The Mourners

(photo via)

(Apologies for the frequent gaps between posts.  Hard at work completing my Fantasia Upon Themes Related to Highway Construction and Road Maintenance (To Millicent, Who Can Change a Tire, O Yes She Can) as Written for Wind Ensemble, Banjophone, Pogo Sticks and Barbershop Sextet.  If I don't finish it soon, my sixty-four-part tone poem on The History of Cute! will never be done by National "Joe" Day!  Anyway, someone died, so:)

"In the 60s, he was both a short-lived mayoral candidate and a proponent of the idea that New York City should secede to become a 51st State. Neither idea caught fire and New York City has since been overrun by America."  -- Choire Sicha makes nice work of his Norman Mailer Obit.

(Mailer, according to the Times' summation, also "proposed to ban private automobiles from the city."  So, yes.)

The Mailer goodbyes have been fun to read; their authors have been eager to enumerate the man's flaws and failures, but have done so with respect (and sometimes awe) rather than petty glee.  A pretty good measure of accomplishment, I think, to be respected for your failures.

I've never read anything by Norman Mailer, but the name evokes a time when writers received more attention than heiresses.  (Maybe that time never actually existed.  Or maybe it's just that there aren't enough writers hitting each other these days.  Foer, you big pussy, get with the program.)  I've never read anything by Norman Mailer, and at the rate I'm going I never will. 

I do have a Norman Mailer anecdote, though, and feel I earned it.  It gets whipped out rather often, relevance be damned, and I'm surprised it hasn't yet made it to this space.  Let's fix that:

Cooper Union hosted a tribute to Bernard Malamud in its Great Hall, a few years after he'd croaked.  I've never read anything by Malamud, either - hadn't then, haven't since, never will, as mere mention of his name, now, makes me curl up into a fetal ball and roll towards the most convenient corner.  But a friend pointed out that Kurt Vonnegut would be speaking, as would Norman Mailer, and that it was free and that we were poor.  So we went.

What?  How do you plan to get people to come to your memorial service?

Anyway.  The thing was hosted by a very talkative woman who wanted nothing more than to fill Time itself with Malamud's words.  She opened the evening with a couple lengthy passages she'd found appropriate or inspiring; then, in between every speaker, she paired their introduction with other passages she'd "just remembered" as equally appropriate or inspiring.  Speakers were called up alphabetically to reminisce and/or (usually "and") share passages they'd found appropriate or inspiring.

Hours passed, continents shifted.  On and on!  It was like Shoah, only with the promise of a Kurt Vonnegut appearance at the end.  The smart ones bolted early.  By the time we'd survived the L's, people were pouring out the doors.  When Norman Mailer hopped on stage, they stopped.  (They didn't stop and sit, they just stopped and turned and stood and waited.)

Mailer didn't bother walking to center stage; he might not have even used a microphone.  His first words were, "I didn't know Bern Malamud..."  And the room groaned/chuckled/hammered a nail into a board and thwacked itself in the eye.  But Mailer didn't know Malamud, so he talked a little bit about Chekhov and Tolstoy.  This is how I remember his speech, though he probably used a more extravagantly engaged vocabulary bigger words:

"I didn't know Bern Malamud.  But his stories always reminded me of Chekhov's.  And before I talk about Chekhov, there's something you should know about Tolstoy:  He hated Shakespeare. 

"Hated him.  Because throughout his career everyone he met would come up to him and say,  ‘Leo!  You are the greatest writer in all the world!  The greatest writer ever, even!  Except, of course, for Shakespeare.'  So Tolstoy hated Shakespeare.

"One night, Tolstoy attended the premiere of a new play by Chekhov and the reception afterwards.  The performance had not gone well, and the playwright steeled himself as his elder colleague approached.  ‘My dear Anton!' Tolstoy said, ‘You know I enjoy your stories.  But your plays!  Terrible!  You should stop writing them, you are embarrassing yourself.  In fact, I think that you might just be a worse playwright than Shakespeare!'  With that, he turned and left.

"Chekhov spent the rest of the evening nodding humbly at others' critiques, pretending to listen.  But only one insult stuck.  After the gathering had ended, he climbed on top his carriage, whipped his horses, and laughed into the cold Russian night.  ‘I,' he screamed, ‘might be a worse playwright than Shakespeare!'"

I don't recall if Mailer had a summary statement that brought the thing back around to Malamud, but he was the only person that night to hold the room.  He hopped off, the next speaker was announced, everyone shrugged.  The people in the aisles 180'd and fled, others joined them.  My friend somehow convinced me to stay - We've waited this long, why not? (You're already sick, why not just go ahead and die?); it wasn't until Vonnegut's slot came up that the hostess announced the author had been too smart ill to attend.

They never found my friend's body.

*

Oh, no!  Harlan Ellison - whom one might put forward as the Mailer of his chosen genre (though Ellison would vice that versa, no doubt) - has included his illustrious name among those WGAW members who will "do no writing until all writers get a fair and reasonable deal."

The 73-year-old Ellison did have a teleplay produced this year (an adaptation of his 1959 story "The Discarded" was burned off on ABC during a summer's Saturday night).  But his most recent production credit, before that, was in the last millennium.  (No doubt he has a list, dozens long, of titles in various stages of production.  IN HIS MIND.)

Harlan Ellison's on strike!  Empires will fall!  Eras will end!  Oh cool, look, there's Tina Fey on a picket line!

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Busted-Up Chiffarobe Dept.:

30 Rock got off to a rough start, this season - they were trying so hard - but the last two episodes have been top-notch.  If you were scared off, come back.

The work stoppage guarantees reruns (there are an estimated five shows left, this season) but:  NBC streams full episodes here (can't seem to link to individual eps, anymore, but the ones you want to watch are "204 - Rosemary's Baby" and "205 - Greenzo") and you can watch that stream with a clear conscience.  The network doesn't pass any of the ad revenue on to the folks who wrote the show!  That'll learn ‘em.

Thank God for this writer's strike.  I mean, there's writing everywhere!  Too much!  We need much less of it.  I only fear that ten billion new blogs will be born.

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Oh, and:  My Con Ed bill this month?  $31.15.  Suck on that, Al Gore.

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Rams win!  Rams win!  At 1-8, we're now on track to win our division, to be the first team to lose its first eight games and make it to the championship, to reverse the fate of Superbowl XXXVI by coming in as massive underdogs to the New England Patriots and stealing the trophy at the last second.

tags: norman mailer  rip  

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