Pictures of an exhibitionist
Byron Rogers
MAILER: HIS LIFE AND TIMES by Peter Manso
Viking, £16.95
The publishers describe this book as a major literary event. Major it certainly is: there are 718 pages of it, and two and a half pounds in weight. It is also a literary event in that it establishes a quite new genre, the authorless book. The man whose name Is on the cover, Peter Manso, wrote nothing except the acknowledgements at the end, and Mr Manso has a great deal to acknow- ledge. Some 200 other people wrote this Mailer's relatives, wives, publishers, friends — some of them in 50 words, some in 1,000, each of them bidding for notice. All Manso does is write their names above each contribution.
This is not biography as polemic, or even what Philip Guedalla used to write, biogra- phy as tone poem: THIS IS BIOGRAPHY AS STREET ROW. The voices chime in, contradicting each other, each with his ovvn tale or point of view. Now just pause to think of the effect this has. Any one event — say Mailer's stabbing of his second wife
— comes at you in so many versions that in the end you throw up your arms like a station sergeant attempting to take down a statement from a room full of drunks. One at a time, please. What DID happen? There is no narrative, no judgment, nothing. There are just 718 pages of quarrelling voices, from which, after a fortnight, I ran, just as the author ran, though he was running before he started. I feel qualified to write about a biogra- Phy of Mailer, having read nothing by him. Like a juror, I came cold to the street row, though it is impossible to live in the late 20th century and not know something about him. He has been quoted as saying that when a man can stab his wife, love is still there; he also wrote, of three thugs kicking an old man to death, that it was a moment of love. Mailer is much exercised by love.
Nachum Malech Mailer was brought up in the btlief that he was a genius; `Malech' means `king'. His mother, a fearsome creature, once stormed down to his school When he was given a 'C' grade CI want him to be acknowledged for what he is, a superior person'); she also saw the grading as a form of anti-semitism. Mrs Mailer got the grade changed to 'A'.
He seems to have been an exhibitionist from childhood. As a student at Harvard, When the family had guests in for dinner, it was his delight to pretend to cut his penis 9ff whilst carving. He also loved swearing in front of his mother. `Which of these five words do you think is strongest — fuck, Piss, cock, shit or cunt?' He recorded her reaction, including laughter, on a tape recorder. You get to hear all five many times in the course of 718 pages. His life seems to have been an exercise in seeing how far he could go before being stopped. There was only one check. He gave a lecture at an university, and was talking about orgasms when a very small, very old, very distinguished Jewish scholar got to his feet and said to his wife, `Esther, this kissing, shitting, fucking and sucking, n s an old business. Let's go.' The one of the 200 who was present said it was the only time he ever saw Mailer taken aback. Enormous fame came early. He wrote The Naked and the Dead and became a world-wide literary figure at the age of 25. There was no stopping him after that, certainly not in the American literary World which became his gymnasium; its Silliness was perfect for him. Bullies are in clanger in pubs, not in salons. He married young, a Jewish girl, even more of an exhibitionist than himself, who at a party once came out of a room, a diaphragm in her hand, announcing `This Isn t mine. I can't get it into my pussy.' There were many parties, and many wives.
think it was the Hollywood scriptwriter Vincent Lawrence who said, `If you want to know what a man is like, look at the mental health of his wife.' You don't get a chance, the Mrs Mailers come and go so fast, but at least two seem just one step ahead of the men in the white coats. There were five wives and eight children (Mailer being an opponent of birth con- trol). The wives plugged back into reality by exacting a staggering amount of ali- mony. After he stabbed the second (at yet another party — there is no private life) he was very helpful to the surgeon who was trying to save her life, telling him the nature of the incision, and its approximate depth; after all, he should know, he in- formed the doctor.
Once he encountered an ego even more monstrous than his own when in Holly- wood he met the actress Shelley Winters. Miss Winters was then committing adultery with the actor Burt Lancaster and Miss Winters had made a discovery. `I knew that Lancaster was being unfaithful to me with his wife.' That must count as one of the most amazing sentences ever written. In the course of his life Mailer makes several discoveries. The first is arm- wrestling in the early Fifties, which was followed by elbow-banging; again at par- ties, he would go up to his friends and hit them with his elbow. He practised on all of them. This, in turn, gave way to head- banging in the late Sixties ('You bang heads — seven or eight times sometimes — until one of you just can't take it'). There has been much violence. He took up boxing and challenged his friends in turn, but one scorned the offer. `What you really want is for us to fall into each other's arms covered with blood . . . it seems kind of homosexual to me.' Mailer, he reported, just smiled and walked away.
During an interval of rest from 'the big one', the writing of the great novel of his time, he decided to become the greatest film-maker. During an improvised scene of violence he was hit over the head with a hammer by the actor Rip Torn; Mailer then bit most of his ear off. Since there are no laughs in this book, you tend to be grateful for such moments of black humour. Another comes when Mailer takes two poodles out for a walk at two in the morning and gets into a fight. Nobody, he reported, was going to call his dog a queer. The blackest moments of humour come when he takes up a convict out on parole as a great writer-to-be; the con stabs a man to death while still under his patronage. Mailer calls a press conference.
He stares out at you from the cover, a glowering little bull of a man, hands on hips, the lissom young Mrs Mailer Number Five towering over him.
Time, that with this strange excuse Pardoned Kipling and his views, And will pardon Paul Claude], Pardons him for writing well.
Time has his work cut out; Mailer has written 25 books.
In his acknowledgements, Manso says that his friendship with Mailer has survived these 718 pages. Blimey. Even among the competing voices, the indictment of the writer as a man could not be more com- plete. Perhaps he can't read.
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