioner) if they have failed to make progress in their part of the program after two years...
...John Hay Whitney...
...The benefit of this law is that it might return us to moral responsibility...
...Hyman G. Rickover, Dr...
...3. Pass a bill making legal the sale of drugs...
...Censorship is an insult to democracy because it makes men unequal— it assumes that some have more sexual wisdom than others, and it imprisons everyone in excessive guilt...
...So I did not mail in my suggestions...
...It is possible I am indulging a shallow liberal optimism, and America would become a cesspool of all-night pornographic drivein movies, the majority of the population becoming night people who meet for cocktails at one in the morning...
...Since nothing is worse for a country than repressed sadism, this method of execution would offer ventilation for the more cancerous emotions of the American public...
...The draft written, I went to bed and enjoyed a self-satisfied sleep...
...What follows is the first draft as I wrote it, touched here and cut there to make it a little less unreadable...
...I went no further with the letter, but took a look at who had been invited...
...For the political parties and the electorate, there is the decision of which candidate, among the several already prominent, is to be given presidential authority and responsibility...
...it occurred to me they might roil the processes of collation...
...Ralph Bunche, Gen...
...David Sarnoff, Francis Cardinal Spellman, Dr...
...About ten of us in the literary garden, and a wide range of other minds, frauds, generals, stuffed shirts, bureaucrats, after-dinner speakers, and figures in the news: Bernard Baruch, Dr...
...James M. Gavin, William Randolph Hearst, Jr., Ernest Hemingway, Dr...
...Accordingly, we should be grateful if you will consider, and answer, these two questions: 1. Among those mentioned as possible presidential candidates, whom do you prefer for president in 1960...
...Guns would not...
...Sidney Hook, Rev...
...So I went downstairs, and worked at fever speed for an hour or less, not altogether innocent of manic glee at the thought of how this long answer to question 2 would look in the pages of a mass-media magazine...
...The man who finds a cure could run successfully for President...
...Reinhold Niebuhr, Walter Reuther, Rear Adm...
...Its first two paragraphs read: Looking ahead to the 1960 presidential election, this magazine feels that it would be an interesting and useful undertaking to present the opinions of outstanding men of ideas regarding the candidates proposed and the issues involved...
...Jonas Salk, Gen...
...I would encourage the long-term loan to them of countless committees of the best minds we have on Madison Ave...
...Martin Luther King, Jr., Henry R. Luce, Gen...
...I think I would be in favor of legislation whose inner tendency would be to weaken the bonds of legislation...
...2. What, to your mind, should be the most important issues in the election...
...Thus, knives or broken bottles would be acceptable...
...Given the force of the hangover, most people do not get drunk every night, and the same, I believe, would apply here...
...There were 150 names...
...In its third paragraph was the following sentence: Answers to Question 2 will be collated, with a discussion of the issues cited by the author of the article, Walter Friedenberg, a scholar-journalist and Fellow of the Institute of Current World Affairs...
...if not, my admiration for the soporific power of Madison Ave...
...As an afterthought, the letter remarked: Esquire holds no political position and will advance none...
...But this could also serve as the salvation of the Republic, for America would then become so wicked a land that Russia would never dare to occupy us, nor even to exterminate us by the atom bomb, their scientists having by then discovered that people who are atomized disseminate their spirit into the conqueror...
...The killer would carry the other man's death in his psyche...
...Frank Stan ton, Bishop Fulton J. Sheen, Dr...
Vol. 7 • January 1960 • No. 1
