The splendid thing about a conversation with Norman Mailer is the gusto he brings to it. Even after scores of encounters, week after week, with press and media across the country pumping his new opus, Harlot's Ghost, the writer's candor, his professionalism (he is businesslike, watch in hand, getting down to the basics) is a worthy performance and, beyond that, a totally disarming one.
Casual in open shirt and jeans, and relaxed in his suite at Los Angeles' posh Bel Air Hotel, the blue-eyed, graying, burly, sixty-eight-year-old displays a noticeably courtly air. He is hardly recognizable as the master of the shenanigan, literary cut-up, notoriety-seeking, Andy Warhol persona of years past. There is little nonsense about him. He talks precisely, quite fearlessly about his life and his work, altogether ready to laugh about his previous antics, the recurrent outbreaks of madness, both public and private, and the subsequent scandals resulting from them. He is willing too, at any point, to take on his literary confreres.
"You must understand," he offers, "that I had an enormous amount of mother love. Young men, first children who are adored by their mothers, tend to have an indefatigable confidence about their lives." He chuckles happily over the understatement. Then, devilishly, he continues the thought with, "Of course. I was once unbelievably innocent, because I thought all women were just as nice as my mother. It took quite some time for me to learn that her type doesn't show up all that often. In fact," and now he is roaring with laughter, "it looks like about all you ever get in life is, maybe, one to a customer."
No question about it, that notorious Mailer "confidence," rich in what he terms "ego funds to squander," might more accurately be dubbed arrogance. The trait has never deserted this man throughout a wild and stormy career. And indeed, with its generous support, he has over the years succeeded in raising the ire of just about everyone around him, whether it be moralists, feminists, politicians, literati, academics, or even outraged fight fans.
Taking on the world
When confronted with a suggestion concerning this compulsion to take on the world at large, to court controversy, to provoke fate by challenging unnecessarily and shooting first, he protests, "I suppose what you're saying is that my life has been as interesting, or more interesting than my novels. I clearly don't see it that way. Everyone's own life feels quiet
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