26
edits
The Mailer Review/Volume 3, 2009/Courtly Mailer: The Legacy Derby: Difference between revisions
The Mailer Review/Volume 3, 2009/Courtly Mailer: The Legacy Derby (view source)
Revision as of 02:09, 19 June 2021
, 19 June 2021FInished page 298
(Finished Miami section starting on Saint Petersburg/Tampa section) |
(FInished page 298) |
||
| Line 255: | Line 255: | ||
podium fireworks visit, but again Mailer surprised me. He brought a new | podium fireworks visit, but again Mailer surprised me. He brought a new | ||
companion, Father Time. | companion, Father Time. | ||
As for the two decades of hiatus, it is somewhat complicated and not | |||
worth explaining, except to say that major writers are very busy and, if you | |||
know one, you must stay in contact to nourish the relationship, which I did | |||
not. I had some personal problems that preoccupied me. Norman and I had | |||
no breakup. We simply faded out. | |||
I was stunned at the first sight of Norman. He no longer walked unaided. | |||
Instead, he relied on twin canes. Indeed, a labored walk. He told me later that | |||
he would never go into a wheelchair. His hair was still a healthy gray and his | |||
face still mostly intact and intense, as were his eyes, especially when he | |||
flashed those Irish smiles. Overall, his body was in decline but his mind and | |||
intellect were still remarkably sharp. (I was later told that Norman kept sharp | |||
by daily workouts on the ''New York Time’s'' tough crossword puzzles.) | |||
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. | |||
This visit, by necessity, was tightly structured around a foursome: Norman, Mike Lennon (who now accompanied and watched over him), I, and Phil Sipiora, my colleague and friend and our official host as chair of the English department. An aged Mailer now seldom visited academe. This trip was an obvious exception, yet he still had star billing as the featured speaker at the well-attended Suncoast Writer’s Conference, a three-day multiple event at the University of South Florida St. Petersburg campus. All four of us stayed at the St. Petersburg Hilton. The Tampa-based farewell event was the Sipiora party and Phil had assured me this event would probably not be a “happening.” “Let’s see” I remarked dubiously. | |||
Phil was right. Father Time did happen to tag along. | |||
Our evening started and ended at Tampa’s most unlikely restaurant, | |||
Bern’s Steak House in old South Tampa, a local and tourist favorite, with its | |||
lurid decor, a virtual clone of an eighteenth century “Elegant Bordello.” The | |||
foursome arrived and Norman and Mike were hungry but tired. | |||
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. | |||
We spoke for twenty minutes, not much time to rehash twenty years. But we | |||
tried and Norman’s sharp intellect and memory helped considerably. | |||
Later, in my motel room and on the verge of sleep, I suddenly remembered sitting in the restaurant’s alcove when a semi-drunk New York gentleman looked at Norman and blurted out: “Hey, there’s Norman Mailer.” The upscale restaurant was crowded and dimly lit, but that tipsy gent was the only person who recognized ''the'' Norman Mailer. | |||
At four years younger than Norman, I wondered: Would I live long enough to see which Mailer would fade—the celebrity or the creator? | |||
At one o’clock in the afternoon of the next day, Norman entered the university auditorium. He winced, ambling on twin canes as the audience | |||
became hushed, a full house reverence. What fortuitous staging. An elderly | |||
Mailer appearing in St. Petersburg, a longtime urban refuge for retirees. Over | |||
five hundred people were in the audience, mostly women, generally over | |||
forty and genteel, and many aspiring writers. Norman entered as most everyone’s Grandfather or Elderly Uncle, trying to stay alive, as was most of the | |||
audience. And Norman bore the ultimate message: “How To Become A Published Writer.” | |||
Norman Mailer, as performer, old or young, never had it so good. | |||
His presentation lasted forty minutes. The first twenty minutes he stood | |||
at the podium, but he had weakened and needed to sit, his canes parked | |||
alongside. He lectured on writing skills, drawn from his recent book, ''The | |||
Spooky Art: Some Thoughts on Writing.'' But Grampa Norman made the | |||
“spooky” more folksy, including helpful tips, breezy anecdotes, and always a | |||
touch of profundity. The applause was deafening. | |||
Later that afternoon, after signing books, Mailer was near exhaustion. I | |||
was walking alongside him and he and his canes were barely making it | |||
up a steep ramp. Near the top, I either saw or thought I saw that he was | |||
falling. My instincts took over and I grabbed him, and momentarily held | |||
him. He roared: “Get off me. Leave me be.” His eyes momentarily flashed | |||
anger, even near-hatred, and I let him go. He regained his balance, opened | |||
the heavy door and I followed, in full knowledge that I had violated | |||
his untouchable independence. Norman would stay alive strictly on his own | |||
terms. | |||