My Conversations with Norman Mailer

Norman Mailer died on Saturday at age 84.

He led with his left on the literary scene for more than a half-century, beginning with his stunning debut novel, The Naked and the Dead, in 1948

Mailer was on the program 11 times over the years, talking about his books, the art of writing and America. He had a lot to say about all this -- and so much more. I am going to be devoting my program tonight to this legendary novelist and non-fiction writer.

Mailer won two Pulitzer Prizes, one for Armies of the Night, he remarkable reporting about the antiwar march on the Pentagon in 1968, and one for his landmark novel, Executioner's Song, in 1979.

After he finished his book about Picasso he came on the program, in October 1995, to talk about the role of the public artist, which he understood all too well.

Here is some of what he said.

Mailer also was on the program many times to talk about America and the state of our democracy. During the run-up to the war in Iraq, in January, 2003, he was concerned about how our nation was doing and what it was getting into.

Here is some what he said.

More from these conversations with Norman Mailer, and parts of others, will be broadcast tonight on your local PBS station.

Or you can see it on the Charlie Rose website starting tomorrow.

Comments

[akhinaten]

connecting the dots...
The sentence "the fierce urgency of now" in Obams JJ-dinner should be seeing as a Hypertext linking the massage of Obama, represented by obama to Martin Luther king Jr and linking the " cynicism " speech at the JJ-dinner to the "I have a dream" speech. It is a powerful critique of the social liberals who call themselves progressives and yet utter the sentence that echoes of historic betrayal of yester years and the cautious timid voices of the 1963. The gradualist who said that blacks should not rock-the boat.
If you don"t see the hypertext and the subtext the speech is just an emotional speech. And nothing more.

Obama is saying, is stop saying that the country is not ready or that he is not, ready -... because this is what the southern racist were saying to civil right activist in the 1960.
Courage is what is needed to reach for what you think is possible instead of timidly confining yourself on familiar grounds. Let us reach for the heights.

Just compeer the two speeches and read the subtext.


Martin Luther king "I have a dream" ;1963

Barack Obama ::::::::::::::: "Cynicism" 2007



i know you live of the "identity policy" it is hard not to reduce everything to that. it is the rational of being who you are to living the life you live. you are essentialy the "black guy". but let us for a moment look ahead to a moment in time when, the epitet is but a distent memory a shameful memory, what then? what would they say about you if they ever even remember you?

[lentinelia]

Norman Mailer speaking about the possibility of the war in Iraq:

"We're starting something we can't finish without changing the nature of American democracy."

Wow!

[Anastasia]

Brilliant man. Mailer perfectly sums up, why most terrorists do what they do. They feel powerless to change the status quo, and their position in society.

In the Middle Eastern, Muslim culture, freedom is not the highest good, justice is. Imagine how our actions over the last 50 years or so, compunded ten fold by the invasion of Iraq, have effected the attitudes of the people of that region.

During invasion of Iraq, the Iraqi National Library was bombed and subsequently looted. As Saad Eskander, the head of the archives pointed out, the US hasn't contributed any funds for the rebuilding effort, though the Italian government and the Czech republic have.

It's hard to imagine anything that would enrage Muslim sensebilites more, than the wanton and baseless destruction of the country of Iraq, in the name of "freedom."