Jackie Wang, for HTML Giant, has an entertaining essay about literary talent and gender.
From the story...
The winners of the Norman Mailer Nonfiction Writing Awards were just announced. A lucky college student will be now be $10,000 richer. Since the awards are intended to honor the legacy of Norman Mailer, now seems like an appropriate time to defame his name by remembering what a sexist asshole he was. Thinking about Norman Mailer’s legacy, I am reminded of the way in which he advanced what I call the Testicular Theory of Talent (TTT).
I remember when I was in high school, my friend read me a quote from Dali’s Diary of a Genius about how genius was only contained in the balls, which was a claim Dali used as a way of discouraging a woman—who was likely Amanda Lear—from being a painter. Later, I discovered that there is a whole discourse and articulated thread of ideas attributing talent and genius to the balls or the fluid that comes from the balls. Surprisingly, this discourse actually has a sprawling history. Galen, a medical researcher of Greek Antiquity—thought that seminal fluid contain the “vital spirit.” Teddy Roosevelt was paranoid about masturbating too much because he thought that loss of seminal fluid would trigger a loss of “nerve force”—the force that gives us “courage, ambition, personality, character, mental powers and energy” (Paul Von Boeckmann, 1921). Norman Mailer said that, “that a good novelist can do without everything but the remnant of his balls.” (Although, regarding another aspect of Mailer’s comment, I admit that maybe I am somewhat “dykily psychotic.”) Jodorowsky’s cinematic talent apparently sprung from his balls. Balls balls balls. Bad news for me, I guess. Good thing I’m not very invested in the concept of “genius” anyway.
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