RIP Norman Mailer
– November 10, 2007Posted in: Obits
Books To Jump Up and Down Over
The Call by Yannick Murphy: The always interesting author of Here They Come and Signed, Mata Hari returns with a novel that whips up a worldview from a rather quirky set of limitations: namely, the call logs that a veterinarian maintains as his son is unexpectedly put into a coma and an unforgiving economy denies him work. What emerges is a surprisingly optimistic, often funny, and very moving account on how one family uses acceptance and forgiveness as a way to atone for hard knocks. (Bat Segundo interview with Murphy)
Birds of Paradise by Diana Abu-Jaber: Forget Franzen and Eugenides. If you're looking for a social novel that counts, Diana Abu-Jaber is the author you're looking for. Building from the free-form exploration of consciousness and identity in Crescent and the gripping procedural structure of Origin, Abu-Jaber's latest novel is her finest, equally fluent with gutterpunk culture and smarmy real estate men. It has been suggested by The Washington Post's Ron Charles that you will likely gain some pounds while reading this novel. This is certainly true. Abu-Jaber's description of food is so precise that it often made me want to do more cooking. But I very much admired the way in which Abu-Jaber presents all her characters as unwitting victims of rough capitalism, which permits them some dignity even as they perform terrible acts.
The Last of the Live Nude Girls by Sheila McClear: This memoir isn't so much about the decline of the Times Square peepshow, as it is about one young woman's efforts to pull herself up by by her bootstraps when presented with few economic options. Filled with self-introspective candor and a quiet dignity, McClear's story is one that might befall any of us in these volatile times. While McClear does get back on her feet, her book leads one contemplating the terrible fates of other young women now moving to New York and falling into deadlier vocations. (Bat Segundo interview with McClear)
I met Mailer 4 or 5 times, the first time in Miami Beach at the 1972 Democratic convention, but mostly during the time in the mid-1980s when he was president of PEN at PEN events. He was always very kind, it seemed, and I think he somehow had learned for the sake of his stature and his position as PEN president, a kind of literary elder statesman, to suppress his natural tendency to tell off fools.
I recall standing with him in a group at the National Arts Club in, I think, September 1984, when some guy started talking about military manuevers involving nuclear weapons in New York Harbor by Staten Island. I can recall Mailer’s electric blue eyes sizing the guy up and then turning slightly to me — the only time at that party that he looked at me — and he rolled his eyes just enough for me to see them (and to respond in kind) without anyone else noticing.
In grad school in the spring of 1974 I took a class titled Mailer and Bellow, which seems — from this vantage point — to be pretty early in their careers — and my research paper was a comparison of Mailer’s play and novel of The Deer Park, works that I’d now like to read again. The first book of Mailer’s that I ever read was Advertisements for Myself, a great title and a good introduction to him.
When a classmate in the MFA program at Brooklyn lost his father, he wrote an essay about the old man and for some reason sent it to Mailer, who in reply sent a very generous, very solicitous and surprisingly long letter. I think that gesture — I saw the letter — made me admire Mailer more than anything else did besides his work.
The video’s down. And I really wanted to link that fucker, too.
Goddammit, that is NOT Rip Torn! It doesn’t sound (either in accent or timbre) or look like Rip Torn. Tom Skerritt, I could believe. Rip Torn, no.
(I have Trivia Karma to work off…)