Mailer explores, among other topics, the attractions and limitations of non-fiction, the pressing need for work habits, the pitfalls of early success, and the dire business of coping with bad reviews. But perhaps the most entertaining moments are those in which he takes on his fellow writers, living and dead--Melville, Faulkner, Hemingway, Henry Miller, Updike, Roth, Vonnegut, Garcia Marquez, Bellow, Styron, Beckett, and a host of others including Mark Twain, D.H. Lawrence, Borges, Cheever, Toni Morrison, Joyce Carol Oates, Graham Greene, Mary McCarthy, Joan Didion, John Dos Passos, Burroughs, Baldwin, Salinger, Algren, and James Jones. Mailer writes, 'I believe I could end up as a good critic because I know so much about novel writing by now. I can always tell when someone is drawing sustenance out of his or her best vein and when the needle missed.' In THE SPOOKY ART, Norman Mailer's needle hits the target, drawing on the best of over fifty years of his own criticism, advice, and detailed observations about the writer's craft