Am I as Bad a Writer as Norman Mailer at His Worst?

Quite a horrifying thought.

I've been writing brilliant stuff for well over 40 years. I just want widespread recognition and fame and billions of dollars for it, what's the problem?

Unless the reason I haven't gotten widespread recognition is that I'm actually not a brilliant writer.

I don't really believe I'm not brilliant, but I worry that I might be brilliant only part of the time, and really, really stupid a lot of the rest of the time, like Norman Mailer. (OMG, was Norman autistic?) I'm not violent like Norman was. But I wonder whether what I once wrote about him, about how he "veers sharply from the sublime to the ridiculous from book to book, page to page, from one word to the next," doesn't apply every bit as much to myself.

Last night I saw a video of almost a half hour's worth of Norman at somewhere near his worst. I tell you truthfully, his attitude here is as grotesque as his hairstyle (Is he drunk? In the middle of the afternoon on a nationwide talk-show? That would not have been entirely unlike him). Finally, about 19:05, he briefly becomes coherent enough to state what is on his mind. The problem is, he's defending one of his worst books, perhaps the most atrocious one of them all, The Prisoner of Sex, his uncomprehending reaction to the Women's Lib movement, and he's reacting quite badly (to put it mildly) to good, constructive criticism from Gore. Granted, it was not flattering when Gore made a connection between Norman and Henry Miller on the one hand and Charles Manson on the other. But the way to refute the thesis that you bear no resemblance to a violent psychopath is not to behave like a violent psychopath. Don't feel obliged to subject yourself to this video if you don't have an especial interest in the literary feuds of mid-20th-century Murrkin literature.



Here's a much more impressive, much more rational performance by Norman, not particularly painful to watch at all, on the contrary, here Norman is rather charming, and promoting one of his better books, Armies of the Night, although unfortunately the man he's talking to is an insufferable weasel.



In both pieces Norman expresses his deep admiration for Ernest Hemingway. Hemingway was Norman's hero, his primary role model, and Norman shared this with countless other writers -- my God, there still may exist some writers who idolize that sheer jackass Hemingway. Hemingway may have damaged more potentially-good writers in more deep ways than anyone since Hegel, maybe even since Rousseau. The deaths by overindulgence in alcohol alone, which can be laid at Hemingway's feet... Before one even begins to consider the damage done to what could have been so very many very fine books. How many of those low, low points in both Norman's books and in his public behavior go back directly to this inexplicable admiration for that jackass Hemingway?

Norman Mailer, Ernest Hemingway, Myself and Other Superstars

Hemingwaywrote "d--n" instead of "damn." In some of his works, at least. In The Naked and the Dead,Norman Mailer may have spelled out all of the other dirty words, but instead of "fuck" he wrote "fug."

And it was published and it was a huge success, and the reason, Mailer said, that in all of his later works he spelled out all of the naughty words is that when he was first introduced to Dorothy Parker, she said, "Ah, you're the young man who doesn't know how to spell 'fuck.'"

This would have been the late 40's. Hemmingway was still alive then, he lived until after 1960. I don't know whether he and Mailer ever met. It seems strange to me that I don't know that. I also don't know whether by the late 40's Hemmingway had begun to spell out the naughty words.

Clive Owen plays Hemmingway in a new HBO movie. He wears spectacles and a big moustache and a goofy expression, but still it's very flattering physically to Hemmingway.

Okay, okay. I'm not complaining about how much better-looking Cate Blanchett is than Elizabeth I was, or that Owen played Walter Raleigh opposite Blanchett.

And if we get right down to it (Mailer was a shrimp!), it's possible that if I had had more success as a writer, and as a young writer like Hemmingway and Mailer, I might have spent less of my life sneering at Hemmingway and Mailer.

That's either all the way right down to it, or painfully close.