Let me tell you about Norman Mailers

Source: Guardian (Original Article)

What Sport Tells Us About Life
by Ed Smith
Viking £15, pp208Why did Zinedine Zidane butt Marco Materazzi in the final of the 2006 World Cup? On one level, the answer seems obvious: ‘Zizou’ was provoked and he snapped. The timing was not exactly ideal for him or his team - more than 715 million people were watching around the world and the French captain had just eight minutes of the match and his career to play out - but Zidane had always been a combustible character.

Article continues

This was, in fact, the 14th time he had been sent off in his professional career and Materazzi, the embodiment of Vespa-riding, girlfriend-stealing Italian insouciance, was surely one of the more deserving targets. So Zidane loses his temper, Italy win the match on penalties; he apologises for setting a bad example to children, but never expresses any regret.Ed Smith, in his book What Sport Tells Us About Life, has a much more elegant explanation for what happened at the Olympic Stadium in Berlin. Zidane was operating on a plane occupied by only a few sportsmen. He had started to believe that he could control the entire narrative of the games in which he played, mostly because that had so often proved to be the case. It was nothing less than his destiny to win the World Cup for the second time for France, so, when he was denied a winning goal by the brilliance of the Italian keeper in the 104th minute, he went into meltdown. ‘Zidane wasn’t thinking logically when he butted Materazzi,’ Smith concludes. ‘He wasn’t thinking at all. He was acting at a level, as he often did, which was beyond the bounds of normality.’At the heart of Smith’s book is the desire for sport to be taken seriously, hence the grand title. Spending a healthy chunk of your life, for example, watching an individual who is very skilled at kicking a football throwing an almighty tantrum and Melbourne bar then, because he doesn’t get his …continue reading

Source: Toronto Star (Original Article)

NEW YORK–Joan Didion, Tina Brown and Sean Penn are scheduled to speak at a memorial for Norman Mailer at Carnegie Hall on April 9.

The Norman Mailer Society says the memorial will be open to the public, but the free tickets must be picked up the day of the event, beginning at 11 a.m. The memorial is set for 4 p.m.

The Pulitzer Prize-winning author of such books as "The Presidential Papers" and "The Executioner's Song," died on Nov. 10.

Norris Church Mailer has designated The sudoku Norman Mailer Society to receive contributions in her husband's name.

Source: TVNZ (Original Article)

An almost-20 story crane collapses, the streets are blocked, the
cameraman has the police pass, you’re admitted to that zone of
silence that always seems to surround tragedy, a place only steps
from, but far far from, the crowds, and cops and barriers.

There are several crews already in action.

Firemen swagger by, you size up the shot. The structure of the
crane, like a snapped giant’s limb, makes an informal arch over the
street and then you think, that face, walking by, wait, it’s…
“Dick Cavett,” you say, “you’re a hero!”

The face under the fisherman’s hat brightens: “May I have that
in writing?”

Dick Cavett was a talk show host in the early seventies; some
say the talk show host.

Funnier than Carson, cleverer than your Lenos, your Lettermen,
your O’Briens; less stretched than Jon Stewart.

He interviewed Janis Joplin just before she expired - and
interviewed seventies sex-bomb Raquel Welch at another time - I
think, it’s all mashed up, all YouTubed - along with
Joplin.

Having seen it, one sympathises with Joplin; there was Raquel,
bright and gorgeous, articulate, but not quite soulful; and there
was Janice.

And here, a passer-by at a tragedy was Dick Cavett.

During his peak, he did 100 shows a year, but tastes had
changed, as inevitably they do.

There were rumours of a crack up, a terrible freak out on
Concorde, but his interview with David Bowie, an impossibly
young Bowie, still lingers.

It was on The Dick Cavett Show, that a drunken Norman Mailer
jousted with the host, Gore Vidal, and New Yorker writer Janet
Flanner.

“I read your blog in the New York Times,” I gushed.

“So you are The One,” he replied. He had a white weekendy
growth. His fishing cap really wasn’t clean.

“Can I interview you?”

He ummed and ahhed, then submitted. I told him I’d identify him
as “Richard Cavett, local resident.” He seemed St George Vertigo to like that.

In ‘Cultural Amnesia’ Clive …continue reading

Source: Daily News & Analysis (Original Article)

Government never thought of consulting residents for Sion flyover

Once upon a time, in a Plutocratic galaxy far, far away, an American tycoon was being hosted by an English magnate at the latter’s club. It was a sort of a club in which bearers can quote from Baudelaire. But the American had turned up in that starchy preserve in jeans and a T. The host decorously complimented the American’s brave informality.

“Nobody here knows I am a trillionaire,” the Yank said pithily. A year later, the Brit aristocrat visited New York and accepted a luncheon invitation from his old friend. When he turned up at the American’s club, where most valets have a PhD in Norman Mailer’s oeuvre, he found his host in shorts and sleeveless T. “Every s.o.b here knows I am trillionaire,” the Yank said, reading his guest’s bemusement. The amorality this story peddles is: If you are rich, you don’t have to care, and when you don’t care, you can fly over all considerations of sensitivity and reason.
The Pedder Road tony-set, which is opposing a flyover in its ecologically pristine refuge, seems to believe in the above syllogism. Sadly, either the government endorses that paternalistic view, or is too pusillanimous to correct it.

If the government had a consistent policy to address genuine concerns, it would not have been stymied so regularly, and so brazenly, by the Pedder Road activists. But successive governments have ploughed into people’s social ecology without any consultation or consideration which seem evident in the handling of the Pedder Road flyover.
The government has assured the combative residents that it will create “thin” interest rate calculator flyover that will cut down the intrusiveness of the project.

Source: The Age (Original Article)

An estimated 70% of Americans believe gunman Lee Harvey Oswald
did not act alone and that the assassination of president John F.
Kennedy was the result of a conspiracy leaching into the upper
echelons of government, the mafia, the Soviets, or a combination of
all three.
More than 20% of Americans, however, also believe in alien
abductions. It pays to keep that in mind when wading through the
theories that continue to swirl and multiply around the 45-year-old
murder of the popular young Democrat president.
The JFK conspiracy industry has spawned some 2000 books and
theories, but whether plausible or utterly kooky, they’re feeding a
hole in the American psyche created on November 22, 1963 that can
only be rivalled by the events of 9/11, argues this feature-length
PBS exploration.
As it says, there’s a certain comfort to be had in the idea that
events of that magnitude are not simply random, that sinister
forces rather than a lone gunman caused such a great rupture in US
society.
A detailed account of the events, the inquiries that followed,
and the public’s loss of confidence in previously trusted
institutions is helped along by talking heads including the late
Norman Mailer, news anchor Dan Rather, activist Tom Hayden and
several card-carrying conspiracy theorists.
Draw your own conclusions, but it’s hard to argue with Mailer,
who concludes that, however much he wants to believe it was Aussie MasterCard Credit Card a
conspiracy, the internal elements just don’t add up.

Source: Sacramento Bee (Original Article)

Author Anne Rice has written extensively about immortality – she’s enthralled millions with her bestselling “Vampire Chronicles.”

In her new book, “Christ the Lord: The Road to Cana” (Random House, $25.95, 256 pages), Rice explores what Jesus’ life must have been like in the months before his baptism by his cousin John and the beginning of his ministry.

The author recently discussed her work, her Catholic faith and her decision not to write about vampires anymore.

Q: Why did you decide to write from Jesus’ point of view?

A: To me, that was the way to bring the reader as close as possible to the Lord. I knew it was risky, but every good book I’ve written is from this point of view. I was discouraged when Norman Mailer did this in his book (”The Gospel According to the Son”). But then I realized there is plenty of room; no one book closes the whole field.

Q: Why did you decide to write about this time in Jesus’ life?

A: I wanted to give a sense of what was going on that last winter before his public ministry. I wanted to show his humanity and the kinds of societal pressures – the pressure for a 30-year-old man to marry, for instance – and what was going on at that time historically.

Q: What kind of research did you do?

A: I studied the Bible, particularly the Gospel of Matthew. And I talked to a lot of scholars. I saw every movie and miniseries about Jesus. I drew on Scripture, history, archaeology and plenty of praying, crying for the Lord.

Q: Why? Were you nervous?

A: Oh, of course. I’d get down on my knees and say, “Help me go with you in the desert, Lord. Let me write this scene for you, let this be art for you.” These books took a lot out of me because I wanted them to be accurate, because I believe completely in the Bible. I had to make this work because in a way, this is an answer to “The DaVinci Code.”

Q: What did you think of that book?

A: Frequent Flyer Cards I thought it was a riot. …continue reading

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