In this week’s Takimag column, Theodore Dalrymple admonishes Norman Mailer’s self-promoting tendencies as a precursor to our own self-aggrandizing era.

It was all rather disgusting, but it worked like a charm: He immediately had offers of jobs aplenty, though of course his real worth as a doctor remained precisely the same. Reticence, which is to me a far more attractive quality than boastfulness, will get you nowhere, and nothing must be left to speak for itself. You must blow your own trumpet, if possible louder than anyone else’s.