A few years ago, my Uncle, R, gave me two presents for Christmas. One was a book by Gore Vidal entitled "Kalki" and the second, Norman Mailer's biography. Upon giving it to me he says tells me that the two were rivals for many years and I could read about it in Mailer's biography. Naturally inclined to chismis and controversy (hehe), I picked the biography.
And I got hooked. Hooked enough that I read it til 6am. My eyes hurt so much that I had to sleep and woke up at 2pm and started reading again. I finished it before New Year's and for months was obsessed with learning more about Mailer. I totally forgot about Gore Vidal's book and I don't even know where it is now. Their legendary rivalry makes for an amusing read, and one was actually documented in the Dick Cavett show.
Snippets:
"Mailer: You're a liar and a hypocrite...Will you apologize?
Vidal: I would apologize if it hurts your feelings, yes."
"A few seconds later, Mailer insults the guests and Cavett, calling them all intellectually inferior, then moves his chair away from the group. Cavett: "Perhaps you'd like two more chairs to contain your giant intellect?"
(http://www.reelpopblog.com/2007/01/sigh_youtube_me.html)
So, last June when I went home, I started sifting over my old stuff, mostly books to bring back to Vietnam because there was a shortage of English books here (unless you were still into the Mills & Boon types). I saw my Mailer biography book and brought it with me. It was time to read it again now that Mailer is dead, the experience may be different. And I got hooked again. His life was so colorful, dark,full or struggle and provocation. But what really emerges is his brilliance and wit that he has kept intact even at 84 years old, a few months before he died. when he granted this
interview . After his first novel, "The Naked and The Dead" (incidentally it's a book which was inspired by his WWII experience as rifleman stationed in the Philippines),which cemented his stature as one of the great post-war writers at age 25. His next few novels and writings would receive mixed, even atrocious reviews. But those served a purpose for he re-emerged then as a voice of activism in the 60's & 70's and up until his death in 2007, he spoke strongly against the Iraq war and Bush,
here. He would never give up on writing novel, though.
I recommend reading the book, and of course his novels and prose, to find out more about this legendary writer. It is one thing to read about the man, and quite another to examine the evidence of that great mind. He wasn't a saint, and his inclinations especially in the earlier years of his life were sometimes reproachful (he has been accused of being the first chauvinist pig). But who can say their own lives are beyond all reproach? His life, demands one to pause and absorb his genius. In the twilight of his life, he was having conversations with God and it is interesting to know how he has evolved from the timid Jewish boy from Harvard to his later persona as the egoistic writer, activist and journalist. I personally will make it my goal to read all his works if I can, starting with the early works down to the last one until his death. After that I will read his biography again and I'm sure that will be a different experience still (of course maybe I will be 90 years old by then, hehe). He was very prolific and leaves us a voluminous legacy of writings that can last us for the rest of
our lifetime, albeit a few sleepless nights.
"No, no, it's not. There's one good thing about old age that people don't recognize. Which is that if you have a reasonable old age, as I do, in that you're not in pain, and you're not in terrible trouble emotionally with your children, or your mate, then what happens is you're cool. And you finally are cool in a way that you never were before. And you realize that you won and you lost, and that's just what happens to everyone else. They win and they lose also. And what you didn't succeed in doing, you didn't succeed in doing, so f--- it." - Norman Mailer, on being asked by a reporter if this is the worst time to be alive
Mailer, in 1979 would write his then fictional obituary for the Boston Times, and which they reposted
here after his death. It will be read in his actual funeral in November 2007, 28 years after.
