Category Archives: Writing

SEASON 3 EPISODE 10

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I never jumped on the Breaking Bad bandwagon when it first turned up on television. After the first season was released on DVD, however, Sue borrowed it from a friend but said it made her too tense to watch. Since I still hadn’t gotten into it, I was fine about her returning the set.

Then the series began coming to its conclusion and it seemed as if the only interviews on radio and TV were of the cast, director, and creator. Even Charlie Rose did his annoying gushing about the program, but what caught my attention was the focus creator/writer/producer Vince Gilligan received. Sure, there was an avalanche of accolades heaped on Bryan Cranston, who played Walter White the main character, Anna Gunn, Water’s wife Skyler, and Aaron Paul as his youthful sidekick Jessie Pinkman, but the amount of consideration given to Gilligan surprised me. Few people in his position garner the raves he received as the show’s end drew near. He was the creative force and wrote many of the scripts (and oversaw the others) like David Chase of The Sopranos.

About the same time my son Jake gave me Apple TV as a present and I decided to spring for  Netflix Streaming and give Breaking Bad another shot. Well, I’m very glad I did. It is a damn good series with exceptional acting and writing, though I don’t believe it in any way, shape, or form surpasses The Sopranos or even the best years of The Wire. Still, it’s certainly a “contendah.” In an age where you have 180 channels and still find nothing to watch, that’s an impressive do.

But I’m not writing this column to compare television series, or even to analyze Breaking Bad as a whole. I’m writing about Season 3, Episode 10 called Fly. I don’t know if Fly more closely resembles a short story or a one act play, but I do know it was 47 minutes that could easily stand alone outside the series.

The plot revolved around catching or killing a fly that threatened to contaminate Walter’s meth lab. As a play (which is how I think of the episode) the actual plot had very little importance. It was just a vehicle to shine a light on the mostly contentious relationship between Walter, the older mentor, and Jessie his much younger, often sleazy, partner and mentee.

In an act of desperation, but mostly kindness, Jessie slipped some drugs into Walter’s coffee hoping to make him sleep after Walt’s continuous 24 hour obsessive hunt for that fly. But what the drugs actually did was allow Walter to talk about who he’d been, what he had become, and why. He talked about the importance “family” in his life and how it dictated many of his choices, despite a bushel full of regrets. And within the course of his confessions and conversation, his underlying affection for his mentee became increasingly clear.

Although Jessie didn’t verbalize his emotional reactions to Walter’s intimacy, his behavior (risking his neck to kill the fly, despite believing the entire effort completely idiotic) indicated his real concern for Walt, despite their relentless arguments and on and off again partnership. As the frantic fly hunt continues, layers of top skin are stripped from both participants. Although Walt and Jessie’s relationship has a much more complicated history, in many ways this episode reminded me of Mamet’s Duck Variations. In that play, two strangers sit on a bench and these old men start making assumptions about the ducks swimming nearby. Even though they know nothing about ducks or each other, their comments reveal more and more about who each of them are and an intimate connection develops before they go their separate ways.

And, of course, by the conclusion of Season 3, Episode 10, the fly has been killed, Walter has slept off the pills and, as they get into their cars, their tenderness has receded into the typical antagonisms.

Just a great 47 minutes and well worth trying to find whether you’re interested in the show as a whole or not. It’s not often an ongoing series produces a one act play as in depth as this episode.

Flipping through other channels:

Homeland, which I’ve written about before, has regained its footing this season. The acting has been strong (Claire Danes isn’t always crying or about to) but what has really been fun are the plot twists. Back in the day, I read a lot of spy novels, mostly favoring the intricate betrayals John Le Carrie wove through his early books. (I still believe both the novel and the movie of The Spy Who Came In From The Cold are classics.) This season’s plotting of Homeland is very reminiscent of those early works. Folks who have cable television and On Demand might want to consider watching this season from the start.

And, of course, it was baseball’s play-offs, which meant hours upon hours glued to the set. Given the outcome, all those late nights and tired days were more than worth it. The Red Sox won! The Red Sox won!

The meeting of two personalities is like the contact of two chemical substances: if there is any reaction, both are transformed. C.G. Jung

SAID THE JOKER TO THE THIEF

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There is, but frankly it’s pretty unappealing. I’d rather interview the dead than be one. I hate returning to my regular Monday posts on a down note, but see no other way. It’s not that my off time was unproductive–got the major revision of TIES THAT BLIND finished and will begin the second revision after my publishing work partner re-reads the book and we review her comments. So, as far as writing goes, I’m pretty pleased. And, in fact, I had a much cheerier post planned for my return.

So why the down?

I read the newspaper every morning. And every morning I read about another fifty dead Iraqis. Another car bomb in Afghanistan. Obama ready to drone Syria—which most of Congress and even more of our population oppose. And then he catches hell from talking heads and those same opposing congressmen for agreeing to a negotiation rather than a bombing.

Ah-h-h, bombing—and they call baseball the “national pastime.” Since the Korean War we have bombed the following countries AND a city in the United States:

  • Guatemala 1954, 1960, 1967-69
  • Indonesia 1958
  • Cuba 1959-1961
  • Congo 1964
  • Laos 1964-73
  • Vietnam 1961-73
  • Cambodia 1969-70
  • Grenada 1983
  • Lebanon 1983, 1984 (both Lebanese and Syrian targets)
  • Libya 1986. 2011
  • El Salvador 1980s
  • Nicaragua 1980s
  • Iran 1987
  • Panama 1989
  • Iraq 1991 (Persian Gulf War)
  • Kuwait 1991
  • Somalia 1993
  • Bosnia 1994, 1995
  • Sudan 1998
  • Afghanistan 1998, 2001-present
  • Yugoslavia 1999
  • Yemen 2002, , 2009, 2011
  • Iraq 1991-2003 (US/UK on regular basis)
  • Iraq 2003-present
  • Pakistan 2007-present
  • Somalia 2007-8, 2011

Plus:

Iran April 2003 – hit by US missiles during bombing of Iraq, killing at least one person.

Pakistan 2002-03 – bombed by US planes several times as part of combat against the Taliban and other opponents of the US occupation of Afghanistan.

China 1999 – – Its heavily bombed embassy in Belgrade is legally Chinese territory, and it appears the bombing was no accident.

France 1986 – After the French government refused the use of its air space to US warplanes headed for a bombing raid on Libya, the planes were forced to take another, longer route and, when they reached Libya they bombed so close to the French embassy that the building was damaged and all communication links were knocked out.

Philadelphia May 13, 1985 – A bomb dropped by a police helicopter burned down an entire block, some 60 homes destroyed, 11 dead, including several small children. The police, mayor’s office, and FBI were colluded  to “evict” a black organization called MOVE from one house and the effort got out of hand

(http://williamblum.org/chapters/rogue-state/united-states-bombings-of-other-countries)

Do the math. In the fifty-four years since we stopped dropping bombs in the Korean War, we spent 36 of them dropping bombs on someone else. Or, if you want to reduce the fraction, it comes down to a very disturbing super-majority of two-thirds. I thought about researching the number of civilian casualties now simply known as “collateral damage”, but frankly, I was afraid I’d throw up. And I really hate to puke.

I imagine there are people who might be able to find rationalizations for some—or even all the above. And I say go for it because it sure doesn’t look like anything is about to change. We might as well have “reasons” for slaughtering hundreds of thousands of people. We ought to have “reasons” for a military force greater than that of damn near every other country combined. Let alone, “reasons” for not spending that unconscionable amount of money on giving our kids great schooling and healthcare.

Bottom line; we’re still taking scalps.

Some of my disgust probably comes because of age. I’m getting closer and closer to “the way out of here” and the older I get, the more violence sickens me. To have my homeland be a serial killer on steroids is excruciating. I’ve been alive through all the above and shudder to think how much more “collateral damage” I’ll live through during the rest of my life.

It would be easy to simply blame politicians, generals, national security councils. Too easy. We the people allow, encourage these mass murders. And I see nothing on the horizon that gives me much hope for change. Hell, the Socialist French President was extolling the virtues of bombing Syria.

Sometimes I wonder what it must be like to live in a country where bombs rain down day after day. Or even the threat of it. I have a Palestinian friend who once told me the first word he ever learned was “bomba.” The very idea of spending every day and night literally waiting for the bomb to drop is almost unfathomable. But in a country where every car’s backfire sends people scrambling for shelter, it’s a whole different experience. Those of us who are old enough to remember “duck and cover” probably remember the apprehension that came with the drill—and that was merely practice. As tragic, frightening, and painful as 9/11 was, it doesn’t equal the slaughter and fear we’ve inflicted upon innocents throughout the past fifty-four years. So many others have awakened every morning wondering how many of their family members are still alive. Not something our own children are forced to cope with.

Although I know a lot of people who feel the way I do, I still experience myself as A STRANGER IN A STRANGE LAND. I go about my daily life, worrying about my relatively insignificant problems, then each morning coffee get jolted back to crazy. Only it’s apparently not crazy. It’s our country and the world in which we live and this is why I felt compelled to write this post.

I am, however, pleased to be writing my Just sayin’ column again. I missed doing it and missed the comments from people I know and those I don’t. And while I do feel intensely about politics and the United States’s role in this insanity, my column will once again tackle a variety of subjects, ideas, art, entertainment–as well as more INTERVIEWS WITH THE DEAD. Just sayin’ will not be an every week political rant–but I gotta tell you, thems there some low hanging fruit.

The good we secure for ourselves is precarious and uncertain until it is secured for all of us and incorporated into our common life-–Jane Addams

 

SLIPPING INTO DARKNESS

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Nah, it’s not depression nor loss of electricity (which would really depress me). I’m simply taking a recess, a working vacation from my Just sayin’ posts until sometime in September.

As I mentioned last week, I’m in a serious revision push with TIES THAT BLIND. I want to strap myself in so the book has a chance to be online sometime this fall, which includes the revision, copy editing and reworking the format for each type of e-book published (including the PDF version).

I don’t expect to finish everything before I turn the Just sayin’ light back on, but I sure hope I’m close. So to those who might actually miss the posts and to those who have been following them, I’ll be baaack!

In the meantime, please enjoy the first chapter of each of my books, which can be found on my web site. And, of course, if you’re so inclined it’s easy to purchase them through my site as well. But thanks again for taking your time to read and comment on my columns. I can’t say enough about how much I’ve appreciated it.

See you in September.

“God is really only another artist. He invented the giraffe, the elephant and the cat. He has no real style, He just goes on trying other things.” Pablo Picasso

MR. MAILER CONCLUDES

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OLDmailer

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?

MailerGrave

“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

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NormanIPortrait

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.

Norman Boxing

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