Mailer (implicitly) on the roots of CRUST

Norman Mailer's: Acceptance Speech for National Book Foundation Award, Fall, November 16, 2005.

"In these years I am feeling the woeful emotions of an old carriage-maker as he watched the disappearance of his trade bfore the onrush of the automobile. The serious novel may soon be in danger of being adored with the same poignant concern we feel for endangered species, endangered before the devastations of television with the clusters of commercials as well as by way of the critics of the mass media. There is an all but unspoken shame in the literary world today. The passion readers used to feel for venturing into a serious novel has withered. Indeed how many of you, even in this audience, do not obtain more pleasure from a review of a good novel in THE NEW YORK TIMES than from the ardors invlved in reading that good, but serious book?"