The Mailer Review/Volume 3, 2009/Courtly Mailer: The Legacy Derby: Difference between revisions

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{{Byline|last=Kaufmann|first=Donald L. |abstract=Norman Mailer’s status as a writer should be determined by the canon of his work and not by his biography. Any consideration of Mailer’s legacy must take into account the conspicuous Mailer canon: two Pulitzer Prizes and other major awards (except for the Nobel). There are over forty books, several truly weighty novels, stories and poems, and much nonfiction, including essays, articles, literary criticism, stage and screenplays, TV and film ventures (actor, director, critic), and much of ephemera. There is also, perhaps, this age’s most voluminous letter writing, many of which are astonishingly creative and revealing. |url=https://prmlr.us/mr03kau}}

Naturally, I differ with ''Smithsonian'' and Morrow. So, I toured the derby site, did some laps cruising, not speeding, but stopping. I consider my experience with multiple Mailer “stops” or “visits.” Over a span of more than forty years, four visits of them were in-depth and three visits were less so. The following discussion is not a composed memoir, just a series of short takes. I was looking for “Courtly Norman” and I found him.

Our first meeting was a bundle of “hellos” and “smiles.” The English department at the University of Iowa had billed me as a pioneer scholar, writing the first doctoral dissertation on Norman Mailer. That fact was what greeted Mailer, who was on a college tour as an “''Esquire'' Literary Symposium” panelist. I was only four years younger than Mailer and must have given off a whiff of pre-academic street sensibilities. This part of me Mailer must have sensed or at least that’s what his first handshake said: “All’s well that starts well.”

The “''Esquire'' Literary Symposium” was not Camelot or Versailles and Mailer was hardly “Courtly,” but he was aware, sensitive, amiable, and most promising. Norman Mailer and I had a future, I was sure of it.

Our second substantial meeting occurred in 1965 in Alaska during a Mailer “culture shock” visit. He was jolted from a Lower-48 America to a magical Arctic America. In the Lower 48, the media are wired. Up north, there is only skeletal static. Norman had landed, already a product of the early Morrows and the incessant media. He was in transition, as was his “character” and canon. The transformation would last, but five days and for the final four days I was an eyewitness.

Mailer certainly was not visiting an American Metropolis in the tundra (echoes of his final novel, ''The Castle'' In The Forest). But he was making the next best “stop” in 1965 America at a three-day wilderness city with ''Castle'' atmospherics. Although I did not know when Mailer landed in Alaska, he immediately sensed that his Lower 48 self and the media-crafted image of the “big bad celebrity” was a lost art up North. Mailer, instead, sensed both an old and new American frontier atmosphere and merged with both of them. If a passerby New Yorker would have spotted this star visitor, he might well have blinked and said, “Where has the real Norman Mailer gone?” I would have answered, “He’s going back to the Lower-48” with loads of Frontier Charm, and that’s why the term—Courtly Norman—stuck.

Culturally speaking, this visit was a drastic shift from a wilderness city to the “sin center” on Cape Cod. In 1967 Provincetown was Mailer’s summer home. Only two years had elapsed since the Alaska trip. How much of that “Arctic Metamorphosis” was still healthy and intact in Mailer?

In the later afternoon Mailer made an appearance and it was quite casual, only a little soft mixing with the crowd. For hours that afternoon, I enjoyed chatting with the hip Mailer folk, with an endless supply of fizz drinks and finger food. We all stayed until the end of the open house.

Their spiffy bayside home with a dock over the water seemed more “his” than “hers.” Beverly called it a “part-time hotel,” but I saw it as “fulltime party pad,” but this weekend a partial exception. On my last Ptown night in a bedroom on that dock over the water, I reviewed a weekend’s appraisal of “Mailer’s “character” that also examined his literary canon. The body of his work, indeed, was wide and deep. What about Mailer as a good family man?

The caption of this trip might well read: the Norman Mailer meltdown that never was. Norman had exemplary existential timing. The local media were primed and there was a scheduled one-day Mailer stopover at the University of South Florida. It was at his time that I met a new Norman, the media’s “Prisoner of Sex.” This controversial topic and book rocked the feminist movement, and marked Mailer. Gender warfare was stormy and blistery in 1972.

The Mailer agenda began, tastefully, with an early four o’clock dinner in Tampa’s historic Ybor City at a renowned Cuban restaurant. I suspected that Mailer would be enthralled with its classic interior of early Spanish tiles and mosaics and so he was. Among the twenty or more dinner guests, some came from Miami and Orlando and some were Norman’s personal friends, seldom seen. His mood soared and the cuisine outdid expectations. For a festive two hours we dined. Norman, charmingly blended with the setting, its cuisine, multiple conversations, and companionship. Norman sat content, obviously very comfortable with himself. I sat and squinted and imagined the atoms of all those tiles and mosaics reassembling into an original Castilian Court, with Norman at the head table.

I missed the podium fireworks. Only later when the evening’s party was in full swing did I hear about how Mailer stunned everyone by turning “trickster.” This February night had turned frigid, but over a thousand people filled the auditorium, including the panting media and Kathy Freeperson and her shock militia. The stage was set for gender warfare and cultural mayhem. Mailer’s speech, whatever its merit, was greeted by bedlam. Kathy was leading the audience in jeers, boos and catcalls. Mailer and his speech were being snuffed out.

Ah, Norman. He had conned Kathy and Company into switching a stump speech into a hit show. Moreover, he earned a five-figure speaker’s fee while Kathy’s group worked for free. Mailer also outdid a common media prophecy—that he could never ever resist violence. In fact, he stamped it out. His Tampa visit did not create headlines, only modest coverage. Everybody won, and that included Kathy, Norman, and his Legacy Quotient.

This “visit” was a Miami peepshow, mostly a three-day blur, because I was no longer at stage-center, relegated to become one of those proverbial lost souls in the crowd, even as was Mailer himself lost among fellow celebrities. For once, Mailer and his “character” were too obscure to probe.

The “show” was the 1972 Democratic Party National Convention, all geared-up with celebrity overload. Norman did have a spotlighted niche. He was in full throttle as the arch-practitioner of the New Journalism, today’s creative nonfiction. ''Life'' magazine had contracted Mailer to write a convention ''exposé'' and the focus was to be the McGovern-Eagleton Democratic ticket for the Presidency. Norman on deadline—and busy, busy.

But there was one event where I could watch Norman in slow motion. A mutual friend from Tampa hosted a glitzy Fort Lauderdale party. Our host was a high-flying attorney (Rolls, yacht, and much more) and he had show business connections. Word got out. Local newspapers were alerted, especially society editors. There were multiple guests of honor and Norman was one of them. Although the Tampa party was Maileresque, this Lauderdale bash promised a new Mailer perspective—his behavior among his social peers. Would there be party room peace or conflict?

So, too, was Fortune Rock, a geographical rarity. Norman’s driving instructions actually included unmapped lanes, dense foliage, and even tree markings. I felt lost all the way.

My first thought on seeing Norman was that he can’t wait to get those books in his hands. And Norman acted as such—he was full speed. He told me to get those boxes inside and we would make dinner.I had forgotten about food, although it was past the dinner hour, and I assumed that my host was hungry and not just for books, so tonight would be makeshift eating. Norman said, “Open up the fridge and make yourself at home.” Supper meant creative sandwiches, beer, and whiskey—boilermakers.

We finished dining, cleared and cleaned the outsized kitchen table, and I opened my two boxes next to Norman’s chair. Once he had graced the table with the first collectibles, nothing matter but the books and the boilermakers.

For about four or five hours, we talked. I listened less as a visiting collector and more as a character in a dramatic narrative. Norman’s most vital body part was his mind or, more aptly, his brain because Norman was always mimicking other writers who see their literary creations as their real children. My two boxes, figuratively, were filled with “brain children.”And what father can resist being fascinated by his offspring.

The Fortune Rock kitchen talk was beginning to sound like the demystification of an author’s legacy potential. It was a surreal evening. A major writer discusses so much of the background of his life and work.

That Fortune Rock kitchen talk was mostly a riot of irony, which describes Stephen Crane’s early canon. (Crane’s themes echo Mailer’s). Mailer has a complex character inside of him that resists facile explanations. But Mailer also exhibits a riotous ironic sensibility. That is why readers and critics, friends and foes, liken him to Proteus and Heraclitus. A flux-man creates flux-works. Thus goes the Mailer Paradox. A paradox-man is more at home, not with certainties, but with mysteries.

The mystery of this Fortune Rock table talk was that it was a paradox. What happened really didn’t happen, that is, as a useful “on the record” encounter. It is virtually impossible to examine a writer and his work in any grand manner. Common sense dictates that most writers live and create off—and not on—the record. I am speaking of Norman Mailer and not other writers, especially his LQ competitors, who sometimes allow their behavior and creations to speak for themselves.

Only a fool expects a rare occasion to have an encore. I was wise enough not to expect a Fortune Rock repeat, yet, here I was waiting for Mailer. After not seeing him for over two decades he was coming to Tampa and St. Petersburg. I expected that his brief stopover would be a ho-hum encore of that 1972 podium fireworks visit, but again Mailer surprised me. He brought a new companion, Father Time.

My shock was understandable. At Fortune Rock, Norman was still in high gear mid-fifties. He was now eighty-one. Who could imagine an old Norman Mailer, an octogenarian, albeit a very tough one.

Phil was right. Father Time did happen to tag along.

There was the usual wait for a table, so we stationed ourselves in an alcove between the bar and foyer, both of which were crowded. We sat and paired off: Mike and Phil to get acquainted; Norman and I to share some privacy.

Phil mentioned to me that his 13-year-old son, Phil Jr., was a baseball pitcher and asked Norman to autograph his prized baseball. Norman did so, saying, “I’ve signed all kinds of things, even body parts, but this is the first time I have ever signed a baseball.” So Norman Mailer and his mighty pen and “America’s Favorite Pastime” put a signature on the evening. The Tampa farewell party could not have been better.

After his departure, I was left with one pensive question. On this visit did I learn more about Norman Mailer or Father Time and, if the latter—were my future Mailer “visits” on a shortlist, numbered?

What remained of the Mailer future was stark. In October of 2005–2007, The Norman Mailer Society held its annual conference in Provincetown. Norman was an active participant each year, hosting a party at his house on Saturday night for all conference participants.

Yes, the Mailer mind still pumped prime, but not the body. Mailer was still spurning the wheelchair but was slowly failing. Yet Norman was always enthused to greet the guests at his annual Saturday night party. He was always eager to be with his admirers.

Such a dark future, I also sensed, was unthinkable for this small throng so devoted to Norman. The parties purred on with typical staging: Mailer seated, room-center, surrounded by autograph seekers, well-wishers, all waiting their turn to park themselves alongside those canes and the host, for brief interludes of big or small talk, or just long hellos. Norman frequently flashed his signature big smile.

Norman Mailer, in a New York hospital, died on November 10, 2007. He had been scheduled for an encore October podium appearance at the University of South Florida and a reunion with Phil Sipiora and me. Such was not to be.

“Someone in the front passenger seat with Norman Mailer, the driver.”  

But I still have the LQ Derby in my sights. That ride makes LQ sense.

Yes, I’m still at the starting gate, and I’m supposedly destined to assume that Norman Mailer’s “bombastic behavior” (aka Shakespeare’s “Sound and Fury”) signifies nothing in a LQ endgame. But such would not be the case if you, Lance Morrow, would consider your attack article to be a trial run of an equally trial derby outing to advertise resumés and establish odds and starting positions for other obvious literary entries such as Bellow, Capote, Malamud, Morrison, Oates, Roth, Vonnegut, Vidal and others.

Please take a fresh long look at the real upcoming LQ derby, make some relevant visits, and do a more thorough probe of Mailer’s character. Try, yes, try to ignore the media whose essence is to magnify the minuscule and overkill rarity. The media result: a hyperinflated ratio between “character flaws” and their equivalent LQ value. For example, a “wife stabbing” equals two major novels, or five public brawls eliminate ''The Naked And The Dead''.

I offer an early oddsmaker’s tip: a LQ “slow starter” like Norman Mailer (read his canon carefully with future eyes) might surprise the ultimate judge: Posterity.

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