The Mailer Review/Volume 4, 2010/Inside Norman Mailer: Difference between revisions

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{{Byline |last=Apple |first=Max |abstract=Max Apple’s satirical short story imagines a surreal boxing match between the narrator and the literary titan Norman Mailer, blending bravado, absurdity, and literary criticism. Through this hilarious and metaphoric battle, Apple pokes fun at Mailer’s outsized persona and reputation while reflecting on the struggles of ambition, authorship, and masculine performance in American letters. |note=Reprinted by permission of the author, Max {{harvtxt|Apple|1976|pp=49–60}}. |url=http://prmlr.us/mr04app}}

{{Byline|last=Apple|first=Max|note=Reprinted by permission of the author, Max ~~Apple. From~~ {{~~cite book~~ |~~last= |first= |date= |title=The Oranging of America~~ |~~url= |location=New York |publisher=Viking |year=~~1976 |~~pages~~=~~49-60 |ref=harv~~ }}|url=.~~...~~}}

==I==

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unlikely. Look at Pete Rademacher—not even a pro. Fresh from a three-round Olympic decision, he got a shot at Floyd Patterson, made the cover of

''Sports Illustrated'', picked up an easy hundred grand. Now that is one fight

that Mr. Mailer, the ~~literary~~ lion, chose not to discuss. The clash between

that Mr. Mailer, the Iiterary lion, chose not to discuss. The clash between

pro and amateur didn’t grab his imagination like two spades in Africa or the

dark passion of Emile Griffith. Yes, you know how to pick your spots, Norman. I who have studied your moves think that your best instinct is judgment. It’s your secret punch. You knew how to stake out Kennedy and

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for good old Teddy I might have forgotten. Like the most careful teacher printing large block letters for an eager second grade, I inscribe and turn to four sides so all can see, “The Naked and the Dead Is His Best Work.”

When Norman reads my inscription, he is swishing Gatorade in his

mouth while his second, Richard Poirier, applies with a Q-tip glycerine and rosewater to the Mailer lips. When my barb registers, he swallows the

Gatorade and bites the Q-tip in half. Poirier and José Torres can barely keep

him on his stool. They whisper frantically, each in an ear. Archie is across the ring getting a quick shine from a boy who manages, on tiptoe, to reach

with his buffing cloth up to the apron of the elevated ring. Arch kneels to tip

with an autograph.

When the bell tolls round two, I face a Mailer who has with herculean effort

quickly calmed himself. He has sucked in his cheeks for control and

looks, for the moment, like a tubercular housewife. I see immediately that he

has beaten back the demiurge. We will stay in the realms of the intellect. His

gloves are completely laced and his steps are tight and full of control. He dances over to the ropes and beckons me with an open glove to taste his

newness.

Who do you think I am, Norm? Didn’t I travel half a world with no hope

of writing a book about it to watch Ali lure George Foreman to the ropes? Not for me, Norm, is your coy ease along the top strand. I’ll wait and take you in the open. You see, I learned more than you did in Africa. While you holed up in an air-conditioned hotel and resurrected those eight rounds for your half a million advance, I thumbed my way to what was once called Biafra. I went to the cemetery where Dick Tiger lies dead of causes unknown at age thirty-five in newly prosperous Nigeria. How did you miss Dick Tiger? You who were the first white negro, you the crown prince of nigger-lovers, you missed the ace of the jungle. Yes, he was the heart of the dark continent, the Aristotle of Africa. A middleweight and a revolutionary. While you clowned around with Torres and Ali and Emile Griffith, Tiger packed his gear and headed home to see what he could pick clean from the starvation and the slaughter. He went home to face bad times and bad people and was dead a week after his plane touched down. Where were you and the sportswriters, Norm, when Dick Tiger needed you? I at least made the trek to the resting

place of the hero, and it was there in the holy calm of his forgotten tomb that I vowed to come back and make my move. No one offered me a penny {{pg|511|512}} for “The Dick Tiger Story” as told to me, so you won’t get it now either. Come out to the middle, Norm. No, you’re still coy, relaxed; well, two can play that

one.

I sit down in the corner opposite him; I fan myself with the mouthpiece.

To the audience it looks as if we’re kidding. He sloping against the ropes, I twenty-five feet away pretending I’m at a picnic in the English countryside. Real fight fans know what’s up. There is only a certain amount of available energy. In the universe it’s called entropy; in the ring it is known as “ppf,” punches per flurry. Neither of us has the strength at this moment to muster the necessary ten to twelve ppf’s to really damage the other. Fighters trained in the Golden Gloves or various homes for juvenile delinquents will go through the motions anyway. They will stalk and butt and sweat upon each other. But Mailer and I, knowing the score, wait out the round. Archie Moore leafs through the Texas Boxing Commission rules. Some fans boo, others take advantage of the lull to refresh themselves.

For me, every second is a victory. Round by round I wear the laurel and the bay. Who thought I could even last the first? Five will get me tenure, seven and I’ll be a dean. Yes, I can wait, Norm, until you come to me in midring

with all that bulk and experience. Come to me with your strength, your

wisdom, your compassion, and your insight. This time at the bell we are

both giggling, aware each to each of the resined canvas upon which we paint our destinies.

I walk over to his corner where he sits on his stool, kingly again, not hurt as he was after round one. He offers me a drink from his green bottle. We spit into the same bucket. I know his seconds don’t like me coming over there between rounds. Poirier turns away but Norman smiles, cuffs me playfully behind the neck. Together we walk out to await the bell.

For twice three minutes we have traveled the same turf. Ambition and

gravity have held us in a dialectical encounter, but as round three begins, Mailer’s old friend the irrational joins us. No matter that I actually see the

pig-tailed form of my sister beckoning me between mouthfuls of popcorn to rush at you. Aeneas, Hector, Dick Tiger, they too saw the phantoms that promise the sunshine and delight after one quick lunge. My sister is nine years old. She wears a gingham dress. She is right there beside you, close

enough for Archie to stumble on.

“Watch out, kid,” I say, “you shouldn’t even be here.” “It’s okay,” Mailer says. “She has my permission.”{{pg|512|513}}

She throws the empty popcorn box over the ropes. “Please take me home,” she whimpers, and as she stands there the power enters me, the ppf quotient floods my own soul, and I rush, not in fear, not in anger, but in full sweet confidence, I rush with both fists to the middle of Norman Mailer.

First my left with all its quixotic force and then my sure and solid right lands in the valley of his solar plexus. Next my head in a raw, cruel butt joins

the piston arms. Hands, arms, head, neck, back, legs. As a boy for the first time shakes the high dive in the presence of his parents, with such pride do

I dive. And with the power of falling human weight knifing through the chlorine-dark pool do I catapult. As a surgeon lays open flesh, indifferently, thinking not of tumors but of the arc of his raquet in full backswing, with

such professional ease am I engulfed.

I hear the wind leave his lungs. Like large soft earlobes, they shade me from the glare of his heart. The sound of his digestive juices is rhythmic and

I resonate to the music of his inner organs. I hear the liver weakened from drink but on key still, the gentle reek of kidneys, the questioning solo of pancreas, the harmonicalike appendix, all here all around me, and the cautionary

voice of my mother: “Be careful, little one, when you hit someone so

hard in the stomach. That’s how Houdini died.”

Somewhere else Archie Moore is counting ten over a prone loser. Judges are packing up scorecards and handbags snap shut. I am comfortable in the

damp prison of his rib cage. His blood explodes like little Hiroshimas every second.

“Concentrate,” says Mailer, “so the experience will not be wasted on you.”

“It’s hard,” I say, “amid the color and distraction.”

“I know,” says my gentle master, “but think about one big thing.”

I concentrate on the new edition of the ''Encyclopedia Britannica''. It works. My mind is less a palimpsest, more a blank page.

“You may be too young to remember,” he says, “James Jones and James T. Farrell and James Gould Cozzens and dozens like them. I took them all on, absorbed all they had and went on my way, just like Shakespeare ate up

''Tottel’s Miscellany''.”

“No lectures,” I gasp, “only truths.”

“I am the Twentieth Century,” Mailer says. “Go forth from here toward the east and earn your bread by the sweat of your brow. Never write another line

nor raise a fist to any man.” His words and his music are like Christmas

morning. I go forth, a seer.

==Work Cited==

* {{cite book |last=Apple |first=Max |date=1976 |title=The Oranging of America |url= |location=New York |publisher=Viking |ref=harv }}

[[Category:~~Short Stories~~ (MR)]]

[[Category:Classic Interpretations (MR)]]

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 {{DISPLAYTITLE:<span style="font-size:22px;">{{BASEPAGENAME}}/</span>{{SUBPAGENAME}}}}
 {{MR04}}
-{{Working}} <!-- EDIT BELOW THIS LINE -->
+{{Byline |last=Apple |first=Max |abstract=Max Apple’s satirical short story imagines a surreal boxing match between the narrator and the literary titan Norman Mailer, blending bravado, absurdity, and literary criticism. Through this hilarious and metaphoric battle, Apple pokes fun at Mailer’s outsized persona and reputation while reflecting on the struggles of ambition, authorship, and masculine performance in American letters. |note=Reprinted by permission of the author, Max {{harvtxt|Apple|1976|pp=49–60}}. |url=http://prmlr.us/mr04app}}
-{{Byline|last=Apple|first=Max|note=Reprinted by permission of the author, Max Apple. From {{cite book |last= |first= |date= |title=The Oranging of America |url= |location=New York |publisher=Viking |year=1976 |pages=49-60 |ref=harv }}|url=....}}
 ==I==
@@ Line 11: / Line 9: @@
 unlikely. Look at Pete Rademacher—not even a pro. Fresh from a three-round Olympic decision, he got a shot at Floyd Patterson, made the cover of
 ''Sports Illustrated'', picked up an easy hundred grand. Now that is one fight
-that Mr. Mailer, the literary lion, chose not to discuss. The clash between
+that Mr. Mailer, the Iiterary lion, chose not to discuss. The clash between
 pro and amateur didn’t grab his imagination like two spades in Africa or the
 dark passion of Emile Griffith. Yes, you know how to pick your spots, Norman. I who have studied your moves think that your best instinct is judgment. It’s your secret punch. You knew how to stake out Kennedy and
@@ Line 115: / Line 113: @@
 for good old Teddy I might have forgotten. Like the most careful teacher printing large block letters for an eager second grade, I inscribe and turn to four sides so all can see, “The Naked and the Dead Is His Best Work.”
+When Norman reads my inscription, he is swishing Gatorade in his
+mouth while his second, Richard Poirier, applies with a Q-tip glycerine and rosewater to the Mailer lips. When my barb registers, he swallows the
+Gatorade and bites the Q-tip in half. Poirier and José Torres can barely keep
+him on his stool. They whisper frantically, each in an ear. Archie is across the ring getting a quick shine from a boy who manages, on tiptoe, to reach
+with his buffing cloth up to the apron of the elevated ring. Arch kneels to tip
+with an autograph.
+When the bell tolls round two, I face a Mailer who has with herculean effort
+quickly calmed himself. He has sucked in his cheeks for control and
+looks, for the moment, like a tubercular housewife. I see immediately that he
+has beaten back the demiurge. We will stay in the realms of the intellect. His
+gloves are completely laced and his steps are tight and full of control. He dances over to the ropes and beckons me with an open glove to taste his
+newness.
+Who do you think I am, Norm? Didn’t I travel half a world with no hope
+of writing a book about it to watch Ali lure George Foreman to the ropes? Not for me, Norm, is your coy ease along the top strand. I’ll wait and take you in the open. You see, I learned more than you did in Africa. While you holed up in an air-conditioned hotel and resurrected those eight rounds for your half a million advance, I thumbed my way to what was once called Biafra. I went to the cemetery where Dick Tiger lies dead of causes unknown at age thirty-five in newly prosperous Nigeria. How did you miss Dick Tiger? You who were the first white negro, you the crown prince of nigger-lovers, you missed the ace of the jungle. Yes, he was the heart of the dark continent, the Aristotle of Africa. A middleweight and a revolutionary. While you clowned around with Torres and Ali and Emile Griffith, Tiger packed his gear and headed home to see what he could pick clean from the starvation and the slaughter. He went home to face bad times and bad people and was dead a week after his plane touched down. Where were you and the sportswriters, Norm, when Dick Tiger needed you? I at least made the trek to the resting
+place of the hero, and it was there in the holy calm of his forgotten tomb that I vowed to come back and make my move. No one offered me a penny {{pg|511|512}} for “The Dick Tiger Story” as told to me, so you won’t get it now either. Come out to the middle, Norm. No, you’re still coy, relaxed; well, two can play that
+one.
+I sit down in the corner opposite him; I fan myself with the mouthpiece.
+To the audience it looks as if we’re kidding. He sloping against the ropes, I twenty-five feet away pretending I’m at a picnic in the English countryside. Real fight fans know what’s up. There is only a certain amount of available energy. In the universe it’s called entropy; in the ring it is known as “ppf,” punches per flurry. Neither of us has the strength at this moment to muster the necessary ten to twelve ppf’s to really damage the other. Fighters trained in the Golden Gloves or various homes for juvenile delinquents will go through the motions anyway. They will stalk and butt and sweat upon each other. But Mailer and I, knowing the score, wait out the round. Archie Moore leafs through the Texas Boxing Commission rules. Some fans boo, others take advantage of the lull to refresh themselves.
+For me, every second is a victory. Round by round I wear the laurel and the bay. Who thought I could even last the first? Five will get me tenure, seven and I’ll be a dean. Yes, I can wait, Norm, until you come to me in midring
+with all that bulk and experience. Come to me with your strength, your
+wisdom, your compassion, and your insight. This time at the bell we are
+both giggling, aware each to each of the resined canvas upon which we paint our destinies.
+I walk over to his corner where he sits on his stool, kingly again, not hurt as he was after round one. He offers me a drink from his green bottle. We spit into the same bucket. I know his seconds don’t like me coming over there between rounds. Poirier turns away but Norman smiles, cuffs me playfully behind the neck. Together we walk out to await the bell.
+For twice three minutes we have traveled the same turf. Ambition and
+gravity have held us in a dialectical encounter, but as round three begins, Mailer’s old friend the irrational joins us. No matter that I actually see the
+pig-tailed form of my sister beckoning me between mouthfuls of popcorn to rush at you. Aeneas, Hector, Dick Tiger, they too saw the phantoms that promise the sunshine and delight after one quick lunge. My sister is nine years old. She wears a gingham dress. She is right there beside you, close
+enough for Archie to stumble on.
+“Watch out, kid,” I say, “you shouldn’t even be here.” “It’s okay,” Mailer says. “She has my permission.”{{pg|512|513}}
+She throws the empty popcorn box over the ropes. “Please take me home,” she whimpers, and as she stands there the power enters me, the ppf quotient floods my own soul, and I rush, not in fear, not in anger, but in full sweet confidence, I rush with both fists to the middle of Norman Mailer.
+First my left with all its quixotic force and then my sure and solid right lands in the valley of his solar plexus. Next my head in a raw, cruel butt joins
+the piston arms. Hands, arms, head, neck, back, legs. As a boy for the first time shakes the high dive in the presence of his parents, with such pride do
+I dive. And with the power of falling human weight knifing through the chlorine-dark pool do I catapult. As a surgeon lays open flesh, indifferently, thinking not of tumors but of the arc of his raquet in full backswing, with
+such professional ease am I engulfed.
+I hear the wind leave his lungs. Like large soft earlobes, they shade me from the glare of his heart. The sound of his digestive juices is rhythmic and
+I resonate to the music of his inner organs. I hear the liver weakened from drink but on key still, the gentle reek of kidneys, the questioning solo of pancreas, the harmonicalike appendix, all here all around me, and the cautionary
+voice of my mother: “Be careful, little one, when you hit someone so
+hard in the stomach. That’s how Houdini died.”
+Somewhere else Archie Moore is counting ten over a prone loser. Judges are packing up scorecards and handbags snap shut. I am comfortable in the
+damp prison of his rib cage. His blood explodes like little Hiroshimas every second.
+“Concentrate,” says Mailer, “so the experience will not be wasted on you.”
+“It’s hard,” I say, “amid the color and distraction.”
+“I know,” says my gentle master, “but think about one big thing.”
+I concentrate on the new edition of the ''Encyclopedia Britannica''. It works. My mind is less a palimpsest, more a blank page.
+“You may be too young to remember,” he says, “James Jones and James T. Farrell and James Gould Cozzens and dozens like them. I took them all on, absorbed all they had and went on my way, just like Shakespeare ate up
+''Tottel’s Miscellany''.”
+“No lectures,” I gasp, “only truths.”
+“I am the Twentieth Century,” Mailer says. “Go forth from here toward the east and earn your bread by the sweat of your brow. Never write another line
+nor raise a fist to any man.” His words and his music are like Christmas
+morning. I go forth, a seer.
+==Work Cited==
+{{Refbegin}}
+* {{cite book |last=Apple |first=Max |date=1976 |title=The Oranging of America |url= |location=New York |publisher=Viking |ref=harv }}
+{{Refend}}
 {{Review}}
 {{DEFAULTSORT:Inside Norman Mailer}}
-[[Category:Short Stories (MR)]]
+[[Category:Classic Interpretations (MR)]]