Random Notes

■ Ecrasez I’infame! The March issue of Vanity Fair debuts a “writer-at-large,” that Herod of American letters, Norman Mailer. In “Children of the Pied Piper: Mailer on American Psycho,” he attempts to settle the controversy over the new novel by Bret Easton Ellis, America’s literary Bluebeard [“Random Notes,” Dec. 31].

First an update. After “innumerable adjustments” by editor Sonny (“I always wear black”) Mehta, who caught Psycho on the fly after Simon & Schuster fouled out, the Ellis saga of serial killer Patrick Bateman is loose this month from Random House. Binky Urban, agent to Mr. Ellis, says her client is “totally happy” with the new version, most especially because there was “no editing whatsoever of the violence,” which means the published work will be, page for page, even bloodier than the original manuscript.

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■ Ecrasez I’infame! The March issue of Vanity Fair debuts a “writer-at-large,” that Herod of American letters, Norman Mailer. In “Children of the Pied Piper: Mailer on American Psycho,” he attempts to settle the controversy over the new novel by Bret Easton Ellis, America’s literary Bluebeard [“Random Notes,” Dec. 31].

First an update. After “innumerable adjustments” by editor Sonny (“I always wear black”) Mehta, who caught Psycho on the fly after Simon & Schuster fouled out, the Ellis saga of serial killer Patrick Bateman is loose this month from Random House. Binky Urban, agent to Mr. Ellis, says her client is “totally happy” with the new version, most especially because there was “no editing whatsoever of the violence,” which means the published work will be, page for page, even bloodier than the original manuscript.