Norman Mailer-Requiem for a Champion

Don DeLillo described him as a writer who "gave America a literature worthy of her vastness." Joan Didion spoke of his 1000 page nonfiction masterpiece "The Executioner's Song" (it was a "novel" she believes, as were all of his works) as "ambitious to the point of vertigo." It upended so many peoples' expectations, as it broke ground with what Didion described as a voice "as flat as the horizon" it depicted and with its strong women as storytellers of a broken heartland. "I can think of no other writer with the character to have risked" that book Didion told the 1500 or so who gathered at Carnegie Hall late Wednesday afternoon for a celebration of Mailer's life and work. A video tribute captured Mailer's rampaging through --and reflecting on-- life. "I became a species of combat soldier in life" he tells the interviewer. It's all there --his bouts with feminists, his bouts with boxers, the march on the Pentagon, the arrests, the campaign for mayor of NYC ("I would sleep better if Mailer were mayor" jibed one of the campaign buttons.) In his televised defense of writers' and artists's right to protest (was it on the Dick Cavett Show?) Mailer spews forth, brilliantly, about General Westmoreland's obscene Vietnam war crimes. His prescient opposition to the Iraq war elicited clapping: " I am worried about starting something we can't finish without changing the nature of America." Sean Penn spoke briefly, reading off his Blackberry, apologizing for that but promising he would be brief, and celebrating Mailer as "what greatness once was and what greatness should be ...a natural of the highest order and an earner who has left us with a towering legacy...." Muhammad Ali's wife Lonnie described meeting Mailer in 1997 when he visited their Michigan farm. "He reminded me of my uncle." And as Muhammad and Mailer sat in her kitchen she saw "two lions who had ruled the jungles in which they lived....their growls no longer as intimidating ...two kindred spirits..both champions of opposition, only the biggest and the best..fighters for ever..real men to the end."

It was Mailer's sprawling, irrepressible, creative children, all nine of them, who stole the show.Each carried the imprint, the impress of their father, and in different ways, with humor, passion, sadness, writerly detail, these actors, artists, writers, former boxers, producers, all united in abiding affection for their father, described a man who engaged them, cared about their lives and talents and always challenged his brood.

The evening closed--and it was evening by the time the close-to-three hour memorial ended--with announcement of the creation of The Norman Mailer Writers Colony --to be established in Provincetown, anchored in the home he shared for decades with his beloved wife Norris Church Mailer..... Advisory Board members, still coming together, now include Gunter Grass, Joan Didion, Doris Kearns Goodwin and William Kennedy. Mailer wasn't a fan of organized religion, organized fellowships or organized anything but I suspect that a project anchored in his home will have the spark to nurture risktakers, disturbers of false peace, fighters and adventurers of this time. We're going to need them. As we needed Mailer.

Comments (16)

1. he was a pit fighter...

   Posted by ibbleblibble at 04/10/2008 @ 12:04am

2. Miss him.

   Mailer's great political contribution to NYC: secede from NYS, form a 51st state with Nassau, Suffolk, Westchester maybe. Hooted back in '69. After Albany's breezy dismissal of congestion pricing for Manhattan, NYC as 51st state starts making more sense. Something for Bloomberg to lead as our 1st guv.

   Posted by sloper at 04/10/2008 @ 02:10am

3. He was an inspiration to me as the toughest, baddest, not-nice Jewish boy who, like Capote in In Cold Blood, Robeson in his classical acting and political courage, Muhammed Ali in his moral integrity, refused to be defined by the categories of power.

   Posted by JFHill at 04/10/2008 @ 08:16am

4. Ms vanden Heuvel....

   Anybody invite Adele Morales to the party?

   Posted by Mask at 04/10/2008 @ 09:14am

5. Mailer was major jerk.

   http://www.bloggernews.net/111608

   Posted by emile duBois at 04/10/2008 @ 11:37am

6. Robson and Ali paid a major price for their political views and actions. this cannot be said about Mailer.

   Posted by emile duBois at 04/10/2008 @ 11:39am

7. Mailer may have been (was) a jerk, but when he was on his game, the guy could write. Executioner's Song is even better than Didion implies.

   I'm currently reading (by chance) The Naked and the Dead for the first time and it's truly great writing.

   And to Happy2 . . . Mailer's relationship with the academy is a LOT more complicated than his being revered in the ivory tower. Because of his personality and because of the, um, 'life' in his books, he's often a bit too far from pc. Check out The Naked and the Dead, a WWII novel about the slow (and dreadful) taking of a small island in the Pacific.

   Posted by Rintrah at 04/10/2008 @ 12:02pm

8. Posted by RINTRAH 04/10/2008 @ 12:02pm | ignore this person

   by many accounts Mailer's murderous protege too could write.

   Posted by emile duBois at 04/10/2008 @ 12:59pm

9. Posted by FDR42 04/10/2008 @ 4:12pm

   You can confirm the fact that he STABBED his second wife....

   and confirm the fact that if you write well and have the right politics, folks like Ms vanden Heuvel and others will overlook "minor flaws" in personality.

   And hold on, my right-wing friends...you're no better. NEWT GINGRICH!?!??!?...lecturing on faith and family values?!?!? How many wives and how many mistresses who became wives has HE run through?

   Posted by Mask at 04/10/2008 @ 4:42pm

10. In 1971 I interviewed Mailer about his latest film, Maidstone. He received me in his hotel room at the Ritz. I'd been promised ten minutes but, in spite of being on a punishing schedule and very tired, he talked with me for half an hour; it was I who terminated the interview out of consideration. He was one of the most genuinely, sensitively polite people I've ever interviewed. Some of my questions were decidedly critical, but he answered them carefully and without irritation.

    This may sound over the top, but I've always felt that Mailer in a very real sense took upon himself the sins of his country and of his generation, empathizing with the lowest and the most extreme. He dived into the depths of the American psyche and came up bearing insights that he could not otherwise have achieved. In other words, if his country had been better, he would have been better as well.

    Posted by John Whiting at 04/10/2008 @ 4:48pm

11. Correction: Pentagon.

    Posted by FDR42 04/10/2008 @ 4:12pm | ignore this person

    I like Pentagone. we should be so lucky.

    Posted by emile duBois at 04/10/2008 @ 5:43pm

12. This may sound over the top,

    over the top? no over the stratosphere. whattaloadofcrap.

    Posted by emile duBois at 04/10/2008 @ 5:45pm

13. Posted by FDR42 04/10/2008 @ 4:49pm

    1. I won't negate the man's literary career. He was too good to do that, but I won't gush all over him like Ms vanden Heuvel and the New York literati....and posthumously kiss his ass Dick Cavett-style.

    2. Yes. Left and Right idiocies I reject...common sense from either, I accept.

    Posted by Mask at 04/10/2008 @ 8:01pm

14. Posted by HAPPY2 04/10/2008 @ 5:17pm

    Not "Pro-Abortion"...just see it as individual liberty and an impossibility for societ to control through some "Prohibition".

    Not "wedded to the Demo Party" either. They just haven't been total f**k-ups for the last 6 years and gone against their own supposed ideology.

    Posted by Mask at 04/10/2008 @ 8:02pm

15. Mailor was also a gonzo journalist, every bit as good as Hemmingway in his own time. Check out 'Miami and the Siege of Chicago'. For impact that strikes back several days after you've read the book, read 'Why are we in Vietnam?' The book is as obscene as the war. He went to the underbelly of America for America. Most still don't want to know.

    Posted by donpolly at 04/11/2008 @ 07:26am

16. I am reminded yet again why I rarely read unedited comments.

    Posted by John Whiting at 04/12/2008 @ 11:10am