Other Crap

American Author, Cultural Icon, Norman Mailer Dead at 84

Others will prattle on about his social and literary significance, so let me just say that Norman Mailer was an OK guy. His CIA novel, Harlot's Ghost, came out when I was living in Norway, and I had a friend in the publishing industry send me an advance copy from the States. The New York Times review, published September 29, 1991, written by John Simon, eviscerated the book. I immediately wrote a letter to the arts editor of the Times, not to disagree with the review, but to point out that Simon was not an unbiased reviewer. He had a long-running and well known feud with Mailer over some nasty words written by Simon in a review of a performance given by Mailer's daughter. Upon reading Simon's typically mean-spirited words, Mailer had said something like, "He better hope that he never finds himself in the same room with me." That recollection, despite the quotation marks, is expressed in my words, not Mailer's. I suppose Mailer probably expressed the thought in a more florid way, as was his wont.

I also pointed out in the letter that Simon, although a brilliant guy, had absolutely no credentials as a book reviewer, yet he was assigned to review a new work by one of America's greatest literary lights. Pretty hefty on-the-job trailing! Simon had been a movie critic and a drama critic, and in those articles he typically ruminated about irrelevant crap like the attractiveness of the actors or the make-up of the actresses. Meanwhile, the Washington Post had assigned the Harlot review to the esteemed Anthony Burgess, author of A Clockwork Orange and several other works of fiction, as well as a well-known James Joyce scholar. In the competition against the Post's Anthony Burgess to review the new book by one of America's greatest living authors, the Times had allowed its banner to be carried by the make-up dude who had no experience as a book reviewer and who was then under the Combined Sword of Mailer and Damocles in the form of a promised beating from the very author he was being asked to review. No wonder the reputation of the Times was falling while the Post was in ascendancy, I noted.

I sent a copy of the letter to Mailer's publisher. I guess they forwarded it to the turgid one himself, because it was only a few days later when I received this letter at my apartment in Oslo.

Needless to say, I thought it was pretty cool that he took the time to write it. I thought it was even cooler when Mailer wrote a letter to the Times, published November 17th, which made some of the same points!

My affection for Mailer doesn't really color my judgment of his art. I admire some of what Mailer wrote in his life, but I find some of his ideas and some of his efforts shockingly jejune ...

... but I think we will miss his presence in our midst.