If there’s a richer radio archive of interviews with cultural figures and others from all walks of life than the one amassed by Studs Terkel, I’m unaware of it. Here, for example, is Norman Mailer talking with him on March 17, 1960, about writing, critics, self-censorship, and American life. It’s great stuff. Mailer offers his thoughts about “affirmative” literary works, apathy, and a lack of passion in modern life generally; about Samuel Beckett and theater; about Jack Kerouac and Beat writers, and their reception in the United States; and about other writers who were Mailer’s contemporaries. Mailer’s accent, which was always changeable, makes him sound a bit like a toff. But what he has to say sticks like gorilla glue.
