Norman Mailer has long understood the appeal of amateur porn. In a Puritan interview in 1981 he said: "[I]n Hustler, often I find that the most interesting section is those cheap Polaroid pictures that untalented photographers send of women who are not models.

"The sordid reality. My sexuality, I expect, is aroused by knowledge. The moment I know more than I knew before, I'm excited. Those gritty Polaroid shots in Hustler are often more interesting. They communicate. …The picture of some waitress who lives in Sioux Falls. I know more at that moment about Sioux Falls, about waitresses -- even if they're lying, even if she isn't a waitress, there's something about the very manifest of the lie that's fascinating. It arouses your curiosity. Whereas superb pictures of models can get boring. There tends to be a sameness in them. Aren't enough flaws present. The very question of the sordid is . . .tricky.

"It's very dangerous to stick it up a woman's ass. It tends to make them more promiscuous…. Those who are scientifically inclined can immediately approach their mate and tool her, if they're able. Then they can observe what happens, watch her at parties, get a private detective, check up on her. So I guess I answered your question: a woman doesn't want it up the ass because she's doing her best to be faithful to that dull pup she's got for a man, and she knows if it blasts into the center of her stubbornness, that's the end of it. She won't be able to hold onto fidelity any longer.

"The ultimate tendency of masturbation is insanity…. It drives you further out of the world. You don't have the objective correlative.

"Porno… encourages fantasy and romance. An analogy. If a kid dreams about football as a wonderful game where he is running for touchdowns, and that's all he ever visualizes, he'd have a rude shock, to say the least, the first time he got into an actual game, was dumped hard and had a headache afterward…. If you're going to love football, you have to love it with its punishment. And at that point, loving it that way, you have a profound relation to football. To love with the full awareness of punishment is the nature of profundity. So, to the degree that pornography encourages people to believe that sex is easy, it's harmful." (PURITAN 1981)