In their obit today, the AP calls him “the macho prince of American letters.” Literary conscience and provacateur.
“Masculinity is not something given to you, but something you gain. And you gain it by winning small battles with honor.”
Macho prince? Yes. Literary conscience? Well, sometimes. He created great literature—but intermittantly. His feuds and his mistakes, were of epic proportion (Henry Abbott comes to mind). He was often famous—or infamous— for all the wrong things.
“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.”
But, when Mailer wrote well, no one alive could best him. For better and sometimes for worse, he was unafraid to put pedal to the metal creatively; whatever idea then held his attention, he rode that baby ’till the wheels fell off.
Ultimately a hero is a man who would argue with the gods, and so awakens devils to contest his vision. The more a man can achieve, the more he may be certain that the devil will inhabit a part of his creation.
The TIME obit, titled “Why Norman Mailer Mattered,” written by Richard Lacayo, gets it right: “…But make no mistake, when he died on Saturday, something important was lost. And there is no one even bidding to take his place. My favorite Mailer quote will always be this one. ‘How dare you scorn the explosive I employ?’ Norman come back. Nothing is forgiven.”
With the pride of the artist, you must blow against the walls of every power that exists the small trumpet of your defiance.
R.I.P. Norman. We miss you already.
As I said elsewhere the literary world will a much calmer place now. I wonder who Gore Vidal will spar with now?
Wow. Your blog is the best–anywhere. Your range, power of words, and immediacy are unmatched in our celestial system. Anyone who doesn’t check out witnessla.com several times a day is out to lunch.
“Mailer built and nurtured an image over the years as pugnacious, streetwise and high-living. He drank, fought, smoked pot, married six times and stabbed his second wife, almost fatally, during a drunken party.”
What a legacy.
Celeste, don’t get a big head, but some liberal site (has to be) has rated the reading level of your blog as “Postgraduate.” With a few more conservatives commenting, we could take it to the Genius level.
This Blog’s Reading Level – Postgraduate
Hmmmm. Link didn’t work. Can’t be me. Must be Bill Gates’ blog filter. I’ll try one more time.
LINK: This Blog’s Reading Level – Postgraduate
Alan, you’re messing with me, I know it.
(The PR check’s in the mail.)
Great gossip in this week’s Sniper column, BTW.
Check it out, guys. Through the public records act, the LA Sniper snatcharooed a stack of 400 plus letters and emails from the UCI Chancellor’s office regarding the whole Chemerinsky hiring/firing/rehiring mess.
It makes for fun, and wonderfully gossipy reading.
PS: Woody, I had to stop myself from feeding an endless stream of blog names and addresses into that site to see what it came up with. Much too much fun!
Check it out, guys…
I did. It was a great piece. Good job. Nice work Alan!
OK Celeste how do I get Alan to give the blog I write for a “Money Quote” like that? I smell a conspiracy!
R.I.P. Norman. We miss you already.
How could anyone outside of his family, close circle of friends, or banker miss him so soon?
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OK Celeste how do I get Alan to give the blog I write for a “Money Quote†like that?
Write something honest, logical, and intelligent. Oh, and change blogs.
– – –
That UCI Chemerinsky thing really got overblown.
If Thornton Mellon wants to make a generous gift to the college, Dean Martin and I will listen–no matter what Dr. Phillip Barbay or other elitist snobs think.
Nuts. One more time for the link….
LINK: Back to School
Wow. Your blog is the best–anywhere. Your range, power of words, and immediacy are unmatched in our celestial system. Anyone who doesn’t check out witnessla.com several times a day is out to lunch.
********************
I’ve heard that line before, but usually in a bar, just before closing.
A better and more interesting bit of “gossip” are the Sheriff Carona sex affairs and all the other dirty birds in the mix.
http://www.lagunajournal.com/orange_county_sheriff_michael_s.htm
http://www.ocweekly.com/news/news/sex-bomb/18560/
I’ve heard that line before, but usually in a bar, just before closing.
Heh.
For things South America, Latin America, & North America one would be hard pressed to find a blog better than: http://beautifulhorizons.typepad.com/
Richard, Reg, and Randy (the 3R’s of the Americas) do a really find job.
Find job, indeed. Maybe they can find real jobs.
Woody,
I have avoided commenting here Woody because I really don’t have the time or inclination to get in a tit for tat with you, but that last comment was pure ad hominem. Knock it off. Now.
Randy, you guys were fishing for a compliment and a link. You shouldn’t be surprised when someone else familiar with your site expresses a different view on your posts.
Using your definition of ad hominem, any criticism of a person’s actions or views is personal. Are your criticisms of President Bush ad hominem, then. I guess that type of reasoning makes schools worry more about self-esteem rather than learning.
Grow up and learn to accept the fact that not everyone thinks that you are as great as your mother told you. Spend your time trying to learn how to be logical and honest on your site rather than worrying about me. Your blog could use it.
Woody,
Randy, you guys were fishing for a compliment and a link.
Before the previous post, I had not posted anything on Witness LA for more than a week. I have no idea who Listener is nor do I know why they posted what they posted.
Knock it off, Woody. Now.
As for the defintion of ad hominem, perhaps you should acquaint yourself with number two here.
I have not engaged in ad hominem attacks against you Woody, out of respect for Celeste and her readers. Perhaps you should consider affording us the same courtesy.
You shouldn’t be surprised when someone else familiar with your site expresses a different view on your posts.
You weren’t addressing the substance of our posts. You were making a personal attack. That’s the very definition of ad hominem.
RLC, It’s simply that the monthly payments are really worth it. Oh, yeah, and did I mention the blackmail…?
Indeed, Beautiful Horizons does excellent work, and congrats to GM’s Corner on their 3-year mark in the blogosphere providing good work as the loyal opposition. [See blogroll for links.]
PS: Woody, everyone’s been very good about stopping the personal remarks. Don’t start, please.
PPS: I just saw “The History Boys” at the Ahmanson and LOVED it. I highly recommend it for all you west coasters who haven’t had a chance to see it in NY. (I hear the movie wasn’t that hot. The play, though, is wonderful.)
Celeste, what do you mean, “you west coasters?” Aren’t you a Topanga/ Irvine chick yourself? Actually, I’m from Bawston, myself, and still missing those New England fried clams and lobsters although I go back east every summer. Got my feet wet in NYC book publishing…
Enjoyed the talk of little white church Congregational Church commons, really sweet — unless you grow up there. Then it becomes “a nice place to visit.”
If you’re ever in Lexington, Mass, around Easter time, on Maundy Thursday, be sure to stop by and enjoy Holy Communion from the Silver that Paul Revere’s dad himself forged. It’s taken out once a year. Harriet Beecher Stowe’s House, and “the Tavern,” of “here come the Redcoats,” are down the street… The nice little old lady docents will show you the fireplace where the “revolutionaries” waited for them overnight, rather than riding home. Kind of takes the validity out of “Reconquista” rhetoric, the “go back to Plymouth Rock, because you’re the immigrants not us” radical talk, too. — “Can’t we all just get along?”
The East Coast/ national history is NOT irrelevant “Eurocentrism.” The principles of English law and the constitution protect us and provide a legal framework for all.
Sorry: Harriet Beecher Stowe’s House and Mark Twain’s, as neighbors, are in West Hartford, Ct. I meant to say Luisa May Alcott’s House, of Little Women, is in Lexington…I’ve lived near both. Thoreau, of Walden’s Pond, also down the street — in Lexington. You all have to visit sometime. And then, if you’re in West Hartford, it’s a little hop to Farmington, where Hampstead House/ former Miss Porter’s School for Girls has the biggest/best collection of Monet haystacks outside of major museums…
Yes, it sounds like I digress, but I think if more California kids had a chance to visit, it would be life- changing. And they’d better understand what our common history really is.
Yep. I’m resolutely West Coast (and Montana). Should have said “you fellow west coasters.”
Celeste, what I like about your site is that, even though we disagree on many cures to world problems, you are accurate and honest. I wouldn’t read here about Ronald Reagan and the Republicans being racist because you have logic or honesty faults. I’m not going to mention names, and I didn’t earlier, so as to stay away from false claims of personal attacks. Keep up the high standards.
Regarding the maggie’s comments, I’ve often thought about the great historical sites that I’ve enoyed and other ones that I would like to see. When I visit a national park, I love the museums and films that they have which tell you more than just a general story. I like the historical plaques along the park routes. One can feel how life was long ago or get a sense of battles. I have and am still considering trying to bring this information and exhibits to other towns on a rotating basis to people who are limited in their travels but would like to appreciate the same things locally. Bringing Glacier National Park to the South might be another thing, though.
“the maggie’s?” Obviously, a mid-stream change in sentence structure.
Woody, you can’t begin to understand the mentality out here. (How did a guy from the South find his way to this site, anyway?) We have more than a few elected officials who openly call L A “the Capitol of Latinismo,” compare us to Mexico City and other Latin Capitols, but they and their followers behave like the east, and our national heritage, culture and language, are worse than irrelevant. Many Hispanics, kids and parents, in LAUSD openly seek to override the California State Curriculum as “irrelevant and too Eurocentric” to matter to “Chicanos.”
I’m actually grateful for all the other ethnic enclaves here: Thai Town, Koreatown, Little Tokyo/Armenia/Ethiopia, the Persians, some Greeks and Russians — at least they keep things from becoming totally polarized. I really believe if their kids had a chance to visit places like Lexington when young, it could change their views of America for the better. (Glacier Park, Yellowstone and the like are lovely, good for the soul.) By the same token, it’s good for kids from the east and south to visit places unique to the west, like the terraced caves of the Anasazi, etc. Our kid study Indian culture and visit Indian reservations/ pow-wows as part of the first-grade curriculum, which is great.)
(How did a guy from the South find his way to this site, anyway?)
I was too liberal for Southerners.
Somewhat belatedly, Norman Mailer is one of the last of the great author personalities, whose egos, ambitions and their flip side, insecurities, came to the fore in the middle of the last century: Arthur Miller, Hemingway, Truman Capote, are a few who come to mind (director John Huston being in the same vein). They were arrogant, obnoxious, macho (well, except Capote, whose own sexuality was a larger-then-life issue in a different way), but powerful observers of human nature and society, seen without any “prettifyinng” filters.
Mailer’s graphic macho bent even gave inspiration to Erica Jong, and a whole new genre of feminist post-Playboy sexualtiy.
In this day of blunt and graphic films, it’s hard to recapture how grdound-breaking their writing was, before the advent of graphic blockbuster movies, the internet and DVDs.
Right up until the 80’s and early 90’s, the rage among all the privileged English majors at Ivy and Seven Sisters colleges was the “glamour” of the New York publishing scene, and real sophistication and coin of the realm was your ability to discuss the latest and greatest authors like Mailer, in almost the minute detail in which they wrote.
Now, young people want to get involved in filmmaking, game design and other internet ventures — hardly anyone has the time or patience to read, let alone dissect and discuss, the great and provocative authors like Mailer. And while there is some good to this flexibility, and freedom from the grip of large publishers which decide who is or isn’t worthy of publication, we’ve lost something as a society. (Oprah’s proletarian book club selections are a commendable try, but just don’t cut it.)
You’re right, Celeste, we miss Mailer and his peers more than we even remember.