Iraq & Vietnam War Stories

    At 84 years old Norman Mailer’s controversial life came to an end this weekend.  I found myself feeling unclear about how  I feel about this man’s life since his legacy is so complex.  On the one hand he brought much attention in his unique way to the anti-Vietnam war movement through his writings – especially WHY ARE WE IN VIETNAM?, which I read for an English course at Trinity College in Hartford in the late ’60’s and was swept away by, and ARMIES OF THE NIGHT, in which Mailer “essentially creates his own genre for the narrative, split into historicized and novelized accounts of the October 1967 March on the Pentagon” (Wikipedia).  So there’s that part of the man and then there’s the comprehensively over the top behavior including stabbing his first wife with a pen knife, trashing aspects of the women’s movement, being a pugnacious bad boy on the talk show circuit, etc…Was it just irreverance and a refusal to accept convention and its standards/judgments of what’s appropriate?  Or was it ego-centrism made into a virtual art form.  I know that his contributions to American letters are significant and I thoroughly enjoyed seeing a slice of his life as a devoted resident of Provincetown in 2002 on a wonderful segment of CBS SUNDAY MORNING today.  He told of loving the history of P’town, the pirates, the crazy parties, the pot smoking and how he likes being there for the echoes of those people and times that are still there.  And isn’t it the echo of his life and work that we will now be left with.   He was anti-war, anti-Nixon, and anti-establishment.  He even ran for mayor of NYC against John Lindsay on a platform that called for the City to secede from New York state…and he was serious.  All the more reason that seeing his very conventional life in P’town – he started each day with the crossword puzzle to get into the mood, wrote for hours at a stretch until the very end and then spent each evening with his 6th wife  – felt so very strange.  Of course, he would never admit to being conventional.  Then there’s his final book, ON GOD, AN UNCOMMON CONVERSATION, in which he returns to form – or perhaps, given the depth of his convictions, he never really left – and says, “that piety is oppressive. It takes all the air out of thought.”  A less pious man has seldom attracted so much attention.  I am very interested to hear what other folks are thinking about Mailer as he has now taken his leave of this earth.

ON GOD an uncommon conversation
Said piety oppressive, it takes all the air out of thought

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