Norman Mailer

Oh, fuck, not Norman Mailer... Yes, Norman Mailer.

When I was twelve, I fell in love with The Executioner's Song when I stumbled on a copy in my parents' basement. They'd both put it aside because they thought, probably rightly, that it wasn't a very good book. Fair enough.

I never really liked any of Mailer's other books, except The Naked and the Dead.

A the time, I regarded TES as sort of a textbook on adulthood.

Systematic inaccuracies were discovered, but lessons learned were also retained.

I have a lot of female friends who say they were warped by Jane Austen at about the same age. I'm sure it was a similar process.

Comments

[John Lucid]

Saturday I ran across this video of Norman Mailer and Rip Torn having a real fight from almost 40 years ago. Say what you want about Mr. Mailer, but anyone who can take a couple of blows to the head from a hammer and keep on fighting is one tough bastard. If you want to know what the fuck is going on, read here for a full explanation, but I distilled the essence of it here:

"In the summer of 1968, the elegant resort town of East Hampton, NY witnessed a bizarre invasion of the celebrities and unknowns, professional actors and amateurs, assembled by Norman Mailer to make a movie in which he would be both director and star. ...

Outraged by the way Mailer had tricked everyone into thinking a film of novel significance was in the offing, Torn refused to accept the ending of MAIDSTONE and attacked Mailer during the filming of him with his family the day after the director had declared the movie over. Charging Mailer in an open field, Torn hit him three times with the flat side of a hammer, pulling his blows but doing enough damage to draw blood. Four of Mailer's children -- Dandy, Betsy, Michael, and Stephen -- were terrified, screaming after Torn's assault on their father.

Mailer was furious. Calling Torn a "crazy fool cocksucker", Mailer wrestled him to the ground, biting & nearly tearing off Torn's ear. Calling Mailer "brother" and insisting the film would make no sense without the assassination attempt, Torn traded insults with Mailer and yet kept reminding him that this was the story Mailer had planned, that Mailer had even seen him coming with the hammer and had not tried to get away.

When Mailer would not acknowledge the justice of Torn's words, Torn called him a "fraud", a charge Mailer later had to countenance, for in the editing room he found that he did not have a movie without the dramatic explosion, the assault not only on Norman T. Kingsley but on Norman Mailer, the half-sincere, half-bogus filmmaker and politician who had to be called to account by a real actor who took his role seriously, as though he were, in Mailer's words, his "true brother". The psychological reality of MAIDSTONE was the actors' expectation that Mailer would be attacked, and so Torn "attacked out of all the plots of other actors" and became, Mailer realized, "the presence of the film, the psychological reality that became a literal reality out of the pressure of all the ones which did not."

[Dock Miles]

I encountered Norman Mailer only once. He gave a sort of lecture at the University I attended in the early ‘70s and of course it had a lot to do with feminism. His big stroke was to begin by saying

“Will all the feminists in the audience roundly hiss me?”

HIISSSSSSSSSS

“Obedient little bitches, aren’t you?”

The rest was not so good.

But, no question, there’s some essential lit in there.

http://www.amazon.com/Why-Are-We-Vietnam-Novel/dp/0312265069/ref=sr_1_2/103-3634826-4120654?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1194929605&sr=1-2”Why Are We in Viet Nam should be read again for obvious reasons.

And, I would like to add, that while The Executioner’s Song is Mailer’s finest later book (it’s truly great), it must always be read with Mikal Gilmore’s http://www.amazon.com/Shot-Heart-Mikal-Gilmore/dp/0385478003/ref=pd_bbs_1/103-3634826-4120654?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1194929766&sr=1-1>Shot In the Heart, which is as profound and lyrical.

[Lindsay Beyerstein]

I know NM loved to say he hated feminists, and no doubt he did in some ways. He was pretty old, so I'm willing to cut him a little slack.

At the same time, I think TES helped me become a much more sophisticated feminist than I might otherwise have been at that age, because the story encapsulated so many different ways in which people exert untoward power over each other.

The story of TES seemed (at least to me, at the time) to convey a lot of important ideas about how men who are oppressed are allowed to revisit their own oppression on women who are trapped in a sexist society. I'm not sure if I'd be so impressed today, but you never step in the same river twice...

[Dock Miles]

You really must read Shot in the Heart. Really must.

[cfrost]

Man, I never could forget or get past the ego and the embarrassing macho preening, not to mention the pointless beef he had with feminism. Great writing, and I agreed with him on a whole raft of things, but I’d enjoy the writing better if I encountered the books with the covers and front material ripped off, so I didn’t know who the author was.

Mailer’s death will probably occasion revisiting the circumstances of his role in the parole of Jack Abbott, author of “In the Belly of the Beast”, who killed a man almost as soon as he was paroled. Mailer himself expressed some regret about the whole thing, and I don’t think he deserved the vilification he got just because he didn’t have a crystal ball. In the Belly of the Beast was a great and necessary piece of reportage. Mailer might have guessed that Abbott was incorrigible, but he couldn’t have known that, and Abbott’s eloquence might have fooled anybody. Particularly anyone who had not lived or worked within the prison system themselves.

Re fighting after a couple konks on the crown with a hammer - In my wilder and stupider teens I once whacked someone in the face with a hatchet and it did not have the desired effect. (It’s a long story, but had it come to court, a good lawyer could have made a self-defense case.) I hit him with the broad side of the hatchet in the face and he went down, only to come right back up. I hit him with the hammer side on the temple; pulling the force a bit, as I didn’t want to hurt him, just scare him. He went down again, this time coming back up at me as crazy and scary as a rabid wolf. We then wrestled over the hatchet a bit. At that point I was getting very frightened, thinking if I didn’t use the blade, the sonofabitch was going to get the hatchet and kill me. A friend accompanying me pulled a gun and pointed it in the guy’s face, (Honestly, we really were not looking for trouble, though it certainly doesn’t sound like it.) but the guy ignored it, continuing to wrestle me for the hatchet and nearly wresting it away from me. I pulled away and turned the blade forward, drawing the hatchet behind my shoulder. The guy finally looked at both the gun and the hatchet, came to his senses, and ran. Comparing notes afterwards, my friend and I agreed that the instant before the guy ran was nearly the most frightening thing we had ever experienced, as we were going to have to decide in the next second whether to use real violence if the guy called our bluff. My friend said he got weak in the knees when he flipped the safety off. That sort of shit is for teenage boys and not for men. Fighting is puerile kid stuff not befitting any adult, certainly not an author who wants to be taken seriously.

[Cass]

I was all set to tell my own hatchet story, but cfrost took all the glamour out of it.

[mudkitty]

I think the guy got way too much credit for simply being able to string sentences together.

However, he was able to create and evoke interesting characters, and maintain a taut plot.

[Alan Bostick]

He was a horrible man. I won't miss him.

[Doyle Saylor]

Interesting footage. Rip echoes a certain set of influences of those times - to be authentic and push things to the edge. Norman seems to be using biting Rip to control Rip and when he lets up Rip promptly attacks again and gets the better of Norman. Mailer is a small guy and apparently so is Rip. Rip would be about up to my shoulder assuming rough equivalence with Mailer. I could easily pick both of them up. And or take the hammer away from Rip. That said though, the lack of communication from Rip of intentions causes the incident.

In those times the femminist challenge to Mailer caught my attention and shifted my thinking, albeit slowly, but my awareness grew as he jousted with the criticism of his macho. This male conflict scenario was common enough then. Some conflict escalates into a fight because acting on words is culturally unusual (see the interview with Daniel Day Lewis about his English schooling versus U.S. culture of non talk in the NY Times magazine). The question being why the culture can't talk, especially a 'writer' can't talk.

Mailer's work revolves around this exploration. A man being executed probes the inability to know - Gilmore might have had (socially dysdunctional). Mailer caught Gilmore's passionate connection to his female partner. Sometimes Gilmore could be expressive writing or talking to her. But as Lindsay says Mailer explores these multi-faceted social forces in strong ways. And looking back I'd agree with Lindsay one can't step back into that stream.

[Dabodius]

Shouldn't that be, "Oh, fug, not NM..."?
I couldn't finish The Naked and the Dead. Although I have no Mailer in my library now, sometime I'd like to reread The Armies of the Night. How comely and reviving now would such protest be to the spirits of a people long oppressed. A Mailer revival, we don't need.

[Dock Miles]

I thought Mailer never got enough condemnation for the Jack Abbot affair (hey, ol' Norman was all but an accessory to murder), but, hey, he romanticized psychopathic behavior as "rebellious" (read An American Dream and take a shower when you finish). And was really sorry, man, later. Whatever, the events were particularly disgusting because, earlier, another psychopathic shithead, Edgar Smith, had pulled the same con job on William F. Buckley Jr.. That one's less well remembered because it resulted in "only" attempted murder.

[Dock Miles]

Sorry I couldn't find it until now -- this is a more graphic, unpleasant, and detailed history of Smith, which is invaluable because it includes Buckley's callous explanation that offing a mere teenage girl in a rage doesn't make Smith into a Hitler or something.

[voxy]

Richard Power says after his initial success as an author he left America rather than suffer the deluge of recognition. His 'complaint' is that Americans place too much emphasis on the personality rather than the work of the author and he felt his work would not receive a fair audience, for this reason.
Mailer's persona was such that we were 'going to KNOW him' come what(ever)may.
He was large in his mind and made himself known.
I'm ashamed to say I didn't grab the last two books he wrote when I intended to.
I'll also confess that rather than blogging his death I waited because I'm actually NOT the best feminist .... and wondered how many feminists loathed him. Because I ardently admire many feminists I wanted to hear what they have to say. So, this makes me ... happy. I thought Norman was pretty cool despite his human ... imperfections.

BUT, it was really PISSING ME OFF to see some gd wannabe columnists trash this man before he was cold in his grave. Writing five and six pages about how he wasn't 'all that' but obviously they'd been working on the spiteful rant for WEEKS or MONTHS; since he first fell ill.
As well, I think his days were probably numnbered since 1991.
And, he'll never pass this way again.
A total ONER.

Thanks so much, Lindsay. It was worth waiting for to read your take on this. And all of you, so far.
Because part of me wondered ...

Is it just me who is really sad about this?
I like to see someone really live. Not all of us live sedately with dignity and ... PC'ness. It adds color, of course. He was very colorful.

[RKimble]

Lindsay:

So what if he was not a nice person I dont even know or care this is the trap of the modern elitepoliticalsex columnisttalkinghead (Novak, Dowd, Russert, Cokie) who cant read or think but can yak stupidly about what NM said to someone at some forgotten party ... he wrote some great books ... The Naked and the Dead; The Deer Park ; The Armies of the Night; TES; Of a Fire on the Moon and most topically Why are we in Vietnam ? all of which will be remembered long after were all dead and our irrelevant colorful personalities have faded ...

[RKimble]

Lindsay:

So what if he was not a nice person I dont even know or care this is the trap of the modern elitepoliticalsex columnisttalkinghead (Novak, Dowd, Russert, Cokie) who cant read or think but can yak stupidly about what NM said to someone at some forgotten party ... he wrote some great books ... The Naked and the Dead; The Deer Park ; The Armies of the Night; TES; Of a Fire on the Moon and most topically Why are we in Vietnam ? all of which will be remembered long after were all dead and our irrelevant colorful personalities have faded ...

[Dock Miles]

Norman Mailer's Enemies List. Pretty rich entertainment and a ton of snark.

[voxy]

Right ON RKimble !

[Lindsay Beyerstein]

I agree about the importance of separating an artist from his work. As a fiction reader, I don't care if Norman Mailer was sexist, or violent, or a hopelessly bad dresser, or anything. I'll always be grateful for the two books of his that I read and loved: TES and TN&TD.

I'm just not sure whether I'd admire either of these books as much today as I did when I was in my early teens. At that point I hadn't read that many "grownup" novels, and I scarcely had any relevant life experiences against which to judge Mailer's pronouncements about love, sex, life, loss, etc. So, what seemed like fresh, daring, plausible stories to me then might not seem so compelling now. That's not a political statement or a verdict on NM's character.

I think I'll re-read TES and report back. I should also check out "Shot in the Heart."

[Dock Miles]

A passionate and personal reflection on Mailer that does a good job of reconciling his appeal as both a public personality and a writer. Phil Nugent should be a well-known cultural commentator.