Let me tell you about Norman Mailers

Source: Houston Chronicle (Original Article)

Jimbo, if he really existed, didn’t represent us well. The Houstonian appeared drunk and gullible just two paragraphs into The Kentucky Derby Is Decadent and Depraved, Hunter S. Thompson’s June 1970 story that first appeared in Scanlan’s Monthly.

Since Thompson didn’t find the American Dream in the decadent and drunken depravity inside the class-warfare-inclined confines of Louisville’s Churchill Downs, he kept looking.

Thompson’s book Hell’s Angels technically launched his career. But his true period of wild influence and wild times was bookended by two sporting events four years apart.

It started at the Derby in Louisville, a horse race Thompson barely bothered to address in a story that defined a style that would become his legend and undoing. It ended in Zaire in 1974. Soaked in alcohol and his own myth, he failed to attend a monumental boxing match and, worse, failed to find a story by not attending the fight.

Norman Mailer, a writer 14 years Thompson’s elder and thought to be past his prime, ended up owning the “Rumble in the Jungle,” where Muhammad Ali, a Louisville guy like Thompson, knocked out George Foreman.

Documentary filmmaker Alex Gibney calls it “a tremendous bungle.”

Gibney — who directed the Oscar-winning Taxi to the Dark Side as well as Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room — made Thompson as the subject of his new movie Gonzo: The Life and Work of Dr. Hunter S. Thompson.

Thompson’s larger-than-life persona already has been made into two feature films. Gibney chose not to propagate the myth. Instead Gonzo, which opens Friday at the Landmark River Oaks, makes the blustery Thompson very human. It projects a sliver of his life when he enjoyed equally formidable successes and failures.

Both made Thompson an icon.

Zaire wasn’t Thompson’s first taste of failure because he often aligned himself with underdogs who, as expected, lost. But it was his first, flightstips though not last, experience with ineptitude.

Gibney …continue reading

Source: Irish Independent (Original Article)

After 45 years and with nearly 1,000 books in print on the subject, the “real story” behind the assassination of JFK seems unknowable. Lee Harvey Oswald was charged with the murder 12 hours after Kennedy was pronounced dead. Oswald himself was shot and killed by Jack Ruby less than 36 hours later. Oswald’s murder, the incompetent police work, the chaos, the unlimited list of possible suspects, the tortured explanations like the “magic bullet” produced in the report of the Warren Commission, the official investigation into the assassination, all have served to make falsifiable claims about that event seem beyond reach.

So muddled is the picture that fiction seems better built for the task than
history. Norman Mailer’s
own ruminations on the killing, in Harlot’s Ghost or Oswald’s Tale, seem
more credible and more satisfying than most of the non-fiction accounts. Who
needs facts at this point?

This may help explain the muted reaction so far to The Road to Dallas.
Author David Kaiser is a respected military and political historian,
lecturing at the prestigious Naval
War College. This recently published work, often dense and scholarly,
purports to be the first book about the assassination by a professional
historian who has pored over tens of thousands of pages of recently
declassified material.

So who does Kaiser believed killed Kennedy — a lone gunman or a massive
conspiracy? Both, actually. Kaiser argues, more or less persuasively, that
Kennedy was killed by Oswald, who was no patsy but a paid assassin,
recruited by a nexus of mafia and anti-Castro Cuban militants.

Kennedy’s death was part blowback from failed attempts to kill or overthrow Fidel
Castro, part revenge for the fanatical pursuit of organised crime by Robert
Kennedy. And part the result of two sides of the American intelligence
establishment working at cross purposes — the CIA,
illegally trying to induce BARNEY AND FRIENDS dvd the mafia to carry out an …continue reading

Source: Irish Independent (Original Article)

Armageddon in Retrospect

By Kurt Vonnegut

(Putnam, Stg£12.70)

Kurt Vonnegut, who chain-smoked unfiltered Pall Malls and died last year at the age of 84, was probably the most loved of the American writers whose books became essential reading for nascent countercultural types in the 1960s and 1970s.

Less druggy than William Burroughs and Hunter S Thompson, less frighteningly brainy than Thomas Pynchon, less mainstream than Joseph Heller and Norman Mailer, and less out there than Robert Anton Wilson, he took pride in writing novels that high-school students could read — novels that “opened doors”, as they say, for many budding satirists, as well as several generations of otherwise non-bookish adolescents.

“Countercultural” is a misleading label, however. While Vonnegut made his name in the 1960s, he wasn’t chiefly a product of that decade. He came from a long line of German freethinkers and frequently invoked the left-wing traditions of his native Indiana.

A sceptic and joker in the mould of Mark Twain, whom he greatly admired, he was shaped above all by his experiences in the Second World War, in which he served in an American infantry division.

Taken prisoner by the Germans in late 1944, he lived through the Allied firebombing of Dresden, after which he and his fellow POWs were put to work clearing charred bodies. Nothing would be quite the same for Vonnegut after the weeks he spent hauling corpses out of cellars. Claims that the bombing had been unimpeachably moral and reasonable rang false to him.

His outrage over Dresden was reawakened in the 1960s by a book by David Irving, who went on to become a Holocaust denier, and Vonnegut took flak later for the faith he put in Irving’s inflated death count. But he didn’t doubt that the Allied cause was just, only that the destruction of Dresden was.

The worries he came to have about the military mentality stood him ANZ Credit Card in good stead during the Vietnam …continue reading

Source: Irish Independent (Original Article)

If you look up Norman Mailer on YouTube, among the many delights on offer is a clip entitled Norman Mailer vs Rip Torn. In an extraordinary piece of footage, the Pulitzer-prize-winning author and the iconic 60s actor engage in a protracted and vicious brawl involving ear-biting, attempted strangulation and a hammer. It’s actually the culminating scene of one of Mailer’s experimental films, Maidstone, but the combat looks in deadly earnest. Apparently, it was.

Mailer, who died on November 10 last, was a force of nature, a prolific and magnificently wayward talent whose failures were almost as interesting as his successes. Though he achieved early and lavish acclaim with his first novel, The Naked and the Dead, Mailer was a terminally restless soul and, instead of settling into the respectable literary life that seemed to have been marked out for him, would dabble throughout his life in politics, journalism, the theatre and film.

Growing up in Brooklyn in the 1930s, Mailer had fallen in love with the cinema, especially the Warner Brothers gangster classics starring the likes of James Cagney, Humphrey Bogart and Pat O’Brien. As a teenager his interests expanded into European arthouse, and he would remain besotted by film for the rest of his days. He had always nourished fantasies of being a filmmaker, and one of the first things he did with his royalty cheque for The Naked and the Dead in the late 1940s was make a ten-minute silent film about a girl having an abortion. There may have been marketing difficulties with that one.

In the summer of 1948, Mailer went to Hollywood. There was interest in the rights to his novel, and he enjoyed meeting Katharine Hepburn, Gene Kelly, Humphrey Bogart and Charlie Chaplin. Perhaps he imagined some role for himself in the Hollywood system, but he hated the political atmosphere (it was the height of the communist witchhunts) and was too much of a maverick in any case to fit in MEDIUM dvd anywhere for very long.

He left …continue reading

Source: Irish Independent (Original Article)

An exasperating, contradictory and original character, Norman Kingsley Mailer seemed destined to live his life in the public spotlight.

Born in New Jersey on January 31, 1923, he was raised in Brooklyn in a comfortable middle-class Jewish environment. He excelled at school, and entered Harvard University in 1939. After graduating in 1943 he was drafted, and though he hardly saw any combat, his wartime experiences in the Philippines would provide the basis for his first novel The Naked and the Dead. It cemented his reputation as a rising literary talent.

Thereafter, Mailer diversified his talents, combining a string of equally grand novels with searing essays, stewardship of The Village Voice and a hybrid writing style called ‘creative nonfiction’ or ‘new journalism’ that he, Truman Capote and Tom Wolfe would be credited with inventing. He was active politically, became a confidant of the Kennedys and even ran for Mayor of New York. He was married six times, and famously nearly killed the second of them by stabbing her with a penknife. He American Express Credit Cards died in New York on November 10, 2007.

- Paul Whitington

Source: International Herald Tribune (Original Article)

I couldn't help noting the that award-winning biographer Nigel Hamilton has just written not one but two books about biography, the latest being “How to Do Biography: A Primer.” So I shot Hamilton an e-mail: What biographies are out there, asking to be written?

Hamilton pointed out that publishers generally opt for safe choices, favoring the X-thousandth take on Lincoln's fondness for pets over a riskier, more original work.

“I do wish, as the American empire winds down, we'd show a little more interest in the biographies of foreign figures,” Hamilton added. “Among foreign individuals we've had Napoleon, Nehru, and Mao; but what of Mehmet Ali, Annie Besant, Subhas Bose, Reza Shah, Abel Gance, and Massimo Troisi? The field is ripe with fascinating lives to explore … if only we are willing to look beyond our borders.”

As Alex Trebek would say, that wasn't the answer I was looking for, but I will accept it. I was hoping that Hamilton would name someone a little closer to home. Jean Strouse plucked Alice James off the bough of history; no one knew she was there. I think the right biographer might do the same for Maud McVeigh Hutchins, the mildly neurasthenic American mid-century novelist.

Next I rang up Justin Kaplan, author of acclaimed biographies of Walt Whitman and Mark Twain. Who needs to be done? Kurt Vonnegut, he answered. “That's the biography I'm looking for.”

That one is already in the works. Charles Shields, the author of “Mockingbird: A Portrait of Harper Lee,” started working with Vonnegut about a year before the author's death.

Kurt's son Mark, a pediatrician and a writer, didn't sound over the moon about the whole prospect. “I think Justin Kaplan is probably a better biographer,” he said. “If I had a point to make it would be: Read the writer and let the biographies come ANZ Frequent Flyer as they may.”

Speaking of recently deceased, big-footprint …continue reading

Source: Boston Globe (Original Article)

Alex Beam

Biographers, start your engines

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By
Alex Beam

Globe Columnist
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June 17, 2008

I couldn’t help noting that award-winning University of Massachusetts biographer Nigel Hamilton has just written not one but two books about biography, the latest being “How to Do Biography: A Primer.” So I shot Hamilton an e-mail: What biographies are out there, asking to be written?Hamilton pointed out that publishers generally opt for safe choices, favoring the X-thousandth take on Lincoln’s fondness for pets over a riskier, more original work. “I do wish, as the American empire winds down, we’d show a little more interest in the biographies of foreign figures,” Hamilton added. “Among foreign individuals we’ve had Napoleon, Nehru, and Mao; but what of Mehmet Ali, Annie Besant, Subhas Bose, Reza Shah, Abel Gance, and Massimo Troisi? The field is ripe with fascinating lives to explore . . . if only we are willing to look beyond our borders.”As Alex Trebek would say, that wasn’t the answer I was looking for, but I will accept it. I was hoping that Hamilton would name someone a little closer to home. Jean Strouse plucked Alice James off the bough of history; no one knew she was there. I think the right biographer might do the same for Maud McVeigh Hutchins, the mildly neurasthenic American mid-century novelist.Next I rang up Justin Kaplan, author of acclaimed biographies of Walt Whitman and Mark Twain. Who needs to be done? Kurt Vonnegut, he answered. “That’s the biography I’m looking for.”That one is already in the works. Charles Shields, the author of “Mockingbird: A Portrait of Harper Lee,” started working with Vonnegut about a year before the author’s death. Kurt’s son Mark, a pediatrician and a writer, didn’t sound over the moon about the whole prospect. “I think Justin Kaplan is probably a better biographer,” he said. “If I had a point to make it would be: Read MasterCard Credit Card the writer and let the biographies …continue reading

Source: Canada NewsWire (press release) (Original Article)

TORONTO, June 17 /CNW/ - He waged a public war against fascism and
anti-Semitism, published critically acclaimed poetry, dined with movie stars
and was watched by the FBI.
Though barely remembered today, Kenneth Leslie was one of the most
remarkable Canadians of the 20th century. An award-winning poet and an
influential political activist in the U.S. during the 1930s and 40s, he lived
with a rare, furious passion that found expression in everything from his
writings to his turbulent personal life.
God’s Red Poet: The Life of Kenneth Leslie tells his story. The hour-long
documentary, produced and directed by Halifax filmmaker Chuck Lapp makes its
world television premiere on VisionTV, airing Wednesday, July 2 at 10 p.m. ET
/ 7 p.m. PT.
Born in 1892 in Pictou, Nova Scotia, Kenneth Leslie was a child prodigy,
attending Dalhousie University in Halifax at age 14. At the city’s First
Baptist Church, he embraced the principles of the Christian social gospel.
Leslie would go on to study theology and philosophy in the U.S. and served for
a time as assistant preacher at a church in Rhode Island.
But it was the writer’s life that truly fired his imagination. Leslie
published the first of several acclaimed volumes of poetry in 1934, earning
the Governor General’s Award for his work just four years later.
Deeds, though, mattered as much to Leslie as words. Troubled by American
isolationism and the rising tide of pro-fascist and anti-Semitic sentiment in
the U.S. during the late 1930s, he chose to take a public stand, launching the
Protestant Digest (later The Protestant), a progressive journal of religion
and politics. With contributions from the leading public intellectuals of the
day, the magazine called for a declaration of war against the Axis powers, and
stood firmly against the oppression of Jews.
By the early 1940s, Leslie’s organization had produced numerous
offshoots, including a national ANZ Rewards Card organization of anti-fascist Protestant clergy
and …continue reading

Source: guardian.co.uk (Original Article)

What a lot of unrepentant fucks there currently are in the music business. Forty-three years after the word “fucking” first appeared on a rock album - the eponymous debut by scabrous garage folkies the Fugs, who took their name from the euphemism used by the more decorous Norman Mailer in The Naked And the Dead - it still seems to exert an endless fascination for rock bands. This year’s hotly tipped lists included three who seem to have invited Gordon Ramsay to come up with their name: Canadian prog-punks Fucked Up, the Fuck Buttons, an experimental electronic duo from Bristol, and Holy Fuck, also from Canada, and recently nominated for that country’s equivalent of the Mercury prize.

Article continues

Presumably the logic behind choosing a band name with the word “fuck” in it involves highlighting your disdain for commercialism and the callow, herd-like mentality of the musical mainstream. Cower before our fearless individuality and unique disregard for conventional mores! Look on in awe as we épater la bourgeoisie with our sweary name! Alas, if the idea was to strike a unique note, you have to say it falls a bit flat. Said three bands join a burgeoning list of artists who seem to have had exactly the same idea about fearless individuality, cocking a snook at herd-like mentalities etc: Fuck, Fuckbomb, Fuckpony, Fuckhead, Fuckface, Fuckmouth, FuckEmos, Fuck Vegas, Fuck on the Beach, Fuck the Facts, Mister Fuck, Swamp Fuck, the Fucking Champs, the Fucking Wrath, the Fuckmasters, the Fuckerettes, the Fuck You Ups, the Exploding Fuck Dolls, the Fuckin’ Shit Biscuits and - a personal favourite - the Guadeloupe-based rapper who clearly couldn’t decide whether he wanted to sound shocking or sweetly endearing and attempted to split the difference by calling himself Fuckly.The same year that the Fugs’ debut album came out, the Times described the word “fuck” University Course 59 as one that “chills the blood …continue reading

Source: Toronto Star (Original Article)

Rock On:An Office Power Balladby Dan KennedyAlgonquin Books, 224 pages, $16.95

Dan Kennedy’s Rock On: An Office Power Ballad looked like it had all the right stuff: 30-something hipster works at New York-based corporate record company where 1970s’ super-groups like Led Zeppelin were once on the artist roster.

Alas, Rock On consists of 200-plus pages of banal anecdotes padded with Kennedy’s whirling internal monologues and loser anxieties. This is Kennedy’s shtick. He’s the chronic, pessimistic loser, the low-self-esteem sad sack who meanders on in an apologetic, tentative voice while trying, and failing, to be too hip.

In 2004, Kennedy played the same hapless role in his first memoir, Loser Goes First: My Thirty-Something Years of Dumb Luck and Minor Humiliation, which pretty much sums up Rock On.

This second book recounts Kennedy’s stint as the director of creative development at an irrelevant corporate record company in a New York office tower.

Kennedy worries about what his boss and co-workers think about him and he has a healthy daily fear of losing his job. After 18 months he does get tubed, along with a thousand other employees, when a new owner comes along.

I had hoped to read a memoir about Kennedy the cad sleeping his way through several floors of cute, young personal assistants; or Kennedy the junkie descending into his own private hell while he lives at the Chelsea Hotel and hides his rock ‘n’ roll track marks from his Prada-wearing overlords.

But the former advertising copywriter doesn’t have anything that racy up his sleeve. Kennedy falls into the same ironic, anti-hero ghetto as more talented others such as Dave Eggers and Jonathan Ames, Nick Hornby and Douglas Coupland. These men have no balls. Where are today’s heroic writers like Kurt Vonnegut, Norman Mailer and Phillip Roth?

Kennedy’s biggest hurtle is agonizing over the right muffin at the Starbucks Amex Blue Sky Credit Card on his way to work.

Kennedy …continue reading