The first of a new series of personal reflections by leading figures in the world of music and the arts
We all live in a profound kind of terror because we have no idea at all whether we're going to become -whether mankind is going to become-a great creation or whether none of us is going to be existing two years, five years, twenty years or two months.
(Norman Mailer)

The controversial American author Norman Mailer, forty-six-year-old enfant terrible, ex-political candidate, four times married, has, from the time of the publication of his first novel, The Naked and the Dead, remained a controversial figure on the literary scene. And, as his latest books, Why are we in Vietnam?, The Armies of the Night, and Miami and the Siege of Chicago, show, he is a man of deeply-held radical political convictions.