Comments on: Norman Mailer, a dissenting view

By: The economics of good and evil « vulgar morality

The economics of good and evil « vulgar morality — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 01:25:52 +0000

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By: Diogo

Diogo — Thu, 15 Nov 2007 16:46:53 +0000

Mr Kimball,
I am not an american and I had never heard of you before. I have only read one half of a Mailer’s book (The Castle in the Forest). I expected more from the prose, but find the narrative wonderful. I say this, because I want to make clear that my motivation in writing to you is not to make a stand ─ for or against Mailer as a writer. My motivation comes from having read previous comments about this post.
For starts, I find it ridiculous that some of these people are criticizing you for stating your opinion about a recently deceased person. It’s the same as telling someone not to speak badly of the government while there are soldiers fighting a war. It is the sort of thing that signals a very simple mind.
Nevertheless what worries me the most are the people who state they are never going to read Mailer because of your portrait of him. I say of him because that’s what you really did. You define his work as awful, but what really seems to bother you is the man himself.
I have learned to mistrust people who evaluate an artist’s work in terms of his life. Readers of your post should do the same.
After reading it I felt more interested in Mailer’s work than before, not less. I cannot condone the praise of violence, I absolutely oppose it. I know nothing of the Abbott affair, had never heard of it. Still, your account of it reeks of moral righteousness, but I presume you wouldn’t consider this a bad thing.
All in all, after reading the post I have the feeling that Mailer, for all of his reported presumptuousness, was a very interesting person. For me anyone who has the courage to transcend the values of normalcy is interesting. Anyone who can envision the possibility of other cultures, other ways of being, is humble, not presumptuous.

By: renminbi

renminbi — Thu, 15 Nov 2007 16:40:09 +0000

You walk into a restaurant and order a meal. The plate is brought to you and you see mold on the food. Do you have to eat it to know it is rancid?

By: Paul G

Paul G — Thu, 15 Nov 2007 11:43:39 +0000

Norman is in the Provincetown ground now and may he rest in peace where the Pilgrims really first landed. I never seen such a vile outpouring of denigration for a writer that most of the posts haven’t bothered even to read.But they are quick to render hallow, mean-spirited barbs at the deceased artist.I wonder how well any of you detractors cotributions to the world would measure up aginst Mr. Mailer.I know you hate the prose from whence it sprouted.How much more ignorant and ridiculous could it be than to render judgements and pronouncements without an intimate knowledge of the body of work.Whatever happened to the adage….if you can’t say anything good about someone, it’s best to remain silent.Listen, no less a brilliant “conservative” mind as the esteemed William F. Buckley has just called Norman the “Master of the Metaphor” in his recent column. Enough said.
Reat in eternal peace, we will miss your moral compass and conscience, Norman Mailer Esquire!

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Thu, 15 Nov 2007 07:49:56 +0000

I read the Executioner’s Song and came away with the impression that Mailer was “a moral cretin”. Of the two men that Gilmore killed weren’t any worthy of some remembrance by this “great author” ? How many pages of his door-stopper did Mailer devote to them? No sir, those young men were just putty in the hands of the artist Gilmore, like paint in Rembrandt’s hand. For a so-called deep observer of the human scene Mailer missed out on the baleful influence of Gary’s father. That man was the Devil incarnate. Mikhail Gilmore, Gary’s younger brother wrote about it in his own terrifying book Shot in the Heart.

By: Ludovico Fischer

Ludovico Fischer — Thu, 15 Nov 2007 04:24:46 +0000

If I may chime in somewhat late, I’ll say I have been a bit puzzled by this piece. It reminds of an observation in one of Susan Sontag’s earlier collections that, somehow, Mailer ‘was hard to take seriously’. I am puzzled because I think the interest of Mailer’s writing (I am writing this in earnest) is his particular brand of irony. Do you really believe that, for example, his bombastic flight of fancy about ‘America’ at the end of ‘The Armies of the Night’ is ’serious’? He often assembled jarring elements of style and substance, as if to say “Can this really work together?’ with a perplex stare, and at the same time, frenetically kicking it everywhere to make it work. But I believe he was, in part, conscious of this. Hence his fooling around.
On another note, I think defining Marylin Monroe as just a ‘comedic’ actress is limiting. Think, for instance, of her performance in John Huston’s ‘The Misfits’. And I wonder if Mr Roger Kimball is not projecting on the sixties (they viewed ‘any appeal to facts as an unacceptably authoritarian threat’), the kind of ‘discurse’ which became fashionable in the United States academia at hand of the children of the sixties, from the mid-70′onward. Mailer himself was too old to have held such language. He did not understand ‘existentialism’, and talked a lot about it, that was it for him.

Regards,

Ludovico Fischer

By: Adrian

Adrian — Thu, 15 Nov 2007 01:43:07 +0000

Re: Everyone who says we should lay off Mailer because he just died, a far greater writer than Mailer said:

“He that writes may be considered as a kind of general challenger, whom every one has a right to attack; since he quits the common rank of life, steps forward beyond the lists, and offers his merit to the public judgement. To commence author is to claim praise, and no man can justly aspire to honour, but at the hazard of disgrace.”
(Samuel Johnson, The Rambler #1751)

By: DC in OC

DC in OC — Thu, 15 Nov 2007 01:27:29 +0000

Norman Mailer is Dead

On November 10th Norman Mailer shuffled off his mortal coil. He now stands before God and, I have little doubt, is attempting to explain what, exactly, was so chic about championing the cause of a murderer and stabbing your wife in a drunken…

By: DC in OC

DC in OC — Thu, 15 Nov 2007 01:19:55 +0000

Norman Mailer is Dead

By: R.J. Torre

R.J. Torre — Wed, 14 Nov 2007 21:37:00 +0000

On war literature, George Orwell’s “Homage to Catalonia” is unmentioned, but should be read and can be re-read.