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Norman Mailer went down fighting
The world is now a quieter, less interesting and less entertaining place. Norman Mailer has left the building.
When I learned last weekend that the larger-than-life novelist had died, at age 84, I thought back to the last time I saw him. It was at a Yale lecture hall in September of 2004, two months before George W. Bush completed his "Swift Boating" of Sen. John Kerry and somehow won re-election.
Mailer had to get around with the aid of a cane (his knees were shot) and he had trouble hearing the questions posed to him by Yale students. But he was as feisty and politically outspoken as in the tumultuous decades of the past, when he was alongside much younger students storming the Pentagon during the height of the Vietnam War protests.
God knows Mailer was not a modest man. But that day at Yale, he told a self-effacing story about his student days at Harvard. He recalled being humiliated during a writing class when other students laughed at his prose. (Maybe he was ahead of his time.)
It was good to see that in 2004, Yale students knew all about Mailer and had read his books. Many of them were carrying copies of "The Naked and the Dead," "The Armies of the Night" (that Pentagon saga) and "The Executioner's Song."
The turn-out was impressive: about 300 Yalies, spilling out into the aisles.
One of the first questions from the students was: "What do you think about the election?"
Mailer sighed, then called it "mysterious" and "hard to fathom."
He noted that Bush (Yale Class of '68) "makes more mistakes and engages in more disasters."
But then he noted in bewildermment, "And yet it looks at this moment as if he's going to win. What is going on?"
With great foresight, Mailer predicted: "We will stay in Iraq, no matter how bad it gets. We have to get all of the oil out of the Middle East. That's their (the Bushies') real thinking."
Mailer also posed a series of questions: "How much is our wealth worth to us? Do we have to continue to be a rich nation if it's going to involve doing this to other countries? Why don't we vote on THAT?"
Not many people talk that way these days. They're afraid of being called "unpatriotic" But Mailer was never afraid of anything.
When I learned last weekend that the larger-than-life novelist had died, at age 84, I thought back to the last time I saw him. It was at a Yale lecture hall in September of 2004, two months before George W. Bush completed his "Swift Boating" of Sen. John Kerry and somehow won re-election.
Mailer had to get around with the aid of a cane (his knees were shot) and he had trouble hearing the questions posed to him by Yale students. But he was as feisty and politically outspoken as in the tumultuous decades of the past, when he was alongside much younger students storming the Pentagon during the height of the Vietnam War protests.
God knows Mailer was not a modest man. But that day at Yale, he told a self-effacing story about his student days at Harvard. He recalled being humiliated during a writing class when other students laughed at his prose. (Maybe he was ahead of his time.)
It was good to see that in 2004, Yale students knew all about Mailer and had read his books. Many of them were carrying copies of "The Naked and the Dead," "The Armies of the Night" (that Pentagon saga) and "The Executioner's Song."
The turn-out was impressive: about 300 Yalies, spilling out into the aisles.
One of the first questions from the students was: "What do you think about the election?"
Mailer sighed, then called it "mysterious" and "hard to fathom."
He noted that Bush (Yale Class of '68) "makes more mistakes and engages in more disasters."
But then he noted in bewildermment, "And yet it looks at this moment as if he's going to win. What is going on?"
With great foresight, Mailer predicted: "We will stay in Iraq, no matter how bad it gets. We have to get all of the oil out of the Middle East. That's their (the Bushies') real thinking."
Mailer also posed a series of questions: "How much is our wealth worth to us? Do we have to continue to be a rich nation if it's going to involve doing this to other countries? Why don't we vote on THAT?"
Not many people talk that way these days. They're afraid of being called "unpatriotic" But Mailer was never afraid of anything.
posted by Randall Beach at
3:01 PM
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