Norman Mailer 1923 - 2007

William F. Buckley, Jr., conservative commentator: Heavyweight prelim and TV show host

…a number of encounters with Mailer over the years, including a great big brawling extravaganza the night before the Patterson-Liston fight in Chicago which the press turned into a kind of polemical prelim before the main athletic event. The theater, seating two thousand, was sold out, and our exchange was published in Playboy magazine. For years, Norman had wandered all over the land ventilating his impression that he had won that debate. (1962)

From "On the Firing Line: The Public Life of Our Public Figures," by William F. Buckley, Jr. (Random House, 1989)

Diana Trilling, author and critic: "He got my attention"

Norman and I...met...at a party at Lillian Hellman's where he had turned to me at the dinner table with the opening remark, "And how about you, smart cunt?" I am usually addressed with appalling respect: he got my attention. We became good friends... (early 1960s)

From "The Beginning of the Journey: The Marriage of Diana and Lionel Trilling," by Diana Trilling (Harcourt Brace, 1993)

Budd Schulberg, novelist and screenwriter: To maintain fame

When we were covering the Liston-Patterson heavyweight title fight together...Norman expressed this hunger [to be in the limelight] quite nakedly. He told me he was going to usurp Sonny Liston's place in the winner's circle at the press conference. I questioned whether this would be a dignified move for a novelist. Should the author of "The Naked and the Dead" and "The Deer Park" have to compete with the prizefight champion of the world? Norman's answer was a revelation. Since he had not had a successful novel in some years (and of course, like so many gifted young Americans, had never been able to equal his first great success), he felt driven to execute a "caper" (I believe that was the word he chose) that would help to keep him in the public eye. (Chicago, 1962)

From "The Four Seasons of Success," by Budd Schulberg (Doubleday, 1972)

Mordecai Richler, novelist: Sexual revolution

...Mailer spoke at the Mayfair Theatre. Once more you had to admire his courage, but regret his recklessness. There were more than 300 people in the theatre, an audience that included critics, other novelists, editors, and playwrights....

He spoke with regret for the eighteenth century when society was orderly and the British navy and the orgasm were both going good ...He was, like most of us, against the piggish rich and for an end to the war in Vietnam....He complained about the shrinking purchase power of the pound and the decline of craftsmanship, ugly architecture, greedy doctors, and high taxation...

It was inchoate, but charming, for Mailer is certainly an engaging man. When he smiles his whole face rumples; it is suffused by the most infectious warmth. Then pulling at his ear lobe, making a fist, discovering it with something like admiration, he told us we were living through a sexual revolution. Sex, once so ring-a-ding, had been corrupted by the search for status, and now Mailer felt that all the cool cats in the house had to be brave in bed. He also seemed to think that promiscuity was a malaise peculiar to the twentieth century.

By this time I held Mailer in a double-vision. I could hear the self-inflated programmist going on and on about a sexual revolution, but what I saw was a warm chunky man of forty-two who was really saying that screwing today wasn't nearly as satisfying as when he was a kid and that, like the rest of us, he suffered sourness and insults in and out of bed, and wasn't it a shame, a bloody shame. (London, 1965)

From "Hunting Tigers Under Glass," by Mordecai Richler (McClelland and Stewart, 1968)

Edmund Wilson, literary critic: On good behavior

We went...to dinner at the [Robert] Lowells': Norman Mailer...was unexpectedly quiet -- I had never met him before -- not throwing his weight around... (New York, 1966)

From "The Sixties: The Last Journal, 1960-1972," by Edmund Wilson (Farrar Straus Giroux, 1993)

Anthony Burgess, novelist: My last book

...at a party given by Panna Grady in Manhattan...a literary hostesss of strange but compelling beauty, had her apartment filled with the great cultural names of the period...Norman Mailer, who said: "Burgess, your last book was shit." (New York, 1966)

From "You've Had Your Time," by Anthony Burgess (Heinemann, 1990)

Andre Dubus, novelist: Using "Advertisements"

...my editor phoned and summoned me and my wife to New York...we would have lunch at the Algonquin with the publisher and the house lawyer... .......

I turned on the bedside lamp. On the floor was Mailer: a paperback copy of "Advertisements for Myself." I had not started reading it, but there it was, and I picked it up and read Mailer, who by then had endured every writer's peril I could imagine...

Mailer was at the Algonquin. I saw him as we walked in, Pat and my editor and I. In the night, he had been with me, and now he was eating lunch with a woman. We were passing him, he was on our right, and farther down the room, the publisher and house lawyer were waiting. I told my editor I wanted to meet Mailer. We went to his table, and my editor spoke to him, Mailer stood, his eyes merry and intent. I extended my hand and as we shook, I said: "Mr. Mailer, I spent last night reading 'Advertisements for Myself,' and I'm using it the way boxers use resin on the soles of their shoes before going into the ring; because I think these guys are going to screw me."

He grinned and his eyes brightened, and still shaking my hand, he said: "Well, that book's been used in a lot of ways, it may as well be used like this. Don't let them get to you." (New York, 1967)

From "Meditations from a Movable Chair," by Andre Dubus (Random House, 1999)

Ultra Violet (Isabelle Collin Dufresne), model, actor and associate of Andy Warhol: Force of nature

In the late spring of 1968 I meet Norman Mailer at a birthday party for Senator Jacob Javits in the large Javits apartment on Park Avenue....

The minute I see Mailer, I recognize him as a force of nature. He radiates energy and belligerence. His crinkled black-and-white hair stands up; his blue eyes crackle. He is his own man, macho, cunning, provocative. Want to tell him how much I admire him for marching on the Pentagon in the huge protest against the Vietnam War and then celebrating that crusade in his book "Armies of the Night," but I am a little afraid that if I choose the wrong words he may punch me. I've heard that he'll punch anyone who antagonizes him, if he's sufficiently booze-soaked, and I can see that tonight the booze is going down him fast. (New York)

From "Famous for 15 Minutes: My Years with Andy Warhol," by Ultra Violet (Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1988)

Alberto Moravia, novelist and journalist: Public figure, always successful

...to Cape Kennedy to witness the Apollo launching...I was sent by L'espresso...Norman Mailer...there for the same reason I was. Only he wrote a book, and I wrote three articles....

...you have to understand the difference between Norman Mailer and me in a professional and social sense. I am, or at least I believe I am, a writer whose success or lack of it depends on how the book is written. Norman Mailer, on the contrary, is a public figure, and he succeeds always. He wrote a first novel, "The Naked and the Dead," a good book, which went well. He wrote a second, not so good, and that was all right, too. He stabbed his wife, and that was all right; he married the daughter of a lord, and that was all right, too. He ran for mayor of New York and failed, but that was all right; he wrote five hundred pages on the flight of the Apollo, and that was actually all right. This said, it must also surely be said that Norman Mailer, who defines himself as a conservative revolutionary, is one of the most likable American public figures and the author of two or three important books. (1969)

From "Life of Moravia," by Alberto Moravia with Alain Elkann (Steerforth Press, 2000)

Next page: You can sense him wondering how much of his charm he will need to disclose