Remembering Norman
Reflections: Norman Mailer at 100, ed. Gerald R. Lucas and Maggie McKinley (The Norman Mailer Society, 2023), p. 94; transcribed from the final interior PDF
From Reflections: Norman Mailer at 100 (The Norman Mailer Society, 2023), p. 94.
At a dinner in Norman’s Brooklyn house in honor of Abe Rosenthal, at the time executive editor of the New York Times, a problem arose when Abe’s wife refused to be seated next to me. I had jocularly commented in a column that if Abe made love as badly as he wrote I felt very sorry for his wife. (He was a hell of an editor but a clumsy scribe.)
Norris was at a loss what to do but then Norman put a chair to his right and installed me there for the duration. My sudden place of honor was noted by the Rosenthals who later in the evening were nice enough to acknowledge that loyalty to friends was not an unfamiliar aspect of Norman’s character.
Loyalty to friends and lost causes was as much a characteristic of Norman’s as was his physical and moral courage. When I asked him to teach me how to head butt, I expected the worst. Instead, he was gentle and thorough, and when I asked if brain damage worried him, he looked puzzled: “Writers have very tough heads, there’s no way there can be any brain damage.” At my annual New Year’s Eve party I once introduced him to the richest and, at the time, prettiest girl in Israel, Irit Federman. Norman was giving her that look of his. “Why don’t you ever come to Israel, Mister Mailer?” she asked accusingly. “Because they don’t all look like you, sweetheart,” said Norman and walked away.
Loyalty, courage, talent, Norman Mailer could teach the pampered celebs of today a thing or two, but for those traits of his he deserves to be canceled more than most.
Taki Theodoracopulos