Heaven Just Got A Lot More Interesting

The word most of the Norman Mailer obituaries I've read seem to associate with him is "ego," but I strongly disagree.

I first met Mailer in 1980. I'd just arrived in New York from London, fleeing a relationship and mending a broken heart. We were seated next to each other at a dinner party.

And from the very first moment of meeting him, the word that struck me, and came to define him in my eyes, was "engagement." For Mailer was relentlessly, passionately, deliriously engaged with life.

If there were something in the world that was interesting, it interested Mailer. And if there were something controversial in the world, it obsessed him. Race, religion, politics, sexuality, violence, war and peace -- Mailer came at them from every angle he could. Stalking them (and eventually pummeling them) like the prizefighters he so admired.

After that first meeting in 1980, I stayed in regular touch with him and Norris Church, his beautiful and talented wife. When I was writing my biography of Picasso, I'd call him up and run my theories by him. He too had always been fascinated by Picasso, and ended up writing a book about the first third of Picasso's life.

But the thing we talked about the most was God. People who are brash and profane and radical (other words frequently attached to Mailer) are often assumed to be anti-God, but this was certainly not the case with Mailer.

He aggressively believed (aggressive belief being one of his most comfortable postures) in God, reincarnation, and an afterlife. To Mailer, belief in reincarnation was what made sense of life.

Last year, while promoting The Big Empty: Dialogues on Politics, Sex, God, Boxing, Morality, Myth, Poker and Bad Conscience in America, the book he co-wrote with one his nine children, John Buffalo, at a forum at the New York Society for Ethical Culture, he said "it makes more sense to me that God exists than that he doesn't."

"God is a creator," he said, "engaged in a great adventure." Of course, both of those applied to Mailer as well. For him, life really was a great adventure and he was nothing if not a creator.

As for the author-as-deity meme, there was never any shortage of critics who accused Mailer of comparing himself to God (in their defense, Mailer did write a first-person novel, The Gospel According to the Son, from the point of view of Jesus).

The last time I saw Mailer was at a dinner I had for him and his wife at my home. It was just before we launched HuffPost, and of course I asked him to blog. And of course he accepted. I say "of course" not because it would be unthinkable to turn me down, but because blogging is just a new way of using language to convey ideas -- something impossible for Mailer to resist.

He told me, however, he wouldn't be able to blog until he finished the book he was working on. But then the imbroglio over the purported flushing of a Koran hit the headlines and he couldn't resist. "I'm beginning to see why one would want to write a blog," he emailed me in what became his first post. (A page of Huffington Post blogs about, and by, Mailer can be found here.)

I wish that ill-health and multiple deadlines hadn't prevented him from blogging more because he so totally got the genre, as you can see from the first line of his last post:

"The following is just for the sake of it -- I want to feed the maw of the blog: In the wake of all the fluvial funereal obsequies that the media attached to Ronald Reagan's earthly departure, I felt obliged to remark that he had been the most overrated president in American history and the second most ignorant."

There's also a link on our page to his great coverage of the 1960 convention in Esquire entitled "Superman Comes To The Supermarket."

Mailer was all about possibility -- about asking why things are the way they are and showing, through his writing, there are other ways they could be. As Jay Rosen wrote:

"To read ['Superman Comes to the Supermarket'] today...is to realize that things don't have to be the way [a traditional reporter] says they are. There are other ways into the intricacies of politics. And if they are not practical for the reporter from Mudville who got the assignment to cover the convention, they can at least be inspirational."

For instance, there was his prescient description of the convention: "one has the feeling it was built by television sets giving orders to men." Our modern political system in a nutshell.

"The Democrats are like whipped dogs," he said last year at the New York Society for Ethical Culture. Sadly, they still are this year. And he closed the forum by saying that what we need to do is "keep alive the critical eye and lift the level of the American language."

In an age when torture has become a "harsh interrogation technique" and "freedom" and "democracy" are used to curtail freedom and democracy, we'll surely miss his critical eye and his passionate love affair with the American language.

When he ran for mayor of New York in 1969, he said "I am paying my debt to society. That is why I am running." He didn't win, but he paid his debt just by being Norman Mailer.

Since the existence of an afterlife was one of the things we both agreed on, I'm going to assume he's now fully ensconced in it, and has already got a few feuds going -- including one with God.

If only I could get him to blog about it.

Follow Arianna Huffington on Twitter: www.twitter.com/ariannahuff

Comments

[racetoinfinity]

Great post and tribute.

[mbaty]

It's good to know someone else thinks that reincarnation makes perfect sense--and that he was a big influence on modern culture. People often say they don't know if there is a god, but that's only because they limit god to what they've heard about god...and rightfully deduce that such an entity does not exist. God has been described as the Ain Soph, or the undefined, the unseen dark matter/energy, the field of intelligent awareness... I think Norman captured the passion of life that proves (God) exists, and with such an adventurous spirit, I'm guessing even "god" couldn't stop Norman from reincarnating.

[swkidder]

Are you sure you can't get him to blog about it? If anyone could cross the barrier between the living and (maybe) dead, it would be Norman Mailer.

[isadora]

When Norman Mailer was a raging anti-feminist I disliked him. A number of years later her covered the Republican National Convention for Vanity Fair. He discussed the "Pro-Life" faction of the party, as seen at that convention. He characterized them as (to paraphrase) "...fiercely loyal, intensely religious,­...and...a­lso full of hate." I knew how true it was, and was glad that someone of his stature has substantiated the observation. His wife, Norris, is quite a woman. Their long, successful marriage testifies to his regard for women of distinction. That is what counts. We will miss his skill, his intensity, and his uniqueness. Heaven is, indeed, more interesting.

[rpmcestmoi]

Mailer was a factor in his time. Better as a reporter/color guy than a fiction writer, he touched a lot more lives through his one-time ubiquity. There are no figures like him right now and no venues in the popular culture (Cavett, Parr, Allen and their good ilk) to help them reach a wide and otherwise innocent public. The screamers have taken over the public square and the owners of the square are the worst of merchants.
His God thing got stronger as he got older. It happens. Nothing like believing in the unprovable. Belief is a strange thing. Nothing like hedging your bets as you get closer to the final truth of death.
He mattered. That's what matters. God quite beside the point.

[Ladydoc]

I never got to speak with Mailer but over the last 20 plus years I have been in his presence many times because during that time we rented an apartment in a small inn a few doors down from his large, red-brick and ivy-covered colonial (architectually out of place) in Provincetown. As an impartial, distanced 3rd party presence, I was able to watch him and see him as a man--a human being. I enjoyed seeing him on the beach behind his house with his children and grandchildren, watching him (in the early years) guzzle down drinks at the bar of a nearby restaurant where we often went too, and seeing him enjoy himself immensely at the P-town movie theatre. In fact, he sat in front of us during "The Closet" and when Auteuil wore the condom on his head, he laughed so uproariously that everyone in the show could hear him. I also "knew him" through the eyes of his first in-laws (Bea Silverman) who, coincidentally, lived in the same apartment house as I did in 1970. I remember the first time I went into their apartment and saw the picture of Bea and Mailer and their thoughts about him and his character. In summary, he was a man with many admirable traits and talents, and like us all, many faults. What he has said about God or reincarnation or anything spiritual are only words. The real indication of his beliefs will be determined by how he has chosen to be buried--in Jewish ritual or creamated and scattered on the P-town shores or something else--will give us the best insight into his true feelings on God, religion and afterlife.

[Izadora]

To iluvsam. Enjoy so much your comments

especially the one you said that: "AFTER 16

YEARS OF RESEARCH."

Are you a writer?

Mr. Dalai-Lama doesn't believe in God. Does

he?

[Izadora]

To transendentilist: wake up Einstein never

believed in God.

"What it is faith? It is believe without any

evidence"

Man accepts religion out of fear and

ignorance. Fear of the unknown and ignorance

in being an adherent to absolute authority.

Who cares about afterlife if we already have

this "HEAVEN" place called the PLANET EARTH?

[benalbanach]

How do you get to believe in God ? It doesn't seem to be a matter of intellect.(Witness the Evangelical Christian movement....or George Bush).
Norman Mailer said it makes sense and you seem to agree. Would you also agree that it's not ridiculous for it not to make sense ?

[jwws007]

who cares

[wisechild]

Thanks, Arianna. I am glad you got to know Mailer and spend time with him. This was a great piece to read and remember.

I almost had a chance years ago to meet him when I was 20 and living in the Village in NYC. He was a friend of a New School teacher named Robert Reisner who wrote about jazz for the Village Voice and had written books about graffiti. I knew him from class and we became friends.

My roommate and I were having a party and Bob invited Norman Mailer! With each doorbell ring we got very excited at the prospect of meeting this giant literary hero. I already knew lots of stories about him and his previous wife, Adele.

Alas, he never showed and really, we didn't expect he would but I always knew he'd missed a great party.

I don't think he missed much else in life and I think heaven or hell will be enriched by his presence.

You can say what you want about Mailer but he was a giant thinker, a sometimes overhyped literary genius and a force in our lifetime. We will miss that power and passion he had for life and I suspect envy it at times.

He is now probably boxing with God for a small bet!

[ijgibson]

I see - I 'believe' in a mythical god because to 'believe' is a good insurance policy ?

Surely to believe one requires hard evidence, not some mumbo jumbo from the decendants and adherers to an earthly power structure ?

[annasoul]

Thank you for this. Though I know keeping an eye on the political scene is important, and I thank you for that, it is always great to be reminded of those who live their lives full out. It hopefully inspires us to be better people, and perhaps elevate our language.

[Paulwd]

Has anyone thought to ask WHY Norman Mailer believed in reincarnation, God, and an afterlife?


Mailer, being an "aggressive" believer of an afterlife, one in which reincarnation is a common feature with folks who sometimes feel they've lived before, may have been one who "recollected" a past life, or usually fragments thereof, and could sense the connection with himself to one or more individuals in a previous era. If he thought me might reincarnate, clearly a new period, or evolution, of himself would begin. But he also may discover that reincarnation is NOT necessary, but is moreover a choice for most. It's nice to know we can "opt out," when we know how beforehand.

As to "God," Mailer's thoughts of "creation" might have inspired him as much as it did Michelangelo, whose imagination soared above most men of the ages, and who did indeed create in a manner that inspired many more after him. And Mailer was a literary artist endowed with a great talent that has inspired others who would like to write "just like Mailer." So when Mailer spoke about "God," did he think of a specific deity or was "God" not a person but a force, one in which we are all a part and who share within that force not only imagination but also an ability to create? Anyone who writes, especially fiction, who paints, who builds, who engages in developing ideas, who can speak and argue or otherwise exchange thoughts, knows the source of these abilities, which is the mind and that unique ability of man in being able to create "just like God." Personally, I think this is where Norman Mailer was at.

But you know, if naysayers believe THIS is the only life rather than an extention--and the result--of what has gone before, which is the history of Earth and all things existing, it probably doesn't matter what happens after their funeral. After all, they already chose the death of their mind, body and soul while they still had them

[JinnRikki]

The really interesting people will be in hell. I don't believe in heaven or hell, just sayin'.