>I agree, but that whole generation of American writers were like
>that. Early promise, too much alcohol and socializing, and not enough
>work, especially the hard work of revising to the point of throwing it
>out. Most of the them didn't grow. One good early shot and that was
>it. Part of it was the way their sensibility bounced off their own
>formative period, which was usually irreverent, comic, and serious all
>at once, a conflict of youth that didn't age or transform into
>something else, something or some direction that should have been
>unexpected, much finer and more comprehensive.
>
Talent can only take you so far -- you actually do need a sustaining
culture. I think Bernini had as much raw talent and worked as hard as
Donatello; but Donatello came along in the high Middle Ages and Bernini,
during a much coarser period.
There have been many hugely talented and promising American writers that could ultimately not deliver: Fitzgerald, Bellow... Mailer is the least of them. I read "Adventures of Augie March" last year and was blown away by Bellow's raw talent, but take it all in all, "March" is a picaresque novel that goes nowhere.
The culture is the soil without which great things can't happen. It cannot be mere happenstance that Shakespeare comes along during the English renaissance; that Mozart and Bach rode on the coattails of many generations of musicians; that India has someone of the stature or RK Narayan, but the U.S. does not. First the U.S. is a very young culture historically; second, the second half ot he 20th century is a period of decline. No shoulders to stand on. And it has never been a culture that prized maturity.
Joanna