Word: mailers
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Aquarius, the water bearer, has gone to the well once more. This time he is in Miami Beach, a few miles south of Cape Kennedy, site of his devil hunt in Of a Fire on the Moon. In the retirement capital of the world, Norman Mailer is on familiar ground. He has already freelanced his way through three national conventions, most tellingly at the street brawls in Chicago...
Observing the national conventions this year did not offer Norman Mailer the physical perils or intellectual brinks he has relished in the past. That turns out to be a good thing. There is not nearly so much of what he calls his "ego liberation"-those warm-up exercises and public temperature takings that have long since turned into self-parody. Mailer can get right down to the business of sniffing out the true spirit of the occasion. The result is that St. George and the Godfather (much of which originally appeared in LIFE) is a very brisk report...
...Mailer relies at least as much on his legs as he does on his punch. He attends the arrivals of the candidates; he noses around the caucus meetings for color or the lack of it. There are even a few side trips. Like a true politician, Mailer does not miss the opportunity to continue his attack on Women's Liberation. Like a celebrity chaser, he goes to the White House to interview Henry Kissinger, who easily wraps Mailer round his finger. But mostly Mailer does what Mailer does best: tossing out metaphors, similes and off-cuff vignettes -usually making...
There is Hubert Humphrey, "a Renaissance priest of the Vatican who could not even cross a marble floor without pieties issuing from his skirt." Ed Muskie, "a gentleman of the frontier out of the 19th century," ignominiously boxed between the new politics and the press. "Nobody," adds Mailer, "forgives a favorite who loses by seven lengths...
Only Eugene McCarthy possesses the complexity and style that truly appeal to Mailer. McCarthy is the witty "philosopher prince" who shares the author's love of language. "I like McGov-ern," says Mailer, "but I just wish he spoke with a little metaphor from time to time." "Methodists are not much on metaphor," replies McCarthy...