Let's Do the Twist
Reflections: Norman Mailer at 100, ed. Gerald R. Lucas and Maggie McKinley (The Norman Mailer Society, 2023), p. 10; transcribed from the final interior PDF
From Reflections: Norman Mailer at 100 (The Norman Mailer Society, 2023), p. 10.
“Dear Bob, … Incidentally, I did look through your book and was much impressed with it… . I felt chagrined that I was unaware of its existence all the while we were talking. It wouldn’t necessarily have improved the interview, but I think I might have been less wary… . I liked you well enough and trusted you well enough, but then I’ve felt that way before and discovered I’d been had.”
That’s Norman Mailer, 15 November 1982, after I first met him in late September, on assignment, for a two-hour interview in his Brooklyn apartment. Earlier we had exchanged letters and a phone call, even as he was finishing up proofs of Ancient Evenings. After the intensity of prodding wary, fifty-nine-year-old Norman Mailer for journalistic gems about his boyhood, his Harvard years, the Army, and his forthcoming novel, I (in my early thirties) felt euphoric and exhausted — post-interview afterglow and tristesse.
As we prepared to leave just after noon, photographer Christopher Johnson and I were standing with Mailer in his living room. I spotted a full-sized jukebox in the corner.
Does it work?”
Sure,” he said. “Pick something.”
I glanced at the list of pop tunes and randomly punched in Chubby Checker’s “Let’s Do the Twist,” which suddenly boomed at party-decibels. I did a couple of lame twist moves and we all laughed, releasing the strain of a long interview. Then we shook hands and parted ways.
Later, I read Mailer telling Redford MacDougall that The Twist is the dance of “the dominant totalitarian middle class.” But over the years Mailer never held my sorry random choice against me.
Robert J. Begiebing