In this last book of his before his death, Mailer reveals his views on the nature of God. In discussions that took place over a period of three years with his friend and collaborator, Michael Lennon, the author appears more provocative than ever.

"I think," says Mailer, "that piety operates repressively. It makes free thought suffocate," and he lays the foundation of his personal system of ideas by rejecting organized religion as well as atheism.

He insists on the view of a world created by an artist God who sometimes succeeds in his pursuits and sometimes fails, due to the strong resistances he faces from opposing forces of the universe, with which he is in an eternal war claiming the souls of humans.

Of course, we are given the freedom to choose for ourselves which path to follow. And Mailer believes that our individual behavior - a permanent, complex mix of good and evil - will be rewarded or punished with a reincarnation corresponding to the life we lived.