Norman Mailer Dies

[BPSCG]

The blurb on the Washington Post's story says:

Pulitzer Prize-winning author long reigned as the country's literary conscience and provocateur.

I have to admit I've never read anything by the man. But his obituary sounds like a rap sheet:

He drank, fought, smoked pot, married six times and stabbed his second wife, almost fatally, during a drunken party.

...was banned from a Manhattan YWHA for reciting obscene poetry, feuded publicly with writer Gore Vidal and crusaded against women's lib.

...later claimed, with typical hubris, that his piece, "Superman Comes to the Supermarket," had made the difference in John F. Kennedy's razor-thin margin of victory over Republican Richard M. Nixon.

In 1969, Mailer ran for mayor on a "left conservative" platform. He said New York City should become the 51st state, and urged a referendum for "black ghetto dwellers" on whether they should set up their own government.

Mailer had numerous minor run-ins with the law, usually for being drunk or disorderly, but was also jailed briefly during the Pentagon protests. While directing the film "Maidstone" in 1968, the self-described "old club fighter" punched actor Lane Smith, breaking his jaw, and bit actor Rip Torn's ear in another scuffle.

Years later, he championed the work of a convict-writer named Jack Abbott _ and was subjected to ridicule and criticism when Abbott, released to a halfway house, promptly stabbed a man to death.

Two years later, he wrote "Marilyn" and was accused of plagiarism by other Marilyn Monroe biographers.

The country's literary conscience? How so? His personal life (as opposed to his literary output, of which, as I said, I know nothing) sounds like that of someone who spent considerable time with his parole officer.

 

[Elizabeth I]

BPSCG, where in the heck have you been?

Re: Mailer, I have always just thought he was a disgusting male chauvinist pig (apologies to the pig.)

 

[BPSCG]

BPSCG, where in the heck have you been?

Going to and fro on the earth, and walking up and down on it.

Re: Mailer, I have always just thought he was a disgusting male chauvinist pig (apologies to the pig.)

Okay, as regards his personal life, but whence the accolades as "the country's literary conscience"? Is there something in his work completely at variance with his personal life?

I mean, Beethoven wrote some of the sublimest music ever, but he was a miserable piece of work as a person. Wagner wrote music that my father, a world-class skeptic described as "angels singing," but the man was a vicious anti-semite and the worst kind of fair-weather friend (Wagner, not my dad).

So what's so sublime about Mailer's writing that makes him America's conscience?

Please don't tell me to read his books - I have too much on the heap right now. Maybe someday.

 

[Elizabeth I]

BPSCG, where in the heck have you been?

Going to and fro on the earth, and walking up and down on it.

Did you scare anybody? Lead anyone into temptation? Steal any souls?

Okay, as regards his personal life, but whence the accolades as "the country's literary conscience"? Is there something in his work completely at variance with his personal life?

I've never read any of his books, but going by some of his magazine stuff, I was including his work in my assessment of him as a "pig." (again, apologies to pigs everywhere.)

 

[LibraryLady]

Going to and fro on the earth, and walking up and down on it.

Oddly enough, I quoted this today as my favorite Bible verse.

Okay, as regards his personal life, but whence the accolades as "the country's literary conscience"? Is there something in his work completely at variance with his personal life?

I mean, Beethoven wrote some of the sublimest music ever, but he was a miserable piece of work as a person. Wagner wrote music that my father, a world-class skeptic described as "angels singing," but the man was a vicious anti-semite and the worst kind of fair-weather friend (Wagner, not my dad).

So what's so sublime about Mailer's writing that makes him America's conscience?

Please don't tell me to read his books - I have too much on the heap right now. Maybe someday.

I have read some of his stuff, but was unimpressed. Basically he was a wannabe Hemingway, but even Hemingway was a wannabe Hemingway. Okay, I know that doesn't make sense. I can clarify if needed.

Mailer was so busy being the literary conscience that he lost sight of reality. The worst was when that poor young waiter was murdered by Jack Henry Abbott. Wouldn't have happened if Mailer hadn't been so single minded.

 

[BPSCG]

Did you scare anybody? Lead anyone into temptation? Steal any souls?

Not yet, but there's a presidential candidate I'm not at liberty to name about whom people are saying, "She'd do anything to be president..." We're in negotiations.

 

[LibraryLady]

Not yet, but there's a presidential candidate I'm not at liberty to name about whom people are saying, "She'd do anything to be president..." We're in negotiations.

Rudy Giuliani changed gender?

 

[sackett]

...even Hemingway was a wannabe Hemingway. Okay, I know that doesn't make sense. I can clarify if needed....

You don't need to clarify that. It couldn't make better sense.

As for the late Norm: I remember when a long-ago English Lit. instructor called him a jerk. It was such a burst of light to a young man struggling to form his opinions. I recall the relief I felt. A single word to sum up N. Mailer! I said, "Thank you, professor!" out loud in the classroom. I say it again now.

Trouble with tough-boy Mailer (who was actually a little old Jewish man) is that he was and will forever be

BORING!

 

[Retrograde]

I have read some of his stuff, but was unimpressed. Basically he was a wannabe Hemingway, but even Hemingway was a wannabe Hemingway. Okay, I know that doesn't make sense. I can clarify if needed.

Makes sense to me.

I read The Castle in the Forest recently, and IMHO it would have been better at 1/4 the length. I found it very self-indulgent, almost as much so as Oswald's Tale, the only other Mailer I've read. There's a nasty streak in his works I don't like.

OTOH, I've been pleasantly surprised by the Gore Vidal novels I've read.

 

[oldunbeliever]

A brilliant writer IMO./. I was tremendously affected by The Naked and the Dead when I first read it at age about 20 while, indeed, serving in the armed forces. Admittedly Ancient Evening was too long and, to be kind, boring, but The Executioner's Song was perhaps his most important and best work. The book on the Washington March, cant recall the name offhand, was a bit too political. He also wrote a lot of stuff that was just throwaway. Can't blame him for that.

Still, I think, a great writer. He'll go down in literary history as one of the best of the, be honest, almost-first-tier 20th century novelists. IMO.

 

[sackett]

oldunbeliever is unquestionably right: Norman will be remembered for a long time. But will he be read? I got through Naked & Dead, but with effort -- and I was a tough reader back then, I'll give my younger self that.

But has anybody here read The Deer Park all the way through? Or all those essays? The Executioner's Song is actually a fairly entertaining read, or was at the time when the subject was fresh, but still: it's half-assed fiction and nothing more.

Hey, I think I've composed Norm's epitaph: "Better half an ass than none at all."