A Funny Thing About Norman Mailer

: When speaking at the memorial service for Arthur Schlesinger Jr. a while back, Mailer made the odd comment that he was really just an acquaintance of Arthur's. This led many in the audience to presume that he had been invited merely for his celebrity. The funny thing is that after finishing Arthur's wonderful diary, you'll find that nobody not named "Kennedy" appears in it more often than Mailer, who was just about Arthur's favorite person. So it makes Mailer appear kinda mean for refusing to call himself Arthur's friend. Thing is, and this is weird too, Mailer did the same thing at George Plimpton's memorial service, saying he really didn't understand why he had been asked to speak. I admired the hell out of the guy but he sure did not contain multitudes. ...

Read the whole Altercation here.