Perhaps best not to ask why, but I spent a little while this afternoon reading Rhoda Koenig's lengthy feature in New York magazine about the PEN conference Norman Mailer organized in January 1986. It was a bonfire of the vanities, with every big name in literature showing up to make a point, shake their head, or simply cut a dashing figure through the proceedings.
They argued about politics, oppression, the writer's duty. About sex and gender and alienation and censorship. There were public arguments, bitter recriminations, hurt feelings, frighteningly hilarious anecdotes about Albert Speer, Robert Kennedy, Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher. John Updike makes a fool of himself, Saul Bellow confirms his reputation as a difficult person.
The observations along the way are fascinating -- Susan Sontag's tweed trousers, Isabel Allende's paisley shawl, Czeslaw Milosz's eyebrows, Danilo Kis' pointedly casual homophobia. All this plays out against the reliable baseline of Norman Mailer's more than ample ego. I'm convinced that time will be kind to Mailer's legacy, especially considering that his ample faults leave us something like this ("Mailer was laughing with a couple of reporters, saying that he got the bruise under his right eye 'sparring,' and telling one journalist not to ask him general questions. 'You should say, 'What do you think of Susan Sontag's remark that Norman Mailer is a mean-spirited dog?'")
At some point, some of the attendees complain that there was too much talk about politics and not enough about books and literature. But you know, I'd take that. What do we have today? Jonathan Franzen mooning over his new BlackBerry, that's what.
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