NOVELISTS WHO DON’T LISTEN.

NOVELISTS WHO DON’T LISTEN. I have encountered two strikingly similar comments on important novelists this week. Tom Wolfe says here about Norman Mailer, “Mailer cannot write novels. I’m sorry to have to say that. He has no ear for anyone other than himself. Just look at the dialogue.” And I read in the Times Literary Supplement for May 16 that Ernest Hemingway told Elaine Dundy (the author of THE DUD AVOCADO) “I liked the way your characters all speak differently. My characters all sound the same because I never listen.” If the characters talk the same, it is a little easier to view the characters as aspects of the author rather than as fully realized.