The Mailer Review/Volume 4, 2010/Norris Church Mailer: Difference between revisions

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{{dc|dc=O|n the face of it, a twenty-six-year-old high school art teacher}} raised by strict Arkansas Baptists whose grandparents were sharecroppers and muleskinners, and America’s wildest literary lion—at 52, already a year older than her father—with seven children, five failed marriages and other affairs in his wake—didn’t have much going for it. But who is anyone to judge? Men and women with no obvious link in their culture, backgrounds or achievements are drawn to one another and the alchemy works. Norris Church Mailer and Norman Mailer were one of those couples. Apart from their cultural mismatch and age difference, in her platform soles, the strikingly beautiful, willowy five-foot-ten redhead, towered above Mailer, who was barely five-foot-eight.

Against all odds, she and Norman had a marriage that lasted, as the line goes,

“Till death us do part.” She is not unhappy living on her own and has no interest in a relationship with another man. As she says, “I’m not someone who feels lonely. I’m painting again and working on another book. Six of our children live in New York, so I’m surrounded by family. And my mother, who’s 9o, lives fifteen minutes away. We see each other all the time and I go out a lot. Of course I miss Norman. There’s so much going on in the world. I want to know what he thinks and what he has to say. If we’d never met, I guess I’d have been happy enough. I’d have painted. Maybe I’d have got married again and had a couple more kids. But I wouldn’t trade my life with Norman Mailer for anything.”