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GenrXr
Master Chief Petty Officer of the Navy
Joined: 05 Aug 2004
Posts: 1720
Location: Houston
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 Posted: Wed Nov 14, 2007 4:53 am Post subject: Norman Mailer is Dead |
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Norman Mailer is Dead
Norman Mailer, a writer who turned his back on both faith and country, was married six times, had many mistresses and loved to beat the hell out of women. A man of no moral compass who wrote and said whatever was fashionably counter to the patriotic current of the time. His deepest desire was to be remembered as producing Hemmingway quality work. The closest his books will ever be in relation to the 'old man' is dependent upon the store clerks H through M placement.
_________________
"An activist is the person who cleans up the water, not the one claiming its dirty."
"All that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to stand by and do nothing." Edmund Burke (1729-1797), Founder of Conservative Philosophy
Last edited by GenrXr on Wed Nov 14, 2007 5:09 am; edited 2 times in total |
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Me#1You#10
Site Admin
Joined: 06 May 2004
Posts: 6503
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| Posted: Wed Nov 14, 2007 4:59 am Post subject: |
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| GenrXr wrote: | | The closest his books will ever be in relation to the’ old man’ is dependent upon the store clerks H through M placement. |
If that's an original quip, your wit has risen significantly in my esteem 
If it ain't, thanks for passing it along 
...and I never read the man...did he have a MySpace? (just kidding) |
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GenrXr
Master Chief Petty Officer of the Navy
Joined: 05 Aug 2004
Posts: 1720
Location: Houston
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| Posted: Wed Nov 14, 2007 5:08 am Post subject: |
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| Me#1You#10 wrote: | | GenrXr wrote: | | The closest his books will ever be in relation to the’ old man’ is dependent upon the store clerks H through M placement. |
If that's an original quip, your wit has risen significantly in my esteem
If it ain't, thanks for passing it along
...and I never read the man...did he have a MySpace? (just kidding) |
Thanks Me#1You#10, I made it up last night while buying Hemmingway's 'Old Man and the Sea.' I have a new theory on that book and thought a refresher was in order.
It is about the book being Hemmingway’s refutation of his earlier idealistic fascination with communism and his later realization of the tragic toll his as well as others like him had on the lives of so many.
_________________
"An activist is the person who cleans up the water, not the one claiming its dirty."
"All that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to stand by and do nothing." Edmund Burke (1729-1797), Founder of Conservative Philosophy |
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streetsweeper95B
PO2
Joined: 25 Nov 2004
Posts: 365
Location: Texas
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| Posted: Wed Nov 14, 2007 5:41 am Post subject: |
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Communism only killed one hundred billion million people. Let's give it one more chance!
PS one of the signs I display at camp garryowen.
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"Proud Member of the Freak Show" |
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GenrXr
Master Chief Petty Officer of the Navy
Joined: 05 Aug 2004
Posts: 1720
Location: Houston
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| Posted: Wed Nov 14, 2007 6:07 am Post subject: |
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| streetsweeper95B wrote: | Communism only killed one hundred billion million people. Let's give it one more chance!
PS one of the signs I display at camp garryowen. |
A ruling intelligentsia, whether in Europe, Asia or Africa, treats the masses as raw material to be experimented on, processed, and wasted at will.
--Eric Hoffer22
22. Eric Hoffer, The Temper of Our Time, p. 83.
From here.
_________________
"An activist is the person who cleans up the water, not the one claiming its dirty."
"All that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to stand by and do nothing." Edmund Burke (1729-1797), Founder of Conservative Philosophy |
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shawa
CNO
Joined: 03 Sep 2004
Posts: 2004
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| Posted: Thu Nov 15, 2007 12:14 am Post subject: |
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I always get a kick out of Buckley's wry humor.
| Quote: | Norman Mailer, R.I.P.
By William F. Buckley Jr.
How to deal with Norman Mailer? I begin by acknowledging the truth of much that is being said about him, that he was a towering figure in American literary life for sixty years, almost unique in his search for notoriety and absolutely unrivaled in his co-existence with it. Roger Kimball of The New Criterion has written that Mailer “epitomized a certain species of macho, adolescent radicalism that helped to inure the wider public to displays of violence, anti-American tirades, and sexual braggadocio.”
But to delve into one’s own little portfolio, Mailer’s career intersected with my own when in September 1962 two entrepreneurs rented the Medinah Temple in Chicago, which held over four thousand people, and engaged Mailer and me to debate on the nature of the right wing in American politics. It pleased Mailer, who was complaining widely about his poverty, that Playboy magazine immediately contracted to publish his and my opening statements in their next issue.
A few years later I had Mailer as a guest on Firing Line, and one critic was deeply inquisitive about the meaning of the engagement. “Seeing Buckley and Mailer on the tube yesterday I can’t get over it,” Mel Lyman wrote in the New York Avatar. “The greatest representation of the two extremes I’ve seen in a long time. Conservative meets liberal, right meets left, before meets after. Buckley didn’t know what the f—-Mailer was talking about, it just jammed his computer, he even had to resort to childish insults to try and keep up his end.” (“Norman Mailer decocts matters of the first philosophical magnitude from an examination of his own ordure, and I am not talking about his books,” I had said.)
“Buckley is a computer,” Lyman went on, “Mailer is a man. A man can only be categorized and computerized to a certain extent, the greater part of him lies out of definition. Greatness can be recognized only. That is why Buckley went all to pieces when Mailer spoke of the ‘greatness’ he saw in Castro. Buckley could only see the un-American activities accredited to the man, Castro. He could only see him as far as he could define his actions. Mailer could look right at him, like a child, and see a great force, an inner strength, a fearlessness that had nothing to do with right or wrong. . . .))
“I love Buckley,” this disciple of Mailer wrote, “but he makes me very sad, he’s completely mastered the art of living in prison but Mailer’s mastered the art of what you do after you get out, and Buckley doesn’t even know there is an out.”
Mailer took two practical steps that bounced off our Chicago exchange. The first was to sue Playboy—on the grounds that, manifestly, his essay was worth more than the $5,000 paid to us. That done, he said he wished to explore with me a string of Buckley-Mailer debates throughout the country, “beginning in Carnegie Hall.”
This initiative brought him and his wife to our house in Stamford, Connecticut, and I took him out on my 36-foot sailboat. He could not believe it when I turned the wheel over to him, pointing out a course to the end of the harbor. It was very cold by the time we had finished dinner, but he ordered his wife Jeannie to the back of his motorcycle, and they zoomed off to Brooklyn.
There were other episodes. There was the night in New York when, after dinner, I said I needed to file a column, but he wasn’t ready to go home, pursuing us to our apartment nearby. Wobbling up the steps, his then current wife passed out and was placed by my wife in a spare bedroom. Norman climbed upstairs with me to my study, and spoke disparagingly of the column as, paragraph after paragraph, I gave it to him to read. Finally he said it was time to go home, and we walked down the stairs to where his wife had been taken. But rousing her from that sleep defied any resource we were willing to deploy, so Norman announced fatalistically that, never mind, she would eventually rise, go out the street door, and get a cab. “Me, I’m going home, Slugger,” as he called my wife. I helped him find a cab.
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But Norman Mailer is a towering writer! So why this small talk? Perhaps because it no longer seems so very small. I said about Mailer a few years ago that he created the most beautiful metaphors in the language. I reiterate that judgment. But I go further, wondering out loud whether the obituaries are, finally, drawing attention to the phenomenon of Norman Mailer from the appropriate perspective. The newspaper of record says of him, as though such a profile were routine, that he was married six times, that he nearly killed one wife with a penknife, and that he had nine children. What if he had had seven wives, the seventh of them abandoned there in somebody’s bedroom, waiting for a taxi to take her home, any home?
© 2007 UNIVERSAL PRESS SYNDICATE
NRO |
_________________
“I love the man that can smile in trouble, that can gather strength from distress, and grow brave by reflection. ‘Tis the business of little minds to shrink; but he whose heart is firm, and whose conscience approves his conduct, will pursue his principles unto death.” (Thomas Paine, 1776) |
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Me#1You#10
Site Admin
Joined: 06 May 2004
Posts: 6503
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| Posted: Thu Nov 15, 2007 2:34 am Post subject: |
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| William F. Buckley wrote: | | “Norman Mailer decocts matters of the first philosophical magnitude from an examination of his own ordure, and I am not talking about his books,” I had said. |
2 trips to the dictionary in one sentence...Buckley snark at his best |
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baldeagle
PO2
Joined: 27 Oct 2004
Posts: 362
Location: Grand Saline, Texas
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| Posted: Thu Nov 15, 2007 3:50 am Post subject: |
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| Me#1You#10 wrote: |
2 trips to the dictionary in one sentence...Buckley snark at his best |
One of the reasons why I never could get into reading Buckley, even though I admired him greatly as a founder of the modern conservative movement.
I prefer a writer who can draw me into the flow of his prose without the necessity of frequent breaks to refer to the dictionary.
_________________
"In a word, I want an American character, that the powers of Europe may be convinced we act for ourselves and not for others; this, in my judgment, is the only way to be respected abroad and happy at home." --George Washington |
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Me#1You#10
Site Admin
Joined: 06 May 2004
Posts: 6503
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| Posted: Thu Nov 15, 2007 4:44 am Post subject: |
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| baldeagle wrote: | | I prefer a writer who can draw me into the flow of his prose without the necessity of frequent breaks to refer to the dictionary. |
Well, perhaps it is a bit tedious and inconvenient at times, but I think an absolute insult couched in $.25 words to be highly amusing.
Honestly, which is better?
He thinks his **** don't stink.
or...
He"...decocts matters of the first philosophical magnitude from an examination of his own ordure" |
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baldeagle
PO2
Joined: 27 Oct 2004
Posts: 362
Location: Grand Saline, Texas
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| Posted: Fri Nov 16, 2007 2:25 am Post subject: |
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| Me#1You#10 wrote: |
Honestly, which is better?
He thinks his **** don't stink.
or...
He"...decocts matters of the first philosophical magnitude from an examination of his own ordure" |
It do have a certain elagance to it, don't it?
_________________
"In a word, I want an American character, that the powers of Europe may be convinced we act for ourselves and not for others; this, in my judgment, is the only way to be respected abroad and happy at home." --George Washington |
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