ANALYSIS: TRUE. Journalism Needs a Pugnacious Asshole Like Norman Mailer.

Mailer drew a correlation between physical toughness and great journalism. In his new book Eminent Jews: Bernstein, Brooks, Friedan, Mailer, David Denby traces Mailer’s transformation from a needy Jewish kid in Brooklyn to a street-tough writer who thrived on combat and iconoclasm. Mailer was transformed during his service in World War II. As Denby puts it, “This American-style prophet brawled and head-butted at parties; at one time or another, he was decked, hammered, billy clubbed, his eye gouged, his ear bitten. He believed that physical courage was necessary equipment for a great writer (Hemingway was the model) and that Jewish men in particular had to overcome all sorts of weakness.”

For Mailer, “everything he could put his body and spirit through was a test. He was sure he needed to escape the traps not only of his soft middle-class Jewish background but also the traps of postwar America—the desire for ‘security,’ the endless consumerism, and what he took to be the country’s humiliating spiritual mediocrity. He had made himself into a novelist in the Pacific, and now he brought the war home. For the author of The Naked and the Dead, the truce never arrived.” Mailer “was fascinated by boxers, murderers, and spies.”

The physical pain Mailer went through gave him a mesmerizing voice on the page. It’s why he could write about politics, boxing, war, women and sports and be perceptive about all of them. Who’s replaced him? Peter Baker? Ezra Klein? Matthew Continetti? It’s not a problem of left and right. They’re all boring.

This is Mark Judge so read the whole thing.