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Norman Mailer was always the wildest of the great generation of 20th-century American novelists; To be fair, the book is not an essay but a series of conversations, taped by Professor Michael Lennon, Mailer's archivist and biographer; moreover, Mailer refused to have Lennon's questions sent to him in advance because he wanted his own responses to be altogether spontaneous. The existence of the Devil is crucial, because Mailer is committed to a belief in a creator God and is unwilling to see him choosing to afflict humanity with all the ills of the planet. Mailer declares his vision of the Devil is taken from Milton, though he has none of that poet's faith in the ultimate triumph of good. For Mailer, God is something like an imperfect artist - a novelist, he suggests - often making mistakes but doing the best he can.

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