TRUMAN REDUX:

Posted on February 1, 2016 by Zachary Klein

Zachary Klein

INTRODUCTION

Hard to believe, but In Cold Blood is fifty years old. Published in 1966, the book was not only a huge bestseller, but also a literary trailblazer. Capote kicked open journalism’s doors (despite Norman Mailer’s belief to the contrary) and they have remained open. A few recent examples quickly jump to mind: Serial, a This American Life podcast; Jinx, an HBO documentary; and, of course, Making a Murderer, a Netflix original documentary series. (A more complete discussion of MaM can be found @ http://zacharykleinonline.com/reviews/making-a-murderer/)

As some of you know, I enjoy interviewing the dead so, in November, 2012, I tracked down Truman Capote and spent a number of hours talking with him. Given his book’s golden birthday I really wanted another interview but this time was met with hostility and refusal.

Me: “I don’t understand. This is a celebratory moment. Why won’t you talk with me?”

Mr. Capote: “Mailer. That’s all the reason I need.”

Me: “I thought you and I hit it off pretty well.”

Mr. Capote: “As did I, until I read your interview with that self-serving braggart.”

Me: “I wasn’t particularly easy on him, you know.”

Mr. Capote: “’To be perfectly honest,’ as Nixon would mutter, it wasn’t your interview per se. It was your decision to submit the Mailer interview rather than mine to that anthology.

Me: Ahh, you mean the one for my local bookstore? (https://www.inkshares.com/books/what-happened-here-year-one-at-papercuts-j-p-.) Truman, please. We’re talking local, here.”

Mr. Capote: Don’t “please” me, Klein. Mailer, Mailer, and more Mailer—and that about wraps it up. Go talk to him again. We’re finished.

And we were as he slipped back into his grave-site. No amount of knocking would raise him from the dead. Still, the fiftieth anniversary of In Cold Blood demands respect. So, to honor his memory and all the room he’s given to generations of writers, I’ve decided to reprint my entire original interview. As Kenzaburo Oe once said, “The dead can survive as part of the lives of those that still live.”

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I’m taking this opportunity to follow Truman Capote’s genre busting creation of the “nonfiction novel” with non-novel fiction—an interview with Capote himself. To that end we recently sat down and, I believe, both enjoyed our conversation. We met in a closed small tavern (I know the owner), called The Living Room where Mr. Capote sat on a club chair upholstered in peacock blue with me across a square table on a leather couch. Both of us drank sparkling water.

Mr. Capote: “Frankly, I was expecting the Ritz. Nothing this shabby.” Capote leaned back in his chair, crossed his legs, and raised his small hand to his chin.

Me: “I wanted a place where we could talk without being interrupted, Mr. Capote. Plus, I don’t know the owner of the Ritz.”

Mr. Capote: “Just call me Tru. It’s always so interesting to discover who one knows and doesn’t. And I do so much enjoy interruptions. It gives me a chance to observe. And of course, it means that people haven’t forgotten me.”

ME: “There’s no chance of anyone who reads forgetting you. Anyone who ever saw you on television either.”

Capote’s hand dropped to his lap, as he leaned forward with a half smile.

Mr. Capote: “I really was famous, wasn’t I?”

ME: “Very much so. In fact, so much so that many people believed it was your driving motivation to write.”

Capote chuckled and shook his head.

Mr. Capote: “I began writing out of loneliness and desperation. I’d been abandoned by my parents and was quite…different than anyone else—so I wrote. And wrote, and wrote. When my mother returned and brought me to New York, nothing really changed inside. Writing was all I wanted to do. To me, the greatest pleasure in writing is not what it’s about, but the inner music that words make. And that music kept me sane. It’s all I ever wanted to do until Perry…”

Capote’s voice dropped to a whisper and his eyes began to rapidly blink.

Me: “Before we go there I want to ask about your statement that the music of words kept you sane. I wonder whether your first novel Other Voices, Other Rooms took it a step further. An opportunity to accept yourself, your upbringing, your sexuality?”

Capote’s eyes kept blinking but he reached for his glass, took a sip and continued to lean forward.

Mr. Capote: “I’ve said many times that the central theme of Other Voices, Other Rooms was my search for who was essentially an imaginary person, that is, my father.”

Capote ran the back of his hand over his forehead.

Mr. Capote: “You do know it debuted at number nine on The New York Times Best Seller list and remained on the list for more than two months!”

Me: “I do. It also seems that the novel helped you come to terms with your homosexuality.”

Mr. Capote: “No, no, no. (Tru vigorously shook his head, almost spilling the water from the glass in his hand) Old news, darling. Frankly, I simply used that theme to make the book titillating. Looking down and back, perhaps it was my first stab at nonfiction novels. Although I must say, Other Voices, Other Rooms was an unconscious, altogether intuitive attempt to exorcise demons for I was not aware, except for a few incidents and descriptions, of its being to any serious degree autobiographical. Rereading it now, I find such self-deception unpardonable. I did know, however, exactly what I was doing when Harold Halma took my picture for the back cover. I wasn’t completely oblivious.”

Back Cover–OTHER VOICES, OTHER ROOMS

Capote put his glass down and laughed delightedly.

Me: “Since you brought up the term “nonfiction novel,” maybe we ought to begin talking about In Cold Blood?”

Mr. Capote: “Not yet, please. It’s been a while since my last interview and, I must say, I’m enjoying it more than I thought. Also, it would be wrong to simply bypass Breakfast At Tiffany’s.”

Me: “You’re right, Mr. Capote. Though it’s still difficult for me to shake George Peppard’s image as Paul Varjak.”

Mr. Capote: “A gorgeous man, Peppard, too bad he spent so much time in the closet. Still, keep in mind I didn’t cast him for the movie. That was out of my control.”

Me: “Of course…”

Before I finished my sentence Capote placed his glass back on the table and sat at the edge of his chair.

Mr. Capote: “As badly miscast as he was, Peppard didn’t annoy me. Tiffany did. They never really appreciated the way I put them on the map. They simply gave me some sort of bauble.”

Me: “Do you remember what it was?”

Capote wiggled back in his chair.

Mr. Capote: “I don’t care to try.”

Me: “Not a problem. You know, of course, that after Norman Mailer read Breakfast he said, “Truman Capote I do not know well, but I like him. He is tart as a grand aunt, but in his way is a ballsy little guy, and he is the most perfect writer of my generation, he writes the best sentences word for word, rhythm upon rhythm. I would not have changed two words in Breakfast at Tiffany’s which will become a small classic.””

Mr. Capote: “Small indeed. Certainly less pages than Mailer could ever write. And his remark that I’m a ballsy little guy and the most perfect writer of that generation was simply another way to insult me and my sexuality. I know George…”

Me: “George?”

Capote stared at me with rock hard eyes.

Mr. Capote: “Plimpton. George Plimpton. I might have been dead when he had the gall to say it, but I’m not blind or deaf. In an interview, he said I was at the top of the ‘second’ tier of writers and named Norman as being in the top. Now who do you imagine Norman really thought was the most ‘perfect’ writer of his generation?”

Capote raised an eyebrow but his stare remained cold as steel. But I couldn’t help myself and burst out laughing. Eventually Capote joined in as both of us contemplated Mailer’s massive ego.

Me: “Point taken.”

I glanced at the clock.

Me: “This has taken longer than I had anticipated but I’d hate to end now. Would you mind staying longer or maybe meet at another time to finish?”

Mr. Capote: “Oh dear boy, I’d be happy to stay. I really don’t get out much anymore. But there is a condition.”

Me: “Yes?”

Mr. Capote: “I simply need something, uhh, better to drink. Remember, I do live in a dry town.”

I certainly didn’t want “Tru” to leave so, I scrambled behind the bar and quickly mixed two screwdrivers—vodka, orange juice, orange slices.

Mr. Capote: “Ahh, my orange drink. You did your homework well.”

Me: “It wasn’t difficult.”

Mr. Capote: “I suppose not,” he said with a sigh, before taking a long sip from the glass.

Mr. Capote: “It is quite good, thank you and you made doubles. I hope you write as well as you bar-tend. Or perhaps I really don’t care.”

I placed my glass on the table, took a deep breath, and climbed back onto the saddle.

Me: “I hope so too. But now I think we ought to talk about In Cold Blood.”

A small smile played at the corners of Capote’s mouth but his eyes saddened.

Mr. Capote: “It was a hell of a book, wasn’t it?”

Me: “Is a hell of a book. I call it genre busting, but even that doesn’t really express the sheer intensity and importance of the work.

Mr. Capote: “That intensity cost me my life,” he said quietly.

Me: “Perry Smith?”

Smith/Capote

Mr. Capote: “Oh yes, he was a major part, but everything about those six years of living in Kansas for long periods of time, especially in the beginning and the end left me empty, dry.”

Me: “Even though Harper Lee was there to help you?”

Capote/Lee

Capote sat taller in his peacock blue chair.

Mr. Capote: “No, no, no,” he said, that hard look returning to his eyes. “Harper and I were childhood friends. I thought bringing her to Kansas might help her with her own writing. She had very little to do, however, with either the research or writing of Blood. She did help me get to know a wide range of people who might not have trusted me otherwise. Harper is a very likable woman.”

Me: “She was pretty upset that you shared the dedication and didn’t even mention her contributions to the book.”

Mr. Capote: “Would she rather I had written that I appreciated her amicable personality since that was her contribution? But really, her upset was just a trickle of blood under the bridge. We did remain friends until I died.”

Me: “Much has been written and speculated about your relationship with Perry but very little about Dick.”

Mr. Capote: “Dick wasn’t particularly interesting, really. He just wanted the Clutters’ money safe and when he discovered they didn’t have one, simply wanted to get away.”

Me: “But Perry said in his confession that Dick shot the two women.”

Capote waved his hand dismissively.

Mr. Capote: “Nonsense, and Perry of course knew that. Which was why he never did sign that confession.”

Me: “So Smith told you that he did all the killings?”

Mr. Capote: “He didn’t have to. Only he had the makeup to murder.”

Me: “Was that what drew you to him? So many people have thought you were in love with him and that his hanging was the death of your creativity.”

Capote finished his orange drink, placed the glass on the table, and leaned back with closed eyes.

Mr. Capote: “People often see things quite superficially. I did love Perry, but it wasn’t the love of lovers. As the years passed, our correspondence and relationship grew very, very intimate. When his death grew closer and so much more real, I finally began to understand our relationship: we were the same person, although I used words to express my violence. It was as if we grew up in the same house as one person, then split apart as I went out the front door, and he the back.”

Capote opened his eyes, blinked furiously, then slumped back into his chair.

KCG

Mr. Capote: “Of course I was shattered by Perry’s hanging. And Dick’s. So many years of trust, of intimacy, of caring—and yes, love. Then to watch as he—they—twisted and writhed for ten minutes hanging from their ropes. How can one not be devastated?”

Me: “It didn’t stop you from living it up in grand style when the book became a huge success.”

Mr. Capote: “A bit tart, aren’t you? Which bothers you more, the book’s success or my wonderful swans?”

Me: “Neither, really. Well, maybe the success. But now that you mentioned your swans…”

Mr. Capote: “My society women. Not just the women, but the men as well. Frankly, everyone who was anyone begged for an invitation to The Black and White Ball. I actually had to run away and hide weeks before the party.”

Black & White Ball

Capote’s eyes lit up.

Mr. Capote: “What a night! Heavens, the guests from Kansas wouldn’t leave when it was over. But watching people scramble to get an invitation, well, that was even more pleasurable than the Ball. It’s quite hard not to be seduced by such attention—especially after experiencing heartbreak and the small death of myself after the hangings. During that time of life I did feel empty, written out. It was only fair to appreciate the accolades and bask a bit. I paid for it and I don’t mean the cost of the party—though of course I paid for that as well.”

I grinned in order to contain my laughter.

Me: “Bask a bit? Mr. Capote, you were all over every television talk show and newspaper.”

Mr. Capote: “Well, perhaps ‘a bit’ is actually an understatement. But you’ve looked at my life. You’ve seen how quickly people can turn on you. On me!”

It was my turn to shake my head.

Me: “Uhh, it was you who decided to pen a roman a` clef. And you who published ‘La Côte Basque 1965’ in Esquire. And you didn’t let it go. I can only imagine your friends’ fear and rage while they waited for the other shoe to drop in that follow-up book you were bragging about, Answered Prayers.”

Mr. Capote: “What could they possibly have expected? I’m a writer!”

Me: “I don’t think they expected you to write about them.

Capote’s head drooped.

Mr. Capote: “They got their revenge.”

Me: “Their ostracism didn’t seem to stop you. Studio 54, Warhol’s loft scene. You partied like it was 1999.

Mr. Capote: “I partied better than those in 1999. Remember, there are many ways to die. Which, having said, I really must leave. I can’t say this has been entirely pleasant, but it’s good to get out occasionally.”

Capote began to slide off his chair.

I stood up with him.

Me: “I have just one more question—did you ever complete Answered Prayers and, if so, who has the manuscript?

This time a wide smile crossed his face.

Mr. Capote: “That, my friend, is an answer I will take upstairs.”

“Everything he had set out to do Truman succeeded in doing,” wrote Gerald Clark in his 1988 Capote biography. “On a superficial level, ‘In Cold Blood’ is a murder story of riveting vitality and suspense. On a deeper level, it is what he had always known it could be, a Big Work – a masterpiece, in fact, that he has infused with the somber energy of a Greek tragedy.”

MR. MAILER CONCLUDES

Posted on July 29, 2013 by Zachary Klein

MAILER: That walk was delightful–don’t get around much anymore. Ha!

ME: So, in its own way this interview has been a relief?

MAILER: In some ways, yes. It’s good to get out once in a while. But in other ways not at all. I’m terribly angry about this country’s direction.

ME: Not the first time is it?

MAILER: You’re talking about John Kennedy, aren’t you?

ME: Impossible not to. At first you loved the guy. I remember what you wrote about the 1960 Democratic convention: “Yes, this candidate for all his record; his good, sound, conventional liberal record has a patina of that other life, the second American life, the long electric night with the fires of neon leading down the highway to the murmur of jazz.” In fact, you called him “an existential hero.”

MAILER: Well, in looking back I was wrong about many things. That was one of them. His secret war on Cuba, the Vietnam war. His snarky little brother, Bobby. So I did what was called for. Joined organizations and protests about their policies and leadership. Now I look around and see virtually the same thing. A Black President. A man who seemed as a flame to moths and had the potential of becoming a transformational figure for real change. But nothing is different. America continues its horrific downward slide.

ME: I don’t disagree, but which slide are YOU talking about?

MAILER: Where should I start? Well, any war that requires the suspension of reason as a necessity for support is a bad war. Right now, we’re in several. And I include the one on our liberty in the name of security. Talk about the suspension of reason! Also, one only has to look at the stranglehold the corporate world and their media has on the American people. My god, they bought themselves a Supreme Court that allows the ruling class to own any candidate they choose. And finally, we have an ideological schism that is tearing the nation apart.

ME: On the last page of Miami and the Siege of Chicago, you predicted the cultural divide. “We will be fighting for forty years…” And we have been.

MAILER: A fight we have apparently lost. As well as losing any semblance of a middle class. It’s quickly becoming a society of those that have and those who don’t.

ME: In Oswald’s Tale you wrote, “If a figure as large as Kennedy is cheated abruptly of his life, we feel better, inexplicably better, if his killer is also not without size. Then, to some degree, we can also mourn the loss of possibility in the man who did the deed. Tragedy is vastly preferable to absurdity.” So you believe we are living in the absurd?

Mailer shook his head and rubbed his eyes. He was growing tired.

MAILER: It’s much worse. That quotation was about individuals and their lives. Now we’re talking about an entire empire disintegrating and I have no faith that we won’t take the rest of the world with us. Throughout my entire career people always talked about “Mailer’s ego.” But, if the world perishes, it will occur because of America’s ego. Rather than absurdity, we’re mired in tragedy.

ME: I’m surprised that you’re as pessimistic as this. You spent much of your life “boxing” for causes in which you believed. Was it your death that changed your attitude?

MAILER, reaching for the bottle and pouring the remains into his glass: Abbot. Jack Abbot. The letters that flew between us while he was in jail convinced me he was rehabilitated. After his parole I had it in my power to help him by getting IN THE BELLY OF THE BEAST published. I think something changed in me after he fatally stabbed that waiter six weeks after parole. I never realized how deeply I was affected until after my own death. Now I understand my role in that will stick with me for eternity.

ME: Well, your political outlook was much more upbeat in 1969 when you ran for Mayor of New York City.

MAILER: Whose wasn’t? Of course I was hopeful. It was also 15 years before Abbot.

ME: Hopefulness or an ego trip?

MAILER: That’s certainly how they portrayed it at the time. But tell me New York City wouldn’t be better off as its own state? In 1969 citizens of New York City paid approximately $22 billion in income taxes to the federal government and New Yorkers only received about $6 billion from federal coffers. If the city kept that $22 billion in their own hands every neighborhood would get a lot more bang for its buck.

ME: Perhaps, but your slogan, “THROW THE RASCALS IN,” made the campaign kind of a joke, don’t you think? Isn’t that why it was called an ego trip?

MAILER: I liked the slogan they wouldn’t print: “NO MORE BULLSHIT!” And where is it written that campaigns have to be dull and serious? Certainly not at that moment in time. Even though the press focused on my succession plan, I took positions on a wide range of issues. I opposed compulsory fluoridation of the water supply. I advocated for the release of Black Panther Party leader Huey Newton. I saw the city, its independence secured, splintering into townships and neighborhoods, each with their own school systems, police departments, housing programs, and governing philosophies.

And no one seems to recall that I was endorsed by libertarian economist Murray Rothbard, who said, “smashing the urban government apparatus and fragmenting it into a myriad of constituent fragments’ offered the only answer to the ills plaguing American cities.” And finally no less a political journalist and historian, Theodore White, called it, “one of the most serious campaigns run in the United States in the last five years… [H]is campaign was considered and thoughtful, the beginning of an attempt to apply ideas to a political situation.” Not entirely an ego trip was it?

ME: You do remember that you came in fourth out of five candidates?

MAILER, yawning: I was ahead of my time. Always have been. You didn’t pound on my grave-site because I was a “know-nothing.”

ME: I pounded on your grave because I think you are one of the most important and creative writers this country has ever produced.

MAILER, rising somewhat wobbly to his feet: Well, we certainly agree about that. But right now I’m a bit tired. Not as alive as I once was. And, as for my giant ego, would you mind helping me home?

“I don’t think life is absurd. I think we are all here for a huge purpose. I think we shrink from the immensity of the purpose we are here for.” Norman Mailer

A PARTIAL BIBLIOGRAPHY OF NORMAN MAILER’S WORK:

Novels

The Naked and the Dead. New York: Rinehart, 1948.

Barbary Shore. New York: Rinehart, 1951.

The Deer Park. New York: Putnam’s, 1955.

An American Dream. New York: Dial, 1965.

Why Are We in Vietnam? New York: Putnam’s, 1967.

The Executioner’s Song Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1979.

Of Women and Their Elegance. New York, Simon and Schuster, 1980.

Ancient Evenings. Boston: Little, Brown, 1983.

Tough Guys Don’t Dance. New York: Random House, 1984.

Harlot’s Ghost. New York: Random House, 1991.

The Gospel According to the Son. New York: Random House, 1997.

The Castle in the Forest. New York: Random House, 2007.

Plays

The Deer Park: A Play. New York: Dial, 1967.

Short Stories

The Short Fiction of Norman Mailer. New York: Dell, 1967.

General non-fiction

The Armies of the Night. New York: New American Library, 1968.

Miami and the Siege of Chicago: An Informal History of the Republican and Democratic Conventions of 1968. New York: New American Library, 1968.

Of a Fire on the Moon. Boston: Little, Brown, 1970.

The Prisoner of Sex. Boston: Little, Brown, 1971.[36]

St. George and The Godfather. New York: Signet Classics, 1972.

The Faith of Graffiti. New York: Praeger, 1974.

The Fight. Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1975.

Of a Small and Modest Malignancy, Wicked and Bristling with Dots. Northridge, CA: Lord John Press, 1980.

Why Are We At War?. New York: Random House, 2003 ISBN 978-0-8129-7111-8

The Spooky Art: Some Thoughts on Writing. New York: Random House, 2003.

The Big Empty: Dialogues on Politics, Sex, God, Boxing, Morality, Myth, Poker and Bad Conscience in America. New York: Nation Books, 2006

On God: An Uncommon Conversation. New York: Random House, 2007

Essay collections

Advertisements for Myself. New York: Putnam’s, 1959.

The Presidential Papers.New York: Putnam, 1963.

Cannibals and Christians. New York: Dial, 1966.

Pieces and Pontifications. Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1982.

Biographies

Marilyn: A Biography.[a] New York: Grosset & Dunlap, 1973.

Portrait of Picasso as a Young Man: An Interpretive Biography. Atlantic Monthly Press, 1995.

Oswald’s Tale: An American Mystery. New York: Random House, 1996

Famous essays and articles

“The White Negro”. San Francisco: City Lights, 1957.

Decorations and Awards

1969: Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award for The Armies of the Night

1980: Pulitzer Prize for The Executioner’s Song

2002: Austrian Cross of Honour for Science and Art, 1st class[37]

2005: National Book Award for Lifetime Achievement

2006: Knight of the Legion of Honour (France)

Commander of the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres (France)

MR. MAILER CONTINUES

Posted on July 22, 2013 by Zachary Klein

Titina Chalmatz

Last week’s Interview with the Dead concluded with Norman being frustrated by our lack of literary conversation. Actually, he was frustrated that we hadn’t yet discussed his literary accomplishments. So in this installment I turn my attention to his prodigious and often controversial work. I do admit a bottle of bourbon helped keep our interaction from being too contentious.

ME: You won the Pulitzer Prize for general non-fiction and the National Book Award for Armies of the Night. Miami and the Siege of Chicago: An Informal History of the Republican and Democratic Conventions of 1968 was brilliant, and Of a Fire On The Moon might be the definitive work about the beginning days of NASA.Yet you once said, “If a person is not talented enough to be a novelist, not smart enough to be a lawyer, and his hands are too shaky to perform operations, he becomes a journalist.” Why did you do so much of what you didn’t value?

MAILER: You disappoint me, Klein. If you had done your homework, in The Armies of the Night, I describe my conversation with Robert…

MY macho flared and I interrupted him.

ME:…Lowell. I think I remember the words exactly, “You know, Norman,” said Lowell in his fondest voice, “Elizabeth and I really think you’re the finest journalist in America.”

MAILER: Good jab, but you forgot the counterpunch…my response to him. “Well, Cal, there are days when I think of myself as being the best writer in America.”

ME: When was a hierarchy of writing established?

MAILER: Since people used stones on cave walls. Actually, long before. Storytelling.

ME: Aren’t you creating a false distinction? Storytelling was as much about history as make-believe and the same could be said about cave paintings.

MAILER: The difficulty I have is not with journalism per se—despite what I said. The problem has been—was, now that I’m dead—the attempt to define the books you mentioned as simply journalism when so much more creativity went into them. Every one of my books killed me a little more, yet too many people made them sound as if readers were going to read a digest of newspaper accounts. As you well know, that’s not what they found.

ME: Yes those works were written in a highly subjectivized style and used techniques that were thought to be the sole domain of fiction at that time, but you were, in fact, reporting.

MAILER: I think it’s impossible to tease out reporting from what you termed “highly subjectivized.”

Mr. Mailer grinned mischievously.

MAILER: Did you just make up that word?

ME: Nah, I ran across it preparing for our interview.

MAILER: I always found it more fun to write about something I didn’t completely know but would discover on route. A friend once told me that “The only time I know anything is when it comes to me at the point of my pen.” I hope our interview manages to replicate that.

A stuffy answer, I thought, and smiled at his ever present ego.

ME: So do I, but I’m still stuck on the journalism issue. I’ll never understand why The Executioner’s Song (Mailer’s book about the life and death of murderer Gary Gilmore) won the Pulitzer for fiction.

MAILER, pouring both of us another drink despite the morning hour: Perhaps we’re both too concerned about categories. It’s true I much prefer, preferred, to be thought of as a novelist, but that might have been shortsighted on my part. In thinking back to my response to Cal Lowell, I used the term “writer.”

Mr. Mailer broke into laughter.

MAILER: I probably should have touted myself more as the best living writer than argue about being a novelist rather than a journalist. Truth was, I sifted through thousands of documents before writing Gilmore’s story.

ME: I’ll be honest with you, I thought the first two-thirds were genius. Each paragraph seemed to be in the voice of the person you were writing about…”

MAILER: You have a good ear, Klein.

ME: But, the last third when your attention turned to the press and, frankly, yourself, just wasn’t as compelling.

MAILER: Reporters’ voices shouldn’t grab you the way main characters do; it’s the nature of their craft. But I’ll take “two-thirds genius.” It goes well with bourbon.

ME: One last question about Song. You’ve been quoted as saying, “The mark of mediocrity is to look for precedent.” Doesn’t The Executioner’s Song follow in the steps of In Cold Blood?.

MAILER, shaking his head: I’m dead and still being asked that question. Yes, there are similarities, but remember an entire movement called New Journalism was rearing its head. Capote, Tom Wolfe, later Hunter Thompson. And me, of course, right up there in the vanguard. Hell, we created The Village Voice to encourage a meld of fiction and non-fiction. So while I understand the question, I believe the notion that Capote set a “precedent” is a stretch.

Mailer raised his bushy eyebrows.

MAILER: And you certainly wouldn’t call The Executioner’s Song mediocre, would you?

ME: Another phenomena jumped at me while preparing for our talk…

MAILER: Pretty confident that I’d talk to you, eh?

ME: I figgered if I pounded on your gravesite shouting GORE VIDAL long and loud enough you wouldn’t be able to help yourself.

Mailer chuckled in a surprisingly wholehearted way.

MAILER: Funny, but that’s not why I’m here. I’ve read your books and you too are trying to redefine a category. Hard boiled detective fiction where instead of just plot, plot, plot and, shoot, shoot, shoot, the focus is on the inner life of your main character and interpersonal relationships.

Me: Well, thank you. That’s a hell of a compliment coming from you.

MAILER: I said “trying.” I didn’t say succeeding.

ME: You took “two-thirds genius,” I’ll take “trying.”

MAILER: Just stay at it. Perhaps you’ll actually succeed where I didn’t in Tough Guys Don’t Dance.

Mailer refreshed our glasses.

ME: Here you are encouraging another author, but during your lifetime it seemed as though you were always at war with other writers. I’m not just talking about Vidal. But even your friends like James Baldwin who liked you and wrote “you strode through the soft Paris nights like a gladiator.” In Advertisements For Myself you wrote, “he was “incapable of saying ‘F— you’ to the reader.”

MAILER, shrugging: Is it an insult if it’s true—at least at the time? Anyway, he eventually got his punch in with, and I quote, “The Negro jazz musicians among whom we sometimes found ourselves, who really liked Norman, did not for an instant consider him as being even remotely ‘hip’. Now that was an insult.

ME: And I quote,“Is it an insult if it’s true”—at least to them at the time?” But it wasn’t just Baldwin. According to you, Styron had “compromised himself;” Bellow wrote “in a style I find self-willed … I cannot take him seriously;” Kerouac lacked “discipline, intelligence, honesty.” “There were no talented women writers at all.” You can’t really believe that about women, can you?

MAILER: Again, one needs to look at the context of the times. I was savaged by virtually every notable woman, writer or not, after I published Prisoner Of Sex.

ME: Excuse me, Norman, I quoted you from 1959 and you didn’t publish Prisoner until 1971. What context are you talking about? Please! You called your cock “The Retaliator” in Prisoner.

MAILER: I was pretty angry when I wrote Prisoner.

ME: You think? Whatever year we’re talking about, you have an across-the-board reputation of being “psychologically, creatively, empathetically tone-deaf when it came to women, his female characters a creamy mélange of angel-whores whose lipstick was ripe for smearing…” Perhaps that’s why your novels don’t receive the acclaim your other writing does. In fact, your last wife (Norris Church Mailer) wrote that she begged you to eliminate the meanderings that made Harlot’s Ghosts, The Gospel According To The Son, and The Castle In The Forest critical failures.

MAILER: She might have been right, but no writer can afford to pay much attention to criticism. Then who the hell are you? And those fucking literary critics, I hate, excuse me, hated them most of all. They still don’t understand the importance of Oswald’s Tale: An American Mystery.

ME: Let’s take a break and stretch our legs. When we return, I’d like to begin with Oswald’s Tale. It’s a perfect segue into your political activism and writings.

theguardian

“They are men’s men. Rocky Marciano was one of them. Oscar Bonavena and Jerry Quarry and George Chuvalo and Gene Fullmer and Carmen Basilio, to name a few, have faces which would give a Marine sergeant pause in a bar fight. They look like they could take you out with the knob of bone they have left for a nose.” — Norman Mailer

MR. MAILER SPEAKS

Posted on July 15, 2013 by Zachary Klein

As most of you know, I’ve been relentlessly pursuing Norman Mailer for an INTERVIEW WITH THE DEAD. Since he had originally proposed to meet in Provincetown, I’ve been scouring every inch of the town with the diminishing hope of finding him. So, as darkness began to shroud the city, I started back to Carpe Diem Guesthouse, to pack and finally head home to Boston. About a block away, I heard footsteps approach from behind. I turned and there he was, fists clenched, barrel chest and curly haired head leading the charge. I wondered if I was going to be face punched, but Mr. Mailer just invaded my space standing nose to nose.

MAILER: And where do you propose to conduct this little chat?

I nodded toward the guest house, practically grazing his forehead with my own and led the way inside.

ME: We can use one of their dining rooms.

Mailer: You would pick a hotel that has rooms named after authors but none of me.

ME: Must have been an oversight.

Mailer: Poppycock! Provincetown’s most famous author an oversight? I don’t think so! People have short memories.

ME: (laughing) Not at all. You’re all over the Internet, your books and essays still in print. Nobody has forgotten you.

MAILER: Then why did you interview that little homo before me? King I understood. But that pasty-faced girly man, Capote?

Both of us took our seats and Mailer’s fists curled even tighter as he leaned across the wooden table between us.

ME: It was you who said, “Harsh words live in the dungeon of the heart,” and that description seems pretty harsh.

MAILER: If you think that was harsh, you must be a fag too.

ME: Have you ever considered that all your misogyny, violence, and homophobia is really about your own love of masculinity? That deep down underneath you’re attracted to men—strong men, real boxers, something you weren’t or could never become?

MAILER: Do you really expect me to answer your half-ass pop psychology?

ME: I wasn’t trying to analyze you Mr. Mailer. Just looking at facts.

MAILER: And what facts might those be, Mister Klein?

ME: Where would you like me to begin, Norman? The Naked And The Dead? All about the boys who actually fought in the war as opposed to cooking like you did.

MAILER: You are a cheeky bastard, aren’t you? I like that.

ME: You’re making my point.

MAILER: I’ll use the language the publisher made me use in the book: fug you. I was in the Philippines with the 112^th Cavalry.

ME: I know, but by all accounts, you were just in a couple of minor skirmishes before you were assigned to be a cook.

MAILER: Really now? Apparently I fought enough battles for the book to become a New York Times bestseller for 62 weeks. Oh, and in case you forgot, or didn’t know, named one of the “one hundred best novels in English language” by the Modern Library. Not bad for a cook, eh?

Me: A novel about which Gore Vidal wrote, “My first reaction to The Naked and the Dead was: it’s a fake. A clever, talented, admirably executed fake. I have not changed my opinion of the book since… I do recall a fine description of men carrying a dying man down a mountain… Yet every time I got going in the narrative I would find myself stopped cold by a set of made-up, predictable characters taken not from life, but from the same novels all of us had read, and informed by a naïveté which was at its worst when Mailer went into his Time-Machine and wrote those passages which resemble nothing so much as smudged carbons of a Dos Passos work.”

MAILER: (shaking his head) I wondered how long it would take before his name came up. Though you surprise me by not beginning with the Cavett fiasco. There is no greater impotence in all the world than knowing you are right and that the wave of the world is wrong, yet the wave crashes upon you.

ME: If you believe that why do you call it a fiasco?

MAILER: I lost the fight, although I still maintain it was just a TKO. I simply couldn’t fight my hardest with Janet Flanner present. And, I have admitted to being drunk during the show. Handicapped if you will.

I began to speak but Mailer interrupted.

MAILER: Speaking of drink, do you have anything decent here?

ME: I thought you stopped drinking and smoking pot?

MAILER: Actually I stopped because it hurt my writing and health. Don’t write anymore, health doesn’t matter, and there is little pleasure lying around all day, every day. So, just get us some whiskey, all right?

I was lucky. Bourbon in one of Carpe Diem‘s kitchen cabinets. I brought it back with a couple of glasses. Helping himself to a healthy pour, he waved the liquor towards me.

MAILER: Drink up Klein, it’s not every day you get a chance to drink with a literary lion.

ME: Mr. Mailer, you really were one of the 20^th century’s literary giants, but don’t you think all the macho, boxing, misogynistic, bullying posturing actually reduced your stature rather than enhanced it? I mean, head-butting Gore Vidal in the green room of The Dick Cavett Show, telling him on air that he ruined Kerouac by sleeping with him?

Nothing ever seemed to be enough for you. Six years later, you threw a drink at Vidal—and punched him—at a Lally Weymouth soirée. And even then Vidal’s response made you look small. Still on the floor, he said, “Words fail Norman Mailer yet again.”

At first I thought he was going to explode but he just took a deep swallow and refilled his glass.

MAILER: Time and quiet does give one a chance to reflect and I’ve had plenty of both. Still, every moment of existence one is growing into more or retreating into less. One is always living a little more or dying a little bit. I never enjoyed the thought of dying even a little.

I want you and your readers to know that I’m not interested in absolute moral judgments. Just think of what it means to be a good man or a bad one. The good guy may be 65 percent good and 35 percent bad—that’s a very good guy. The average decent fellow might be 54 percent good, 46 percent bad—and the average mean spirit is the reverse. So say I’m 60 percent bad and 40 percent good. Should I suffer eternal punishment for that?

Also, I must say, while he might have made me look small with his clever retort, he deserved to be on the floor. Would you sit silently by when someone says, “Mailer, Henry Miller and Charles Manson as brother chauvinists who should be collectively referred to as M3.” Now, while I had many wives, to be compared to Charles Manson was frankly too much to tolerate.

ME: You don’t seem to be suffering eternal punishment. In fact, there’s a strong argument that it was the people around you who were punished. Hell, you nearly murdered the second of your six wives, Adele Morales.

MAILER: I never meant to kill her. It was 4 A.M. at a party to announce my candidacy to run for Mayor of New York and I walk into a room only to hear her say, “Come on, you little faggot, where’s your cojones?” It’s public record that I spent time in Bellevue for that act, which, while I won’t discuss, I do regret.

ME: Not at the time. Numerous people say you stood over her while she was hemorrhaging on the floor and said, “Let the bitch die.”

Mailer: Adele has written a book about our life together. She can have the final words on the subject. But here we are talking gossip and public behavior when you yourself say and I’ll quote, “Mr. Mailer, you really were one of the 20^th century’s literary giants.” Yet all of our book talk amounts to Vidal’s insult of The Naked And The Dead. Have you really spent this much time pursuing me to talk about my public persona, or are we going to talk about my work?

ME: We’re there now, Mr. Mailer.

Mailer was right. We sat in Carpe Diem’s breakfast room the entire night and more—much to the chagrin of the other guests who came down for coffee and omelets and were seated in another area. But this is enough for today’s post. More to come.

“What lasts is the strength of your ideas and the force of your expression of them.” Justice Sonia Sotomayor

LOOKING FOR MR. O

Posted on March 4, 2013 by Zachary Klein

I’m not a detective, though I have made one up. But this week I’ve been re-reading the Oscar tweets and Matt Jacob (http://zacharykleinonline.com/matt-jacob-ebooks/) invaded my head. Who the hell was this Oscar fellow? Was there a real man behind the little gold? Since this year was the Awards’ 85^th birthday, Oscar Sr. would no longer be with us, but that’s no problem for the man who interviews the dead. Or so I thought.

My first call went to Louis B. Mayer who initiated the awards in 1927.

Me: “Mr. Mayer? My name is Zachary Klein and I have a series…”

Mayer: “You think I’m stupid? Word gets around. You interview the dead—and it’s about damn time that you finally fucking called.”

Me: “I’m sorry but I didn’t call to interview you—today, that is. Of course you are on my list.”

If I had a list.

Mayer: “Then why the hell you bothering me? You think I got gornisht to do? Down here, we’ve always got deals to make and people to fire!”

Me: “I’m looking for the person the Oscar was named after and thought you would know.”

Mayer: “You dug me up to ask that?”

Me: “Mr. Mayer, I haven’t dug you up. It’s a telephone call.”

Mayer: “Not that big a difference when you’re busy or sleeping, dammit!”

My temper got the better of me.

Me: “Fuck it, I’ll find someone else.”

Mayer: “Don’t get your shwartz twisted. It was either Bette Davis who said the damn statue looked like her uncle or columnist Sid Skolsky who claims he stole it from an old music hall joke with the tagline, ‘Will you have a cigar, Oscar?’ Frankly, I don’t give a damn and don’t know why you do either.”

I thought about explaining but his attitude continued to piss me off.

Me: “Well, I appreciate the information and will let you go.”

Mayer: “You coming back?”

Me: “If you’ll let me.”

Mayer: “We’ll see.”

I guess what people say about old time movie moguls is true. They are pricks. Still, I had two leads and I didn’t need a weatherman to tell me who I was going to contact first.

No easy do. The administrators at Forest Lawn Cemetery in Hollywood Hills were a tough crew to get past and it took my interview with Richard lll before they accepted my bone fides as an interviewer of the dead. Or maybe they were just impressed that I flew out there despite their repeated refusals. No matter, I was finally sitting on the flat stones in front of her grave-site monument.

Divas aren’t an easy get either. But if I learned anything writing novels and chasing dead people, I’d learned persistence.

I started off with my usual calling card but nada. Then tried raising my voice. Worse, the afternoon was creeping toward 5 o’clock, when I had agreed to leave. Then I remembered going with my grandmother to her first husband’s grave-site. She’d find a few rocks to tap on his stone. Although I kept a “safe” distance, after a few moments of knocking, Grandma engaged in animated conversations.

Why not? But even finding stones was difficult, given the care the groundskeepers gave these VIPs. Once I finally wedged a couple of pebbles from the ground I began tapping away like a woodpecker. That is, until I heard a throaty voice chuckle, “Not so loud, Darling. You’re waking the dead,!”

Me: “Is that you, Ms. Davis?”

Davis: “Who else were you expecting?”

She emerged from the white marble and I caught my breath. Don’t know what I expected—perhaps it was because I had recently interviewed Richard III—but she was drop-dead gorgeous. Tiny, flashing blue eyes, in a striking black and grey dress, black gloves and hat.

Davis: “Where are we going, Sweetheart?”

Me: “Actually I promised to leave and have you back inside by five.”

Davis: “But I began dressing when you first shouted. You do have an awfully loud voice.”

Me: “Just trying to get your attention.”

Davis: “Well, you have it—though apparently not for long. What is it you want?”

I knew she was upset about not leaving the grounds so I quickly explained why I’d come and told her what Mayer had recounted. She burst out laughing.

Davis: “Louie. What a pip! Was he smoking one of those foul smelling cigars?”

Me: “We were on the phone.”

Davis: “He took your call. I’m impressed. You really must have a knack for this line of work.”

Me: “Not a lot of competition. So, was Mr. Meyer accurate about how Oscar got his name? That you said the statue looked like your uncle?”

Davis: “Ahh, I guess we’re all growing old. Louie always remembered everything but not anymore. I never had an Uncle Oscar. That comment was made by Margaret Herrick, the Academy librarian. You tell me whether you’ve ever seen a statue named after a librarian’s uncle?

Now, my first husband’s middle name was Oscar, but all I ever said was that the statue’s ass looked like his. Ham was a wonderful musician, but nobody ever named anything after his behind.”

Me: “What about the Sydney Skolsky story? Do you know whether that was true?”

Davis’s lips curled in obvious contempt.

Davis: “‘Will you have a cigar, Oscar?’ Please. Louie must be losing it cooped up for so long. He probably offered mini-Winchell one of his.”

Me: “‘mini-Winchell?”

Davis: “A nasty small minded man who used Schwabb’s for an office once he came out here. He’s nothing but a self-serving liar. Just look at his Times Square Tintypes.”

Me: “So no cigar, no uncle, and not your husband. His middle name is just a coincidence?”

Davis: “Just a coincidence. Frankly, Darling, nobody really knows why that award is named Oscar and nobody ever will.”

I glanced at my watch and saw it was time. Ms. Davis noticed.

Davis: “You’re ready to leave, aren’t you?”

I saw Security walking in our direction.

Me: “I promised and they’re going to hold me to it.”

Davis looked over my shoulder with a half-smile.

Davis: “I’ve been known to cause a fuss, but today I’ll just go for the dramatic exit.”

I left Forest Lawn and debated hunting for Sydney Skolsky. I asked myself what Matt Jacob would do and a voice crashed through my head. “Some mysteries are better left unsolved! You just heard Bette Davis tell you that a statue’s ass looked like her husband’s. It just doesn’t get any better than that.”