Set Theory | Norman Mailer | The New York Review of Books

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I. Input for the Computer

Devils: One of us will be better looking
when it is all over.

Angels: Well, let us hope
   we do not
   go down
   my darling
   both of us
   together.

Orgiasts: Go down
   both of us together
   or do not hope
   to curl
   like oil
   around the leaf.

Onanists: Yes, I feel better
   now
   that it is
   all over
   the leaf.

II. Output from the Computer

Women’s Lib: What is good for us
   is good.
   What is good for them
   is no good.

Chauvinist: Hear, hear!
Stick it in their ear.

III. Samuel Beckett Addresses the Computer

The only thing sure is that no one will
understand one when one is gone. Which is to
say that no one is equal to one when one is not
done. It is a situation to suggest that one will
understand no one so soon as no one has won.

Norman Mailer

Norman Mailer (1923-2007) was born in Long Branch, New Jersey, and grew up in Brooklyn, New York. In 1955 he co-founded The Village Voice. He is the author of more than thirty books, including The Naked and the Dead; The Armies of the Night, for which he won a National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize; The Executioner's Song, for which he won his second Pulitzer Prize; Harlot's Ghost; Oswald's Tale; The Gospel According to the Son; and The Castle in the Forest.

This Issue

March 18, 1976