Word: mailer
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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That is slightly hyperbolic, but Mailer indisputably makes waves when he moves in public. And whatever he may say to the contrary, he does not shrink from attention. Shortly before the appearance of Ancient Evenings, he spends five days as a hard-working fellow at the University of Pennsylvania. The undergraduates who trail him through his meetings, classes, lectures and ten-hour daily schedules were not even born in 1960, when Mailer established his notoriety by stabbing his second wife Adele; they were pre-teens nine years later when he ran for mayor of New York City. They are tadpoles...
...Mailer: "I want to see how much of my head is left." It has been years since he has subjected himself to such a long haul of academic rigors. At each session, he tries to sniff out potential enemies and attackers; he chiefly scents respect and even reverence. This is a fairly new phenomenon in Mailer's tempestuous performing life, and it seems to puzzle him. Early in the week, he offers to pay $5 for the rudest question he is asked. At the end, he judges none worthy of the award. Fireworks are predicted when he visits...
...lectern, Mailer proves he is still a Roman candle of ideas, spinning off sparks, noise and smoke. He gives one class his grudging approval of abortion but not birth control. "Women's contraceptive instincts become confused," he says, and spins his theory that prostitutes do not get pregnant: "When a woman has sex with five to ten different men a night, the sperm from each man is battling against the other sperm. It's the competitiveness of the sperm. They're all killing each other...
...thing to stop nuclear war. It is another thing to stop war altogether. I think we don't have enough small wars. I was immensely impressed by the war in the Falklands." He suggests that countries stuck in irreconcilable disputes "rent the Falklands and fight their battles there." Mailer is asked about homosexuality, another subject on which he has been illiberally truculent: "My feeling is, and you're all going to boo at this, homosexuals want to become heterosexual... If you're homosexual, you might have to ask yourself what God thinks of you." Some...
Back home in Brooklyn, Mailer seems bemused by such deference, somehow bruised by kid gloves. "He's liking being a celebrity less," says former Light-Heavyweight Boxing Champion Jose Torres, Mailer's friend and sparring partner. "I think he's tired of the image." And the author's legends do lag well behind substantial changes that he has made in his life...