“

To Ernest Hemingway

—because finally after all these
years I am deeply curious to know
what you think of this.

—but if you do not answer, or if you
answer with the kind of crap you
use to answer unprofessional writers,
sycophants, brown-nosers, etc., then
fuck you, and I will never attempt
to communicate with you again.

—and since I suspect that you’re even
more vain than I am, I might as well
warn you that there is a reference to
you on page 353 which you may or may
not like.

”

— Norman Mailer, in a signed inscription to a copy of The Deer Park (sent in 1955, but returned to Mailer by the post office).