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May 20, 2013

Richard A. Serrano: Is Meir Kahane's assassin now a changed man?

Hannan Adely: Town raises Palestinian flag at City Hall

Melissa Healy: Genetic copies of living people from embryos no longer science fiction
Morgan Housel: When smart investors do stupid things

Sharon Saloman, M.S., R.D.: Hunger games: Eat more, weigh less, without starving

Jewz in the Newz by Nate Bloom : Jews Inducted into Rock Hall of Fame; Anton Yelchin co-stars in New "Trek" film; Kutcher (but not Kunis) visits Israel; Jewish TV Star Praises Jewish Rap Star

The Kosher Gourmet by Cathy Pollak: WARNING: This WALNUT CAKE WITH PRALINE FROSTING, perfect for afternoon coffee, is addicting
May 13, 2013

Rabbi Nathan Lopes Cardozo: Why the giving of the document that would permanently change the world could only be done in desolation

David G. Savage: Church-state, literally? Supreme Court weighing public school graduation in a church

Emily Alpert: Recession dragged down birth rates for less-educated women
Morgan Housel: The deep downside of home ownership

Peter Teffer: Will Dutch police soon be stalking cybercriminals on your computer?

Heidi McIndoo, M.S., R.D.: Meatless 'meat' can have its own set of problems

The Kosher Gourmet by Diane Rossen Worthington: Celebrate! This must-try appetizer is delicate yet has depth of flavor: Corn-Leek Cakes with Caviar, Smoked Salmon and Creme Fraiche

May 10, 2013

Rabbi Berel Wein: Be all that you should be

Caroline B. Glick: The dirty little secret about Israel's Arabs

Mona Charen: Hawking's Moral Calculus: The man and the movement he embraces
Morgan Housel: The biggest retirement myth ever told

Sandi Doughton: Eyes may provide new insight into brain problems

Jewz in the Newz by Nate Bloom : The Great Gatsby's Jewish Ties; Jews in the "Time 100 list" List; People's Most Beautiful Women

The Kosher Gourmet by Linda Gassenheimer: A sweet-hot meal: Pear salsa spices up salmon

May 8, 2013

Peter Ford: Why China is welcoming both Israel's Netanyahu and Palestinians' Abbas

Warren Richey: Obama administration quietly backs out of appeal over new contraceptive mandate

Fred Weir: At Kerry-Putin meeting, US-Russia relations thaw --- a tad
Amanda Paulson: Study reveals sad truths about community colleges

Harvard Health Letters: Evidence weak that zinc, echinacea are beneficial

The Kosher Gourmet by Leela Cyd Ross : Almost too pretty to eat, this colorful salad with Sicilian inspiration will tickle the taste buds and delight your visual sensibility

May 6, 2013

Edmund Sanders and Patrick J. McDonnell: Think Israel's objective in Syria is to weaken Assad or embolden the rebels? Think again

Brian Bennett: Israeli airstrikes may show weakness in Syrian defense

Michael Ollove: Millions of ex-felons, parolees and those on probation are about to be entitled to tax-payer paid health coverage
Karen Kaplan: Most men can skip PSA test for prostate cancer, urologists say

Kimberly Lankford: How to track down a lost life insurance policy

Dream of Mars exploration achievable, experts say

The Kosher Gourmet by Susan M. Selasky: EGGPLANT WRAPS are an easy, sumptuous and scrumptious meal

May 3, 2013

Rabbi Nathan Lopes Cardozo: Human Courage and the Unavoidable, Disturbing Text

Steven Emerson: Attorney General Fights CAIR in Court, Lauds it in Public

Mediterranean diet helps beat dementia: study
Harvard Health Letters: When to be screened for a hearing problem

Jewz in the Newz by Nate Bloom : Iron Man's Jewish Connections; Marc Maron's New TV Show; Martin Landau Grows Up with Israel; Shalom, Allan Arbus

The Kosher Gourmet by Diane Rossen Worthington: A sweet surprise for Mother's Day dessert

May 1, 2013

Jonathan Rosenblum: An Improbable Journey to Orthodoxy

Jonathan Tobin: Blame Obama, Not Israel for Syria Push

Kids, kittens the Same? With employee perks at struggling Internet pioneer Yahoo! it's hard to tell
Halena M. Gazelka, M.D.: Mayo Clinic Medical Edge: What you need to know about implanted pain relief devices

Sandy Kleffman: Artificial kidney offers hope to patients tethered to a dialysis machine

Jessica Shugart: When it comes to math, MRIs may be better than IQs

The Kosher Gourmet by Mario Batali: The celebrated chef on how high-maintenance ASPARAGUS RISOTTO need not be

April 29, 2013

Roy Gutman: Poland's new Jewish museum celebrates life, doesn't revisit Holocaust

Mark Clayton: Terrorism in America: Is US missing a chance to learn from failed plots?

Kim Murphy: Boston Bomber's 'Svengali' Revealed
Morgan Housel: He's rich, smart and old: Listen to him

Thomas Salinas, D.D.S.: Mayo Clinic Medical Edge: The safety of amalgam fillings

Harvard Health Letters: Tomatoes and stroke protection

Pete Spotts: Tiny satellites + cellphones = cheaper 'eyes in the sky' for NASA

The Kosher Gourmet by Diane Rossen Worthington: Swing into spring with lemon cream pie

April 26, 2013

Rabbi Abraham J. Twerski: The world is a mirror

Caroline B. Glick: Time to confront Obama

Clifford D. May: Defense in the Age of Jihadist Terrorism
Kimberly Lankford: New strategies ease pain of paying for long-term care insurance

Howard LeWine, M.D.: Ask the Harvard Experts: Too much ibuprofen?

Sharon Palmer, R.D.: How to feel your best -- with plenty of energy, a healthy weight and optimal mental and physical function -- without driving yourself batty

Jewz in the Newz by Nate Bloom: Jewish Major Leaguers, 2013; New Movies and Comedy Show; Shalom, 'Lumpy' (Leave it to Beaver)

The Kosher Gourmet by Emily Ho : A bright and cheerful salad to herald the warmer months ahead

April 24, 2013

Steven Emerson: Boston Bomber Exposes Islamist Secret

Morgan Housel Admit it: No one has any idea what's going on
Harvard Health Letters: Can you get headaches from headache medication?

Kerri-Ann Jennings, M.S., R.D.: How to easily get more Omega-3s in your diet

Melissa Healy: Pot in a pill: All the pain relief without the smoke

The Kosher Gourmet by Susan Russo: Chipotle Chili Butternut Squash Soup is bold, zesty, hot

April 22, 2013

Ken Dilanian: Counterterrorism's future is unclear

US man departing country arrested on terror charges
Barbara Williams: An unorthodox but growing treatment in a 9-year-old's battle against cancer

P.J. Skerrett, M.D.: How to recognize a good whole grain product

Jewz in the Newz by Nate Bloom: Teen actor Jonah Bobo in New Flick: Hunky James Wolk on Mad Men; Erich Segal's Daughter Writes Prize-Winning Jewish Novel


Jewish World Review Nov. 15, 2007 5 Kislev 5768

Recalling my Mailer crush

By Suzanne Fields


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http://www.JewishWorldReview.com | I nurtured a crush on Norman Mailer from the moment the great counterpuncher walked into my house for dinner. I was his hostess at what he called "The Liberal Party," in the opening pages in "The Armies of the Night," his book about the great Vietnam war protest in Washington in October of 1967.


Mailer, who died last week, was a demonic force, a man who was tough when it was tough to be tough, after the idea of manhood had been hijacked, softened, neutered and finally feminized. He believed it important that a man "earn manhood." He took the idea over the top, stabbing the second of his six wives and springing from prison a romanticized killer who would then kill another man. But in his best work he challenged both convention and himself. He liked playing the buffoon, making it hard sometimes to tell whether he was serious or merely making fun of himself — and of whomever he was talking to.


He gave me my 15 minutes of elusive fame with the description of me in his Pulitzer Prize-winning book as "surprisingly adorable and childlike to be found in such a liberal academic coven." When he passed up my boeuf bourguignon to take his bourbon in a coffee mug up the street to the scruffy old Ambassador Theater for more rant against the war, he apologized and added the novelist's detail that he dared the look of rejection in my innocent eye, "which was almost balanced on a tear."


He was Don Quixote, the bombastic hero, and I was thrilled to be Desdemona, damsel-in-distress. But it was impossible to take offense because he had the intoxicating power to charm. Mailer was a notorious womanizer. "Mailer had not been married four times for nothing," he observed, referring to himself as usual in the third person. But I took as praise that I was "vivid, bright-eyed, suggestive of a fiery temper and a child-like glee." He never enjoyed parties unless there was a wicked lady present: "An evening without a wicked lady in the room was like an opera without a large voice." But I couldn't sing Aida.


Mailer was less than charming a little later when his inebriation upstaged his message at the theater and he delivered a scatological portrait of himself as Lyndon Johnson's alter ego. No one could understand him. He threw obscenities at his hecklers, but other guests from my party were drunk on stage, too.


When he recounted the conversations at my table in "The Armies of the Night," I marveled at his drunken recall. He had been the pitiful sycophant in his conversation with the poet Robert Lowell. In Mailer's eyes, Lowell, a New England WASP, was vastly superior to a merely good Jewish novelist from Brooklyn. He resented Lowell's regard for him as "the finest journalist in America." He thought of himself as "the best writer in America."


He deliberately ignored Dwight MacDonald, the pompous literary critic and social butterfly of the party. MacDonald wore a pin of Rosa Luxemburg, the socialist revolutionary murdered in Berlin in 1919, and was willing to talk only to those who knew who she was. Mailer, who knew very well, wouldn't speak to him because he was working on a review of Mailer's latest book, "Why Are We in Vietnam?" He thought that if he "endeared" himself to the critic, MacDonald would savage the book just to prove his ruthless objectivity. (The book, which had nothing to do with Vietnam, deserved savaging.)


The other "illustrious" ignored guest was Paul Goodman, who got a brief celebrity with his book called "Growing Up Absurd," about the emptiness of contemporary work and education. Mailer hated his prose and loathed his celebration of guiltless sexuality, both homo- and hetero-, even more. "Without guilt, sex was meaningless," Mailer wrote. He lost his chance for confrontation because, finding no one at the party to feel guiltless with, Paul Goodman lay down on the living room floor and spent the dinner hour alone, snoring at high decibel.


Shortly after "The Armies of the Night" was published I reminded him that he had taken my copy of "Why Are We in Vietnam?" to the theater with him, where he lost it. He had written off this minor theft with typical bravado: "If you cannot make a hostess happy, the next best charity is to be so evil that the hostess may dine out on tales of your misconduct."


A week later I received another copy of the book, carefully inscribed: "I guess you can't dine out on tales of my misconduct forever." Maybe not, but I can do it one more time.

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