[lit-ideas] "Greetings from P-town!"
- From: Jlsperanza@xxxxxxx
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Sat, 10 Nov 2007 15:01:05 EST
Dead White Man: Mailer
How can you just quote from a link without reading it!? Here's my commentary:
"Norman Mailer, the macho prince of American letters who for decades reigned
as the country's literary conscience and provocateur with such books as "The
Naked and the Dead" and "The Executioner's Song""
MACHO PRINCE? That's a new one. I hate the word 'macho', being from
Argentina. It seems that Spanish "macho" is the worst word that Americans or
Brits
thinks the Hispanic world is all about. So I'm pleased to see this anglo
defined as a 'macho'.
"Mailer died of acute renal failure at Mount Sinai Hospital."
Nice name for a Jewish hospital in NYC. So close to the commandments.
"From his classic debut novel to such masterworks of literary journalism as
"The Armies of the Night,"
"none was pronounced the Great American Novel that seemed to be his life
quest"
You see. Not only have you time, Geary, but you can call it, alla Joyce,
Work-in-Progress. I would call it "The Great American Novel" and kill two birds
with the same stone.
"Mailer built and nurtured an image over the years as high-living. He smoked
pot, and stabbed his second wife fatally"
And why is that HER obituary was never news? And shouldn't he have died in
jail?
"He had nine children"
Hate that. Nine offspring. They are no kids anymore.
"He waas banned from a Manhattan YWHA for reciting obscene poetry"
C'mon it was just Martial and Catullus. Geary will remember and provide a
few specimena.
feuded publicly with writer Gore Vidal and crusaded against women's
liberation.
But as Newsweek reviewer Raymond Sokolov said in 1968, "In the end, it is the
writing that will count."
"He was born Jan. 31, 1923, in Long Branch, N.J."
Long Branch of that? Never heard of 'Branch' in a toponymy before. Shouldn't
that be Long Ranch?
"His father, Isaac, a South Africa-born accountant, and mother, Fanny, who
ran a housekeeping and nursing agency, soon moved to Brooklyn — later
described by Mailer as "the most secure Jewish environment in America."
-- And Queen Anne is dead.
"Mailer earned an engineering science degree in 1943 from Harvard
University, where he decided to become a writer"
On Engineering topics? I can't remember where the Faculty of Engineering is
in Harvard, surely not ON THE YARD, as the campus is called there.
"and was soon drafted into the Army. Sent to the Philippines as an
infantryman, he saw enough of army life and combat to provide a basis for his
first
book, "The Naked and the Dead," published in 1948 while he was a postgraduate
student in Paris on the GI Bill of Rights."
-- The Naked must be the Philippines. They speak Spanish being a former
Spanish Colony, but ethnically they are Asians.
"The book — noteworthy for Mailer's invention of the word "fug" as a
substitute for the then-unacceptable four-letter original — was a best seller"
Well, in German is "ficken", "Figgen".
"Buoyed by instant literary celebrity, Mailer wrote,
"The White Negro,"
(?)
:He also churned out two more novels, "Barbary Shore" (1951) and "Deer Park"
(1955).
The latter sounds to me like an autumn season in Balmoral. While Barbary
Shore I first read as Barbary Shoe.
"Mailer turned reporter for Esquire"
I love that. That's the meaning of "Esq." when I sign "J. L. Speranza, Esq."
-- It has NOTHING to do with the AMERICAN use, that allows things like
"Marcia Reynolds, Esq.".
Also "Superman Comes to the Supermarket," a continuation of the saga of the
cartoon hero.
Life magazine called his next book, "An American Dream" (1965), "the big
comeback of Norman Mailer,"
Who's having the DREAM. I hate the expression, since it's the DREAMER who
counts, never the DREAM.
He covered for Harper's magazine.
"Macho prince" indeed if he reads Harper's (we don't say "magazine").
"Mailer's personal life was turbulent"
"He stabbed his second wife, Adele Morales"
Ah, so I see. She was a Hispanic. Hence the little publicity on the event.
Not a Bouvier from Boston.
He said that "poetry is a natural activity. A poem, like a turd comes
naturally to one. Whereas prose requires more of a gag reflex, and I'd define
as
vomiting"
"Mailer's suspicion of technology was so deep that while most writers used
typewriters or computers, he wrote with a silver fountain pen"
"Feminists need to abolish the mystery, romance and "blind, goat-kicking
lust" from sex."
Tthe broadside should "earn him a permanent niche in their pantheon of male
chauvinist pigs."
Well, he is officially a white dead man now
In "Advertisements for Myself" (1959), Mailer promised to write the greatest
novel yet, but later conceded he had not. Among other notable works:
"Cannibals and Christians" (1966); "Why Are We in Vietnam?" (1967); and
"Miami and
the Siege of Chicago" (1968).
"The Executioner's Song" (1979),. "Ancient Evenings" (1983), a novel of
ancient Egypt that took 11 years to complete,
"I had to travel to MEMPHIS twice to even set the novel correctly"
"Tough Guys Don't Dance" (1984) Some critics found "Harlot's Ghost" (1991).
In 1997, he came out with "The Gospel According to the Son," a novel told from
Jesus Christ's point of view.
As opposed to... THE NEW TESTAMENT is precisely boring because while we have
12 apostles they are ALL telling the story from Jesus's point of view.
Next came "The Time of Our Time."
Besides Morales, Mailer's other wives were Beatrice Silverman, a
Jewish-American, Lady Jeanne Campbell, the daughter of a Scots peer, Beverley
Bentley,
actress Carole Stephens and painter Norrisia Church. He had five daughters,
three sons and a stepson.
Mailer kept a beach-side home in P-town -- the gay mecca in Cape Cod, Mass.,
where he spent increasing time in his later years, and was often seen outside
the gay discos on main street.
"The Castle in the Forest," a novel about Hitler's early years, narrated by
Satan, which J. L. Speranza described in "The Memphis Registrar" as the best
example of the banality of evil.
A book of conversations about the cosmos, "On God: An Uncommon Conversation"
proved to be pretty common, as God would reply in Aramaic.
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