Jones gives good blog?

INTERVIEWER

Well, how do you keep in shape?

MAILER

Look, before we go on, I want to say a little more about craft. It is a grab bag of procedures, tricks, lore, formal gymnastics, symbolic superstructures—methodology, in short. It's the compendium of what you've acquired from others. And since great writers communicate a vision of existence, one can't usually borrow their methods. The method is married to the vision. No, one acquires craft more from good writers and mediocre writers with a flair. Craft, after all, is what you can take out whole from their work. But keeping in shape is something else. For example, you can do journalism, and it can be terrible for your style. Or it can temper your style . . . in other words, you can become a better writer by doing a lot of different kinds of writing. Or you can deteriorate. There's a book came out a few years ago, which was a sociological study of some Princeton men—I forget the name of it. One of them said something that I thought was extraordinary. He said he wanted to perform the sexual act under every variety of condition, emotion, and mood available to him. I was struck with this not because I ever wanted necessarily to have that kind of sexual life, but because it seemed to me that was what I was trying to do with my writing. I try to go over my work in every conceivable mood. I edit on a spectrum that runs from the high, clear, manic impressions of a drunk, which has made one electrically alert, all the way down to the soberest reaches of depression where I can hardly bear my words. By the time I'm done with writing I care about, I usually have worked on it through the full gamut of my consciousness. If you keep yourself in this peculiar kind of shape, the craft will take care of itself. Craft is very little finally. But if you're continually worrying about whether you're growing or deteriorating as a man, whether your integrity is turning soft or firming itself, why then it's in that slow war, that slow rear-guard battle you fight against diminishing talent that you stay in shape as a writer and have a consciousness. You develop a consciousness as you grow older, which enables you to write about anything, in effect, and write about it well. That is, provided you keep your consciousness in shape and don't relax into the flabby styles of thought which surround one everywhere. The moment you borrow other writers' styles of thought, you need craft to shore up the walls. But if what you write is a reflection of your own consciousness, then even journalism can become interesting. One wouldn't want to spend one's life at it, and I wouldn't want ever to be caught justifying journalism as a major activity (it's obviously less interesting than to write a novel), but it's better, I think, to see journalism as a venture of one's ability to keep in shape than to see it as an essential betrayal of the chalice of your literary art. Temples are for women.

http://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/4503/the-art-of-fiction-no-32-norman-mailer

 

And by a little more he meant a lot.

 

The worked is linked here, in this thread, and elsewhere.

Bottom line, these men - and those who hoped to emulate them - added something significant to this place.

Now, forever lost.

 

" ... added ... to this place."

Can we stop gargling on that mouthful of seed? They chose to leave. Nobody forced 'em out the door.

We miss nothing by their absence, other than camaraderie.

If they come back, great; though I submit some have. If they don't, so what.

 

You also have to factor in ESPN ban of social media by their cast members
which no doubt drove some away.

 

Which men? No women?

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mundane

In subcultural and fictional uses, a mundane is a person who does not belong to a particular group, according to the members of that group; the implication is that such persons, lacking imagination, are concerned solely with the mundane: the quotidian and ordinary.

If this building was in Hornell, NY, it would not be mundane, but what you typed shows how something great can be mundane if it is one of many. This building belongs to a larger group of similar buildings, which makes it mundane.

 

Do you really want to argue that the Equitable Building is nondescript, or even mundane?

Yes, there are lots of spectacular, historic buildings in New York City, and some buildings that might stand out elsewhere may not have the prominence they would have elsewhere.

But, even if their are more prominent buildings in NYC, the Equitable Building is not nondescript.

In the history of skyscrapers, the Equitable Building plays its part. When it opened, it had more rentable square feet of office space of any building in the world. Zoning laws were changed as a result of it.

It's on the U.S. National Register of Historic Places, and has been designated a U.S. National Historic Landmark, and a NYC Landmark.

If you want to argue it's nondescript, you might as well argue every building in New York City is nondescript.

The building across the street, 140 Broadway/1 Liberty Plaza, maybe you could call it nondescript:



Especially when you consider it replaced these:

 

Thanks, "Moderator."

 

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/subjective

 

And there, in a nutshell, is a big reason why the trolls win. Satisfaction with the status quo.

It's not a so-what issue that good people walked away from here. IMHO.