find myself in rare concert with both Ron & Hitch today, who helpfully seize some of the gems from Norman Mailer's highly variable landslide of prose--especially interesting to see Ron on the brilliant beat pastiche "Why Are We in Vietnam?" & Hitch on "Harlot's Ghost", which to my mind beat LeCarre at his own game. I would add "Of a Fire on the Moon" his epic on the Apollo 11 mission, which is not only one of the few times an important writer attempts to actually come to detailed terms with the technology of our time, but then uses it to undergird his bad faith--"The Wrong Stuff", perhaps---