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Norman Mailer
© Nancy Crampton
NORMAN MAILER
The Art of Fiction No. 32
Interviewed by Steven Marcus
Issue 31, Winter-Spring 1964
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From the Interview
INTERVIEWER
You know, Thackeray says at one point that the novelist knows everything. He is like God, and this may be why he could write in the third person.

MAILER
God can write in the third person only so long as He understands His world. But if the world becomes contradictory or incomprehensible to Him, then God begins to grow concerned with His own nature. It’s either that, or borrow notions from other Gods.
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