Mailer Remembered
Here’s a link to my write-up in the Los Angeles Times of the Norman Mailer memorial last week at Carnegie Hall. I got to run on a bit about D.A. Pennebaker and Chris Hegedus’s Town Bloody Hall, a documentary of a 1971 debate about Women’s Liberation, which features a slew of literary celebrities as well as Cynthia Ozick’s unprintable query to Mailer about his writing practice.
And, as I have little sense of propriety, I include the exchange below:
Cynthia Ozick confessed to the room, “This is my moment to live out a fantasy.” And then to Mailer, her voice sweet and curious, she spoke: “You said quote ‘a good novelist can do without everything but the remnants of his balls.’ For years, I’ve been wondering, when you dip your balls in ink, what color ink is it?”
Mailer, laughing, responded: “I don’t pretend I’ve never written an idiotical or stupid sentence in my life and that is one of them.”