Norman Mailer at Harvard

Now Mailer was often brusque himself, famous for that, but the architecture of his personality bore resemblance to some provincial cathedral which warring orders of the church might have designed separately over several centuries, the particular cathedral falling into the hands of one architect, then his enemy. (Mailer had not been married four times for nothing.) If he was on many an occasion brusque, he was also to himself at least so supersensitive to nuances of manner he sometimes suspected when in no modest mood Proust had lost a cell mate the day they were born in different bags. (Bag is of course used here to specify milieu and not the exceptional character of the mothers, Mme. Proust and Mrs. I. B. Mailer.) At any rate, boldness, attacks of shyness, rude assertion, and circumlocutions tortured as arthritic fingers working at lace, all took their turn with him, and these shuttlings of mood became the most pronounced in their resemblance to the banging and shunting of freight cars when he was with liberal academics.


I'll admit that part of me expected this 1967-fied, Armies of the Night Norman Mailer to show up at the First Church in Cambridge for the Harvard Book Store-sponsored leg of his latest book tour. That evaporated for a minute as the 84-year old writer hobbled to the stage on two canes. But even without a podium and a drink, Mailer was able to bring the feisty--while settled comfortably in an armchair, no less. It was difficult to hear him at first; the church, while beautiful and clean and open, had lousy acoustics for Old Man Voice with Crappy Microphone. But his voice got stronger as he got into the interview (the name of his interviewer escapes me right now, but it's his official biographer), and you could tell he still gets off on being the center of attention.

Just about all of the topics focused on his new book, The Castle in the Forest. Based on the given description of the book as a deeply imagined look at Hitler's early years, I'm not sure I'll pick it up--at one point, the interviewer mentioned that the first fifteen pages are essentially an SS officer talking about incest. Maybe I'll catch Mailer on the next novel. By the way: he mentioned that the book ends with a "To Be Continued?" First of all, risky game, tempting the calendar like that. Second, are real writers actually allowed to do that? Anyway, I'm not super keen on Hitlerian history, and it sounds like there's much Freudian stuff mixed in. So all WWII/mother obsessives, have at it, and let me know how it turns out.

When the floor opened up to questions, things took a much more current, political slant. I'm pretty sure "Don't you hate Bush?" has been a theme at 90% of the book events I've been to in the past year. But Mailer seemed game, and took whatever bait was thrown by offering opinions on the war, Hillary and Obama, etc. At one point he tried to goad the biographer guy into insulting him, just to generate God knows what kind of soundbite, but unfortunately the guy demurred. Probably out of respect or something. Lame. A Pulitzer winner asks you to insult him, you do it, dammit.

As Mailer is definitely an Endangered Author, I'm quite pleased to have gotten to listen to him while he's still in some kind of prime. It's not every day that you get to hear someone who's been fiercely literary, fiercely talented, and just plain fierce in his time.

Molly Ivins

This past week, there have been all sorts of tributes to Molly Ivins, who passed away after a long series of bouts with cancer. And while most of those tributes have been sincere and all, I'm not sure any of them really got to the heart of the Molly Ivins thing like Dahlia Lithwick's piece in Slate did. I guess it takes a smart, funny chick to properly eulogize another. (No offense, Paul Krugman.)

Of course, any tribute is better than the one Ms. Ivins got on a wacko-conservative message board that I like to read as a guilty amusement. Posters there made references to her rotting in hell with Ann Richards, and--my personal favorite--to the idea that if Molly Ivins had been "born beautiful," she would never have become an incisive writer and caused so much trouble.

Maybe that's true. Maybe with the right face and the right body, she would have developed a different kind of Texas woman's armor. But she wasn't the cheerleader type, and so we have her mourned well by another woman who "gets it."

Housekeeping vs. The Dirt by Nick Hornby

I'm pretty sure Nick Hornby doesn't need to write novels anymore. He's already given us all the top-five lists and fucked-up relationships we could ever need. And with all his newfound free time, he can keep commenting on everything he reads. Sound good?

As a follow-up to The Polysyllabic Spree, the newest collection of his Believer columns, Housekeeping vs. The Dirt doesn't really vary much from that format. Not that it needs to. The essays are as engaging as ever, and they mix informal practicality and substantive reviews in ways that the New York Review of Books will unfortunately never touch. It's more like a friend talking about the books, being candid about what's boring, what's lame, and what's fun. Actual literary merit rarely matters over drinks. 'Course, it's not like I'll ditch pretentious/serious/jargony book reviews any time soon, but it's much more fun to get openly biased, tangent-filled picks or pans.

This is not to say, though, that the tone means that the essays are devoid of review-y philosophical goodness. Hornby makes a lot of interesting points in between his stories about how and where he bought the books, and discussions of his poor treatment at the hands of the Polysyllabic Spree of Believer editors. (Okay, so he touches on a lot of random thoughts I've had over the years but never really explored. Same diff.) Like, which books are "one of those books we've all read, whether we've read it or not (c.f. Animal Farm, 1984, Gulliver's Travels, and Lord of the Flies." And whether In Cold Blood is something you have to read to fit in with the literati (short answer: yes).

He also produces some nifty language to describe the depth of some books, in a way that's self-conscious, but can't really hide the glee he must have felt when the metaphor first popped into his head: "I have always prized the accessible over the obscure, but after reading Housekeeping I can see that in some ways the easy, accessible novel is working at a disadvantage (not that Housekeeping is inaccessible, but it is deep and dark and rich): it's possible to whiz through it without allowing it even to touch the sides, and a bit of side-touching has to happen if a book is going to be properly transformative. If you are so gripped by a book that you want to read it in the mythical single sitting, what chance has it got of making it all the way through the long march to your soul?"

And as usual, Hornby gave me a bunch of books to add to my queue. He's even managed to get me somewhat excited about reading novels again, after a lengthy hiatus. Not just anybody could make me break my current streak of nonfiction essay collections, but somehow he manages. I could probably acknowledge this favor by subscribing to Believer instead of waiting for the collections to come out, but it's more likely that I'll send the thanks toward one of my other favorite book reviewers for giving the well-chosen holiday gift of Hornby.