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{{byline |last=Grobel |first=Lawrence |abstract=A veteran interviewer of several decades explores a range of issues in his interview with Norman Mailer, including morality, personal development, the experience of being a writer, the challenges of success, fiction vs. nonfiction, American writers, and a number of other topics. |note=This interview originally appeared in ''Endangered Species: Writers Talk About Their Craft, Their Visions, Their Lives'' (Cambridge, MA: Da Capo Press, 2001). |url=https://prmlr.us/mr08grob}} | {{byline |last=Grobel |first=Lawrence |abstract=A veteran interviewer of several decades explores a range of issues in his interview with Norman Mailer, including morality, personal development, the experience of being a writer, the challenges of success, fiction vs. nonfiction, American writers, and a number of other topics. |note=This interview originally appeared in ''Endangered Species: Writers Talk About Their Craft, Their Visions, Their Lives'' (Cambridge, MA: Da Capo Press, 2001). |url=https://prmlr.us/mr08grob}} | ||
{{dc|dc=W|hat can on say about Norman {{NM}}}} that he probably hasn’t already said about himself? I grew up on Mailer. His great journalism in ''Esquire''; his incredible gift of metaphor; his surehandedness when it came to writing about taboos, superstitions, and excrement; his knuckleheaded foray into the brave new world of women’s lib. And his supreme self-confidence, focusing so superbly on himself in a book he audaciously and precisely titled ''[[Advertisements for Myself]]'' and later in ''[[Pieces and Pontifications]]''. And, of course, his fiction, which, until recently (and even still ...) he always believed would earn him a Nobel Prize, those purely Mailer novels beginning with ''[[The Naked and the Dead]]'' when he was just 25, and then ''[[Barbary Shore]]'', ''[[The Deer Park]]'', ''[[An American Dream]]'', ''[[Why Are We in Vietnam?]]'', ''[[The Executioner’s Song]]'' (history as novel), ''[[Ancient Evenings]]'', ''[[Tough Guys Don’t Dance]]'', ''[[Harlot’s Ghost]]'', ''[[The Gospel According to the Son]]''. | |||
Of all the interviews in this book, this one needed the least editing. With Mailer, conversation flows and you can chart his own comfort and discomfort zones. I had prepared many more questions than I had time to ask and he did insist that a portion of our talk concentrate on the novel he had then wanted to promote, ''Ancient Evenings''. That wasn’t a problem for me, I read and enjoyed that long, often daring novel, and admired how he managed to get so many of his Maileresque themes into the narrative. | |||
The Brooklyn born, Harvard educated National Book Award and Pulitzer Prize winning larger-than-life father of eight and co-founder of the ''Village Voice'' has survived six marriages, public feuds with [[w:Gore Vidal|Gore Vidal]], [[w:William Styron|William Styron]], and leaders of the Women’s Movement, two [[w:New York City: the 51st State|New York mayoral campaigns]], and a Mike Tyson-like battle with [[w:Rip Torn|Rip Torn]] biting open a piece of the actor’s ear during the making of Mailer’s movie ''[[w:Maidstone (film)|Maidstone]]'', which he wrote and directed. He’s been at the forefront of anti-war demonstrations, he’s covered such icons as [[w:John F. Kennedy|John F. Kennedy]], [[w:Marilyn Monroe|Marilyn Monroe]], [[w:Pablo Picasso|Pablo Picasso]], [[w:Muhammad Ali|Muhammad Ali]], and Madonna, has poked his nose into the mysterious lives of [[w:Lee Harvey Oswald|Lee Harvey Oswald]] and Jesus Christ, and spent seventeen days under observation in Bellevue for [[w:Stabbing of Adele Morales by Norman Mailer|stabbing his second wife]] at a party. | |||
He’s been described as both a radical and a puritan; as pugnacious and gentle; as anti-establishment and part of the establishment; as a fool and a serious writer. His early success led to his alienation, which he has called a 20th century condition. He believed from the very start that a writer of the largest dimension can alter the nerves and marrow of a nation and was determined to be that kind of writer. He’s also called himself one of the most wicked spirits in American life. As far back as 1954 [[Lipton’s Journal|he claimed that marijuana]] was more important to him than any love affair he ever had. He called drugs a “spiritual form of gambling,” experimented with LSD and said he tasted the essence of his own death, and wrote that a man must drink until he locates the truth. As for sex, he believes that masturbation cripples and leads to insanity, considers fellatio a weakness, raises the orgasm to the ultimate act of self-realization, defines great sex as that which makes you more religious, and gives the nod to [[w:William Burroughs|William Burroughs]] for changing the course of American literature with one sentence: “I see God in my asshole in the flashbulb of orgasm.” Civilization will enter Hell, he’s suggested, when no more good novels are written. | |||
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[[Category:Interviews (MR)]] |