Not-So-Cancelled (or, Hey, We’re Still Talking About the Wrong Things)
In a semi-recent piece for The Nation, David Klion discussed what is by now no longer the “latest” bit of Internet “free speech” theater in response to the cancellation of a collection of Norman Mailer’s essays. I shouldn’t say “cancelled,” really. The publisher passed on publishing the book, which means it could very well be published somewhere else (even by Mailer’s estate), thereby making the meaning of a “cancellation” rather dubious at best. Can you really be “cancelled” in the lofty meaning that term has now taken (undeserved, really) when you’re both very much dead and your work is otherwise still available? I mean, the presumed offending work, “The White Negro,” is literally right there on the Internet. Google it if you must.1 As far as I can tell, this essay has been legally published online in Dissent since 2007. While I can’t say that all of Mailer’s non-fiction will be available in similarly legal venues, it’s not exactly hard to find his writing out there. ↩