NP was supposedly a very jolly presence before the unflattering reviews of MAKING IT made him turn to drink. He did sober up, but unfortunately his merriment was deposed by a terminal seriousness. If only the literary establishment had been sufficiently awestruck by him! I do like MAKING IT, though.

He was an interesting–if suffocatingly serious–neoconservative scold. I would’ve liked to have met the early version of NP. The much jollier, much more liberal NP. I did enjoy his self-worshipping memoir MAKING IT. Alas, he never forgave the literary establishment for being insufficiently awestruck

Considering how often he brought up his former friendships, I won’t be surprised if his epitaph reads “Ex-Friend of Norman Mailer, Hannah Arendt, the Trillings, and Allen Ginsburg”.