"if you are a success, you run the risk that Norman has run and that I run, too, of becoming a kind of show business personality. Then the legend becomes far more important than the work. It's as though you're living in an echo chamber. You hear only your own voice. And, when you become a celebrity, that voice is magnified by multitudes and you begin to drown in this endless duplication of what looks like yourself. You have to be really very lucky, and very stubborn, not to let that happen to you. It's a difficult trap to avoid. And that's part of Norman's dilemma, I think. A writer is supposed to write. If he appears on television or as a public speaker, so much the better or so much the worse, but the public persona is one thing."
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Pulitzer Prize winnersAcademics from the United StatesJews from the United StatesScreenwriters from the United StatesBiographers from the United States
Original Language: English
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Sources
1984 interview in Conversations with James Baldwin edited by Louis H. Pratt and Fred L. Standley (1989)
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Norman_Mailer
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