Tuesday, Jul 13, 1999 4:00 PM UTC

Mailer vs. Greer: The bout that wasn't

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Sometimes you can’t fight history, even when it’s wrong. That’s what biographer Christine Wallace, author of the recently published “Germaine Greer: Untamed Shrew,” is learning.

In a recent story for the Associated Press, Sue Leeman profiles Greer, who has also just published a book, “The Whole Woman” — an update of her bestselling 1970 feminist classic “The Female Eunuch.” In the profile, Leeman describes Greer as “the woman who once demolished Norman Mailer in debate.” The reference is to the legendary “Dialogue on Women’s Liberation” held at New York’s Town Hall on April 30, 1971, in which Mailer appeared with a panel of feminist writers that included not only Greer but also Diana Trilling, Jacqueline Ceballos and Jill Johnston.

But as Wallace meticulously details in “Untamed Shrew,” Greer most decidedly did not “demolish” Mailer, despite what Leeman claims and many believe today. “It was really more of a mutual love-in, atmospherically speaking,” Wallace explained to Salon Books in an e-mail from Australia, where she lives. “Germaine had, in fact, organised some ammunition for the Town Hall debate but confronted by the reality of Mailer declined to use it.”

That ammunition involved applying Mailer’s dismissive description of D.H. Lawrence — “no stud” — to Mailer himself. Writing in Esquire shortly after the debate, Greer attributed her change of heart to “pity” sparked by the realization of how “cruelly apt” that description was. In the same article, she confessed to later dining with Mailer and practically begging for his affection: “‘I love you,’ I kept saying, with the unsaid corollary, ‘so why do you treat me this way?’”

“While Germaine and Norman were the glam couple of the evening,” Wallace observes, “it was Jill Johnston [author of 'Lesbian Nation'] who stole the show.” Filmmakers D.A. Pennebaker and Chris Hegedus documented the evening memorably in “Town Bloody Hall,” which is what Wallace used as her source. According to Wallace, “Johnston had audience members laughing and squirming simultaneously” with a provocative, impressionistic rant “until Mailer called time” — whereupon two women from the audience leaped onto the stage and began passionately kissing Johnston. Enraged, Mailer exhorted her to “be a lady.” (Panel discussions, it seems, are not what they used to be.)

Johnston, “rolling around the stage pashing with a couple of girlfriends, sent Norman off his nut,” Wallace reports. “‘Town Bloody Hall’ ought to be rerun by your public broadcasting network. It’s a blast.”

Laura Miller is a senior writer for Salon. She is the author of "The Magician's Book: A Skeptic's Adventures in Narnia" and has a Web site, magiciansbook.com. More Laura Miller.

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The week in 10 pics

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Lisa Montgomery embraces her nephew Thursday after a tornado tore apart her home in Cleburne, Texas. The twister killed six people and destroyed entire swaths of the North Texas town.
Credit: AP/LM Otero
Jack McMahon, the defense attorney for abortion doctor Kermit Gosnell, speaks outside the Criminal Justice Center in Philadelphia Tuesday. His client was convicted of killing three babies in his clinic, and will serve multiple life sentences.
Credit: AP/Matt Rourke
A photo taken Monday captures Vice President Joe Biden's response to a Milwaukee second-grader's innovative proposal to end America's epidemic of gun violence. This guy!
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Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., flanked by a grouper-eyed Michele Bachmann, addresses the IRS' admission that it targeted Tea Party groups in advance of the 2012 election. In an op-ed for CNN Thursday, the Kentucky senator slammed the president for his faux outrage.
Credit: AP/Molly Riley
Ousted IRS chief Steven Miller is sworn in on Capitol Hill Friday. Miller testified before the House Ways and Means Committee on the extra scrutiny the agency gave conservative groups applying for tax-exempt status.
Credit: AP/J. Scott Applewhite
Attorney General Eric Holder pauses as he testifies on Capitol Hill before the House Judiciary Committee Wednesday. Holder is under fire, among other things, for the Justice Department's gathering of phone records at the Associated Press.
Credit: AP/Carolyn Kaster
O.J. Simpson sits during an evidentiary hearing at Clark County District Court in Las Vegas, Nev., Thursday. Simpson, who is currently serving a nine-to-33-year sentence in state prison for armed robbery and kidnapping, is using a writ of habeas corpus to seek a new trial.
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Major Tom to ground control: On Sunday astronaut Chris Hadfield recorded the first music video from space, a cover of David Bowie's "Space Oddity."
Credit: AP/NASA/Chris Hadfield
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Credit: AP/Jacquelyn Martin
A smoke plume rises high above a road block at the intersection of County A and Ross Road east of Solon Springs, Wis., Tuesday. No injuries were reported, but the the wildfire caused evacuations across northwestern Wisconsin.
Credit: AP/The Duluth News-Tribune/Clint Austin
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Mailer vs. Greer: The bout that wasn't