
 |
|
May 20, 2013
Melissa Healy: Genetic copies of living people from embryos no longer science fiction
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
May 10, 2013
Rabbi Berel Wein: Be all that you should be
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
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
May 3, 2013
Kids, kittens the Same? With employee perks at struggling Internet pioneer Yahoo! it's hard to tell
Sandy Kleffman: Artificial kidney offers hope to patients tethered to a dialysis machine
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
Pete Spotts: Tiny satellites + cellphones = cheaper 'eyes in the sky' for NASA
April 26, 2013
Clifford D. May: Defense in the Age of Jihadist Terrorism
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
April 24, 2013
|
| |
Jewish World Review
Nov. 15, 2007
5 Kislev 5768
Recalling my Mailer crush
By
Suzanne Fields
| 
|
|
|
|
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.
Every weekday JewishWorldReview.com publishes what many in the media and Washington consider "must-reading". Sign up for the daily JWR update. It's free. Just click here.
Comment on JWR contributor Suzanne Fields' column by clicking here.
Suzanne Fields Archives
© 2006, Creators Syndicate, Suzanne Fields
|
|

Arnold Ahlert
Mitch Albom
Jay Ambrose
Michael Barone
Barrywood
Lori Borgman
Stratfor Briefing
Mona Charen
Linda Chavez
Richard Z. Chesnoff
Ann Coulter
Greg Crosby
Larry Elder
Suzanne Fields
Christine Flowers
Frank J. Gaffney
Bernie Goldberg
Jonah Goldberg
Julia Gorin
Jonathan Gurwitz
Paul Greenberg
Argus Hamilton
Victor Davis Hanson
Betsy Hart
Ron Hart
Nat Hentoff
A. Barton Hinkle
Jeff Jacoby
Paul Johnson
Jack Kelly
Ch. Krauthammer
David Limbaugh
Kathryn Lopez
Rich Lowry
Michelle Malkin
Jackie Mason
Ann McFeatters
Dale McFeatters
Dana Milbank
Jeanne Moos
Dick Morris
Jim Mullen
Deroy Murdock
Judge A. Napolitano
Bill O'Reilly
Clarence Page
Kathleen Parker
Star Parker
Dennis Prager
Wesley Pruden
Tom Purcell
Sharon Randall
Robert Robb
Cokie & Steve Roberts
Heather Robinson
Debra J. Saunders
Martin Schram
Greg Schwem
Culture Shlock
David Shribman
Roger Simon
Lenore Skenazy
Michael Smerconish
Thomas Sowell
Ben Stein
Mark Steyn
John Stossel
Cal Thomas
Dan Thomasson
Bob Tyrrell
Diana West
Dave Weinbaum
George Will
Walter Williams
Byron York
ZeitGeist
Mort Zuckerman

Robert Arial
Chuck Asay
Baloo
Lisa Benson
Chip Bok
Dry Bones
John Branch
John Cole
J. D. Crowe
Matt Davies
John Deering
Brian Duffy
Everything's Relative
Mallard Fillmore
Glenn Foden
Jake Fuller
Bob Gorrel
Walt Handelsman
Joe Heller
David Hitch
Jerry Holbert
David Horsey
Lee Judge
Steve Kelley
Jeff Koterba
Dick Locher
Chan Lowe
Jimmy Margulies
Jack Ohman
Michael Ramirez
Rob Rogers
Drew Sheneman
Kevin Siers
Jeff Stahler
Scott Stantis
Danna Summers
Gary Varvel
Kirk Walters
Dan Wasserman

Tech Q&A
Mr. Know-It-All
Ask Doctor K
Richard Lederer
Frugal Living
On Nutrition
Bookmark These
Bruce Williams
|