Sometimes I sense that to put real confidence in my memory I have to get to the end of all rememberings. That seems to say that I forego remembering. And now that strikes me as an accurate description of what it is to have confidence in one's memory.
          --Stanley Cavell, The Claim of Reason

I remember when Norman Mailer and Jimmy Breslin ran for mayor and City Council president.  I was against them because they wanted New York City to secede from the state and become the 51st state.   But I was proud to live in one of the original thirteen!

A couple of years later, Breslin's Gang That Couldn't Shoot Straight came out.  I loved it when I read the paperback in seventh grade (I remember because I discussed it with Michael Hoban in math class). I remember the hilarious moment, maybe quoted on the back of the book, describing how one mafioso "died of natural causes.  His heart stopped beating when the men who snuck into his bedroom stuck a knife in it."

I remember that that's when I began to like him more and more.

Mailer not so much.

I am not sure why I didn't offer either the lead-up or the sequel of the story I posted nearly ten years ago, when Mailer died, but the whole story is kind of interesting.  I was visiting colleges and staying with friends at Tufts.  We'd rushed to get a dozen donuts when we heard he was speaking since it turned out there wouldn't be time for dinner now.

Like most of the audience, we were sitting on the floor of the Tufts gym. Mailer did his anti-feminist schtick, calling on all the women to hiss.  They did and he gloated: "Obedient little bitches."  So one of the women in our group, meeting aggression with love, got up and took a jelly donut up to him as a kind of show of our generous superiority.  He laughed and tossed it back into the crowd.  They laughed and tossed it back to him.  He laughed and threw it back harder.  It landed right near me, almost back where it started.  It was quite a tough little ball of gluten.  I picked it up and threw it just as hard back at him, imagining I guess, that its consistency was robust enough to last through many such rallies.  But it splatted him right on his jacket and tie.

So he wiped it off with a handkerchief and then went straight to a dramatic effect he was obviously saving: he opened out his attaché case at the podium and took out... a tumbler full of ice and a bottle of scotch, and poured himself a stiff drink.  Everyone loved that.

Then after the talk was over I went up to him as he was moving backstage to apologize -- saying, truthfully, that it was an accident.  I didn't mean to hit him, and certainly would have been happy to have him catch it.  He was with some goon body-guards, maybe Tufts plainclothesmen, maybe his own.  He looked at me witheringly and walked away without a word.

I guess I can't blame him, but it did make me feel better that he was graceless about it.

posted by William 2:41 PM
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