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Oct. 6th, 2020|11:14 pm |
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Norman Mailer could have written about this theatre. He could have got a book about Trump stripping the mask. Would have pounded down into the subterranean streams painfully eroding the American manifestation. He was the journalist that 'blew my mind'. I had picked up a copy of 'Miami and the Siege of Chicago' on a whim to read on the coach trip to a geography field study in South Wales. I had never thought you could write about politics like that. I met him much later. Went with my brother to hear him talk. My fiancee of four years had just left me. Met her in the university bar beforehand- she was going to see the Levellers - we were going to see Norman Mailer. We pissed ourselves (nearly) when the old hebrew declared there was no such thing as a good woman. He is wrong: the world is full of the blessed things, but at the time... I wanted to bring a desperately old copy of 'Why are we in Vietnam?' for him to sign. I bought it in the second-hand bookshop in Fakenham and took it to read on the train ride to visit her in Yarmouth. There is a passage in it where he describes the death of a bear shot in Alaska. It had a soul. I read the passage to my fiancee over and over again as I came down from the LSD she had presented me. I had nearly died a few hours previous. died of laughter at the notion of two old gits betting on 92 no-score draws and winning the pools. I bought a copy of 'The Executioner's Song" and waited in line. Some young sapling ahead of me asked him to sign the book he gave him as 'From one writer to another'. The kind of cunt you get sometimes in Norfolk. "How do I know you are a writer?" Mailer asked him, and wrote 'From a writer'. |
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