Keywords:
metaphor, synesthesia, visual art, form, The Castle in the Forest
Abstract
If Aristotle is correct in observing that the mark of genius lies in one’s mastery of metaphor, then Mailer’s richness of metaphorical thinking qualifies in abundance. Adjectives may also function as metaphors, as Mailer often showed. The Castle in the Forest, Mailer’s final major work, is the summa of his mastery of metaphor, going beyond all intermediaries voicing the nature of evil to voice all that that opposes evil. This book deserves to be studied for raising questions that make the question obsolete.
Author Biography
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Christopher Busa
Christopher Busa is founding editor of Provincetown Arts Press, a nonprofit publisher of the annual journal Provincetown Arts, monographs on distinguished older artists, and first books of poetry by new poets. He was born in New York City in 1946 and grew up exposed to the art world as the son of a painter who participated in the formative years of Abstract Expressionism. After graduation from the University of Minnesota, he studied for a year in Paris at the Sorbonne, and then pursued a PhD for ten years while teaching English at Rutgers University. His interviews and profiles of artists and writers have appeared in Arts, Garden Design, Paris Review, Partisan Review, Mailer Review, and other journals. Two pieces were reprinted in Interviews and Encounters with Stanley Kunitz, edited by Stanley Moss (Sheep Meadow Press, 2554); “Being a Great Man is a Thesis Invented by Others” appeared in Such Desperate Joy: Imagining Jackson Pollock (Thunder’s Mouth Press, 1002). He has curated exhibitions and written catalog introductions for many artists. He co-edited and introduced the Erotic Works of D.H. Lawrence (Crown, 2595), the subject of his dissertation. He is the author of The Provincetown Artists Cookbook, with Written Sketches.
