Norman Mailer, Dead at 84

[mallorys_camera]

Norman Mailer dead at 84…

A great favorite of my mother's. Mailer was a Brooklyn boy who made good, hamishe.

Advertisements For Myself was one of the books my mother hid behind the other books on her shelf, along with Ulysses, Lolita and an expurgated version of Lady Chatterly's Lover. I'd found and devoured them all by the time I was 11. I remember being particularly put off by the essay in which Mailer buttfucks a sarcastic young Jewish woman – I think he actually uses the word "Jewess" which I hadn't seen between hard covers since I finished Ivanhoe in the fourth grade. What was that all about? I didn't get the "white Negro" stuff at all.

I'm trying to remember whether I've ever read a single novel by him – yes. Yes, I did: The Deer Park. I was drawn by the Versailles symbolism of the title. Read it in my early twenties but even then at the height of my infatuation with style over story, found it overwritten. I longed to stalk Mailer with a bullhorn: "Subject, verb, object! Subject, verb, object!"

I did like The Executioner's Song very much, but of course, not as much as I liked In Cold Blood. As much as Mailer despised and belittled Capote, Capote was the greater writer and I'm sure they're all having a merry laugh over that in the afterlife equivalent of Elaine's.

I loathed The Armies of the Night. An incredibly dishonest and self-serving book, I thought – of course, by then I knew a leettle bit about that subject matter...

So after I read Mailer was dead, I tried to remember how he became irrelevant. Didn't it seem as though one moment he was an Important Literary Figure and the next, he was a buffoon? A characature of a macho wannabe?

"Two words," said Ben. "Jack Abbott."

Ah, of course! The macho writer got played like some sort of sob sister languishing on the other side of the bars for her conjugal visit. A literary reputation is never going to recover from that.

I suppose Gore Vidal will be the Reaper's next victim. Now that will make me sad. I adore Gore Vidal.

And I wonder whether any of the American writers writing in the last half of the 20th century will be remembered?

Comments

[dinahprincedaly.livejournal.com]

I liked him... I liked Armies of the Night... I liked his outrageousness... that he dared to try things or his willingness to go out of bounds... when I was about 19, I wanted to be Norman Mailer... didn't like it that he stabbed his wife tho... but, later, probably on like my third date with my husband, he took me to meet Norman Mailer in his Brooklyn Heights home which reminded me of a ship, the woodwork, looking out over the water at Manhattan, and I remember being impressed by how unassuming the man was and gentle and generous and normal...

[mallorys-camera.livejournal.com]

You have met everyone! :-)

So sorry about yr computer but it sounds as though yr hard drive is okay, and all the irreplaceable stuff is there -- just inaccessible at present.

[pageeater.livejournal.com]

He bored me. Still, sorry he died at 84. I think everyone deserves at least one-hundred good years.
There are definitely writers in the last half of the 20th century who will be remembered - but not as well nor as fondly as the flamboyant writers who are being whittled away right now.

[mallorys-camera.livejournal.com]

There are definitely writers in the last half of the 20th century who will be remembered

Curious who you think those are.

[pageeater.livejournal.com]

Yikes - what a loaded question for a pageeater! Well, there are those who will be remembered - because they are huge commercial sellers - and there are those I personally think should be remembered, both in the literary field and specific genres. I'll give you a few, okay? Literary first, followed by...
Carmac McCarthy, Ian McEwan, Sra Gruen, Neil Gaimen, Anita Shreve, Anne Pachette, Kazuo Ishigoro, Anne Tyler, Stephanie Kallor.
Then there's...
Stephen King, Piers Anthony, Mary Dorian Russell, Orson Scott Card, Clive Barket.
And - even Anne Rice, for her early works and especially (as A.N Roquelaure) her Beauty series.

This just touches the surface. I've left off so many. We have a wealth of extraordinary writers in the last half-century and present day. Granted, the writing is different - but the times have changed. No many are entertained by the wordiness of a Moby Dick these days. And good-writing is indeed in the eye of the beholder.

I actually had to read "Armies of the Night"

[diemoniker.livejournal.com]

for a class in college, so that I might, childish naif that I was, understand the 60s.

I found it very confusing. Although not nearly as confusing as the Port Huron statement. The one lesson that I extracted from "Armies" and the several plaintive bits where Mailer ogles his fellow marchers was that being any sort of vaguely hippie-ish woman in the 60s entailed a long, long decade of painfully earnest, unattractive men trying to guilt you into having sex with them.

Re: I actually had to read "Armies of the Night"

[mallorys-camera.livejournal.com]

Heh! I think you "extracted" the central political point of the seventies actually -- demonstrate and get laid! And the longer you march around, the less of that bo-o-oring foreplay you have to do.

I was on the receiving end of that often enough, God knows.

I like the idea of "New Journalism" because I do think reportage is never objective so it's good to establish the reporter's own set of biases as a narrative lens upfront. That's a little different than writing a book about yourself though. Reread that first sentence in "Armies of the Night" some time. It could be the lede in a textbook on clinical narcissism.

[nokomisjeff.livejournal.com]

I like Vidal's work, but I'm a disciple of William F. Buckley Jr. Here's a good exchange they had in 1968.

Aloha,

Jeff

[mallorys-camera.livejournal.com]

You know, I'm bizarre -- two things I avoid if at all possible: WalMarts and YouTube. Don't know why! I just hate them, and think they're symptomatic of everything that's wrong with America! :-) I'm a crochety old lady.

But I've read William F. Buckley. Excellent writer. Kind of a Barry Goldwater Republican, no? I'm closer to that politically than I am to Hillary Clinton.

[nokomisjeff.livejournal.com]

You're 100% correct. I'm a Goldwater Republican at heart, with a splash of Buckley thrown in.

I love youtube, but wouldn't cross the threshold of a Wal-Mart even at gunpoint.

Aloha,

Jeff

[(Anonymous)]

Mailer couldn't wipe Henry Miller's ass.

However, there's a good video (on YouTube, I think) shot on the set of a film Mailer was making. He and Rip Torn get into a pretty good fight. I think Norman could have taken Rip easily enough but was holding back out of friendship. Or maybe he wasn't as tough as he'd have everyone believe.

I read THE NAKED AND THE DEAD when I was a kid, very amused by the made-up word "fug." I remember a scene in which Japanese soldiers were taunting the Americans at night, yelling out: "Fug you! Fug Babe Ruth!" Words surely designed to get American blood boiling.

[mallorys-camera.livejournal.com]

Henry Miller! Yes! Thank you, anonymous person!

[(Anonymous)]

You might really enjoy Erika Jong's excellent DEVIL AT LARGE, the account of her correspondence and eventual close friendship with Henry, which began around the time FEAR OF FLYING came out.

Good stuff in there about writing, too---the ins and outs and pain and joy of it.