Kaylie Jones, remembrance
Reflections: Norman Mailer at 100, ed. Gerald R. Lucas and Maggie McKinley (The Norman Mailer Society, 2023), pp. 28–29; transcribed from the final interior PDF
From Reflections: Norman Mailer at 100 (The Norman Mailer Society, 2023), pp. 28–29.
This was during the February 1978 black tie book launch for my father, James Jones’, last novel, Whistle, which had been four chapters from completion when he died of congestive heart failure the previous May. I was sixteen when my father died, three months before my seventeenth birthday. There must have been three hundred people at the party, which took place at the Park Avenue Armory, and I was in such shock that I only remember the evening as a series of hazy images that have the dark and faded quality of old film clips.
My mother was understandably anxious about this book launch. We had to put our best foot forward and look the part of the dignified and proud family before the New York literati, who had for the most part not been kind to my father. We had to show them we were stronger than they were, that we could remain proud in the face of their disdain. My father had always been considered an outsider by the gatekeepers of the literary establishment, a Midwestern hick from Bumfuck, IL, a common foot soldier in World War II, with no college education to speak of (one semester on the GI Bill). He was almost entirely autodidactic, and had read so many books that there had not been a room in my childhood home that wasn’t filled with wall-to-wall bookshelves.
I remember standing in the reception line, cameras flashing all around us. Suddenly Norman Mailer appeared before me, whom I had never met. He’d once been my father’s best friend, but Norman had become persona non grata in our home shortly before I was born. None of the other writers involved in that infamous literary knock-down fight had been able to explain to me the exact nature of their dispute, because everyone had a different version. But, an enemy of my father’s was an enemy of mine, and I wondered who had invited him to the party.
I wanted to snub him, I remember, but this was not the place nor the time. Holding up the long reception line, he grasped my hand and held onto it, leaning forward so that our noses were almost touching, and told me that the greatest regret of his life was that he hadn’t made peace with my father before he died. Nine months had passed, and still just the mention of my father brought a choking sensation to my throat, and I felt like I couldn’t breathe. Tears pricked my eyes but I forced myself to hold them in, wondering if Norman Mailer meant what he was saying, or if he was just being polite.
He meant was he was saying. Over the next forty-odd years he’d repeat this to me on many occasions, and we would become good friends and trusted allies as standard bearers of my father’s fallen flag.
My deep and abiding love for Norman Mailer has little to do with his literary genius, and everything to do with his decency and kindness; his willingness to admit a wrong that had plagued him for years. That is true courage, and Norman’s generosity toward me that night, and in the years that followed, helped guide my way as a writer and as a lifelong teacher of the written word.
Kaylie Jones