[lbo-talk] Norman Mailer RIP

[Carl Remick]

On Nov 10, 2007 8:58 AM, Jim Farmelant <farmelantj at juno.com> wrote:
>
> November 10, 2007
> Norman Mailer, Outspoken Novelist, Dies at 84
> By CHARLES McGRATH
>
> ... Gore Vidal, with whom he frequently wrangled, once wrote: "Mailer is
> forever shouting at us that he is about to tell us something we must know
> or has just told us something revelatory and we failed to hear him or
> that he will, God grant his poor abused brain and body just one more
> chance, get through to us so that we will know. Each time he speaks he
> must become more bold, more loud, put on brighter motley and shake more
> foolish bells. Yet of all my contemporaries I retain the greatest
> affection for Norman as a force and as an artist. He is a man whose
> faults, though many, add to rather than subtract from the sum of his
> natural achievements."  ...

Perfect -- except for the last two sentences, which make no sense at
all.  I recall Mailer as the windiest loud-mouthed buffoon of my
lifetime.

Carl