SOURCE: "Tough Guys Don't Paint," in The New York Times Book Review, October 15, 1995, p. 16.

In the following review, Kimmelman provides a generally unfavorable assessment of Portrait of Picasso, citing incidents of unsubstantiated speculation and Mailer's failure to break new ground on the subject of the celebrated artist.

He has "a greedy desire for recognition," and "the vanity and the need for group applause of someone like Muhammad Ali." When young, he pushed "his explorations into sex, drugs," and had a lengthy affair that was one of "those delicate, lovely and exploratory romances that flourished like sensuous flowers on slender stems, those marijuana romances of the 50's and 60's in America where lovers found ultimates in a one-night stand, and on occasion stayed together." "Short in stature," "possessed of the ambition to mine universes of the mind no one had yet explored," he was "not macho so much as...