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The Mailer Review/Volume 2, 2008/The Time of His Time: A Celebration of the Life of Norman Mailer/One More for the Road: Difference between revisions
The Mailer Review/Volume 2, 2008/The Time of His Time: A Celebration of the Life of Norman Mailer/One More for the Road (view source)
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While he was writing ''[[The Fight]]'', his account of the epic boxing match between [[w:Muhammad Ali|Muhammad Ali]] and [[w:George Foreman|George Foreman]] in Zaire, my uncle discovered a book of Bantu philosophy that excited him because it articulated an idea he had always held but never expressed that people were not so much beings as they were forces. | While he was writing ''[[The Fight]]'', his account of the epic boxing match between [[w:Muhammad Ali|Muhammad Ali]] and [[w:George Foreman|George Foreman]] in Zaire, my uncle discovered a book of Bantu philosophy that excited him because it articulated an idea he had always held but never expressed that people were not so much beings as they were forces. | ||
I thought of that when he was in the hospital at the end of his life, in a weakened state, voice muted by the tube in his trachea, because his force, or what the African tribesmen called ''muntu'', was still so powerful. On what would turn out to be the last day of his life, the whole family gathered in his hospital room. The doctors had warned us that his organs were failing, but when we saw the light in his blue eyes along with the return of some of that irrepressible | I thought of that when he was in the hospital at the end of his life, in a weakened state, voice muted by the tube in his trachea, because his force, or what the African tribesmen called ''muntu'', was still so powerful. On what would turn out to be the last day of his life, the whole family gathered in his hospital room. The doctors had warned us that his organs were failing, but when we saw the light in his blue eyes along with the return of some of that irrepressible {{NM}} energy, none of us could believe they were right. Don’t read too much into it, they said. A dying man sometimes receives a last gift of clarity and energy before the end. | ||
Our own energy, by contrast, seemed to ebb and flow, and go up and down, and so we took turns and spelled each other, and people went out and people came back. At one point, several of us were in the room, and my phone rang. It was Michael Mailer. He was out having lunch with some of the others. He said, “Do you think Dad would like a last drink?” This immediately struck me as a great idea. I leaned in close to the bed and said, “Norm, Michael wants to know if you’d like him to bring back a drink for you….” My uncle’s eyes did a veritable jig. “What’ll it be?” I asked him. “Scotch? Vodka tonic? Rum and OJ?” | Our own energy, by contrast, seemed to ebb and flow, and go up and down, and so we took turns and spelled each other, and people went out and people came back. At one point, several of us were in the room, and my phone rang. It was Michael Mailer. He was out having lunch with some of the others. He said, “Do you think Dad would like a last drink?” This immediately struck me as a great idea. I leaned in close to the bed and said, “Norm, Michael wants to know if you’d like him to bring back a drink for you….” My uncle’s eyes did a veritable jig. “What’ll it be?” I asked him. “Scotch? Vodka tonic? Rum and OJ?” | ||