Stephen Lennon, remembrance
Reflections: Norman Mailer at 100, ed. Gerald R. Lucas and Maggie McKinley (The Norman Mailer Society, 2023), pp. 42–43; transcribed from the final interior PDF
From Reflections: Norman Mailer at 100 (The Norman Mailer Society, 2023), pp. 42–43.
A house filled with books was my childhood. As Norman’s last wife Norris noted, “books are kudzu.” They filled our Illinois prairie house like the infestation covering the south of the United States. We were the last family I knew of to purchase a color television, but words and ideas filled our home. The idea of Norman was prominent, the idea of what he represented, his shape-shifting plasticity resonated to me and my brothers. My enduring dislike of plastic originated from Norman. His hatred of wearing any label on clothing I have embraced. Norman did not want to be defined by any brand and his celebration of taking risk, of endurance, and the want, the drive to rappel into the unknown came from him and my parents.
I introduced Norman and Norris to several girlfriends over the years. When I said I was getting married, they both immediately asked if my girl was pregnant. When I said, “not yet,” a mischievous glint came to Norman’s eye. He told me that to be wicked was a quality to be found and embraced. The opening lines of Macbeth come to mind, yet I trace Norman’s idea of wickedness back to that glint, his machismo, pluck, and daring.
When I lived in New York City as a graduate student, I worked with Norman to clean out his warehouse of books in a studio Down Under Manhattan Bridge. He paid me $15 dollars an hour and then rounded it up. He asked me when we were both dusty and sweaty what was my favorite book of his. Without hesitation, I said “Barbary Shore, because I knew nobody ever read it,” and he laughed with gargantuan glee.
Norman and I were friends. He once asked me to tell him a fisherman story. He knew I had taken the adventure of going to sea. I told him of when my boat once headed towards shore after only my first two weeks at sea, “to the beach,” in fishermen idiom, and I was a rookie. As we plunged through a storm towards Cape Cod, I was taken aside and told, “When we get to a pub, if the captain fights you have to fight.” Norman understood this implicitly; lucky for me no melee happened that day. He loved that my boat, the Osprey, was forced to the lee of the land at Provincetown and reveled in our real danger as we found succor there.
Stephen Lennon