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The Mailer Review/Volume 2, 2008/Tributes to Norman Mailer/Mailer on the Eve of Ancient Evenings: A Memory in Six Parts: Difference between revisions
The Mailer Review/Volume 2, 2008/Tributes to Norman Mailer/Mailer on the Eve of Ancient Evenings: A Memory in Six Parts (view source)
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Later, I realized that I had met a man living in the hushes, as Emily Dickinson put it, “between the Heaves of Storm.” One heave was the ten years spent writing his intended masterpiece, the other was the impending reception of that book. I was but one more distraction for an already distracted and aimless man in the still trough of those heaves. | Later, I realized that I had met a man living in the hushes, as Emily Dickinson put it, “between the Heaves of Storm.” One heave was the ten years spent writing his intended masterpiece, the other was the impending reception of that book. I was but one more distraction for an already distracted and aimless man in the still trough of those heaves. | ||
“For the first time in my life,” he said as we began talking, “I understand the feelings of people who’ve been working all their lives, but at the age of sixty or sixty-five, there they are sitting on a couch or walking around and their wife or husband says, ‘Relax, darling. Relax! | “For the first time in my life,” he said as we began talking, “I understand the feelings of people who’ve been working all their lives, but at the age of sixty or sixty-five, there they are sitting on a couch or walking around and their wife or husband says, ‘Relax, darling. Relax!{{' "}} | ||
Had some Hollywood director set out to film what has become an event in our collective consciousness — call it The-Young-Aspirant-Journeys-to-the-Literary-Master — this is how the director would have shot it. The master’s infamous digs would be the set: skylights, bookshelves, rigging and crow’s nest, and the picture window facing New York City’s financial district, with the Brooklyn Bridge in our right periphery and the Statue of Liberty in our left. The East River traffic below would send up its moans and clangs to the fourth-floor of the Brownstone as we talk. Then there would be, as indeed there was, the beautiful younger wife, the bright child who looks up at me with the searching, innocent eyes of my own daughter, the busy maid, and the photographer who sets up strobe lights and metallic umbrellas. It would be like waiting for the movie camera, but this time life was again imitating art. | Had some Hollywood director set out to film what has become an event in our collective consciousness — call it The-Young-Aspirant-Journeys-to-the-Literary-Master — this is how the director would have shot it. The master’s infamous digs would be the set: skylights, bookshelves, rigging and crow’s nest, and the picture window facing New York City’s financial district, with the Brooklyn Bridge in our right periphery and the Statue of Liberty in our left. The East River traffic below would send up its moans and clangs to the fourth-floor of the Brownstone as we talk. Then there would be, as indeed there was, the beautiful younger wife, the bright child who looks up at me with the searching, innocent eyes of my own daughter, the busy maid, and the photographer who sets up strobe lights and metallic umbrellas. It would be like waiting for the movie camera, but this time life was again imitating art. | ||