Reuters North American News Service, November 10th, 2007
Nov 10 (Reuters) - U.S. writer Norman Mailer, a towering
presence on the U.S. literary scene for decades, has died.
Opinions poured out of Mailer. Following are some of this
thoughts on the United States, men, women and himself:
"America is a hurricane, and the only people who do not hear
the sound are those fortunate if incredibly stupid and smug
White Protestants who live in the center, in the serene eye of
the big wind."
-- From "Advertisements for Myself," a collection of essays,
poems and observations.
"I've always felt that my relationship to the United States
is analogous to a marriage. I love this country. I hate it. I
get angry at it. I feel close to it. I'm charmed by it. I'm
repelled by it. And it's a marriage that's gone on for let's say
at least 50 years of my writing life, and in the course of that,
what's happened? It's gotten worse. It's not what it used to
be."
-- A 1998 interview for French television.
"Masculinity is not something given to you, something you're
born with but something you gain. And you gain it by winning
small battles with honor. Because there is very little honor
left in American life, there is a certain built-in tendency to
destroy masculinity in American men."
"I find now that women have achieved some power and
recognition they are quite the equal of men in every stupidity
and vice and misjudgment that we've exercised through history.
They're narrow-minded, power seeking, incapable of recognizing
the joys of a good discussion. The women's movement is filled
with tyrants, just as men's political movements are equally
filled."
-- Discussing his long-running rivalry with feminist leaders
in an interview with Time magazine in 1991.
"I hate everything which is not in myself."
-- Cold-hearted Sgt. Croft in Mailer's World War Two novel
"The Naked and the Dead."
"I felt something shift to murder in me. I felt that I was
an outlaw, a psychic outlaw, and I liked it."
-- Describing a growing sense of disillusion in
"Advertisements for Myself."
"It's a misperception of me that I am a wild man -- I wish I
still were ... The rage now is, oh, so deep it's almost
comfortable. It has even approached the point where I can live
with it philosophically. The world's not what I want it to be.
But then no one ever said I had the right to design the world."
"I'll keep writing as long as I possibly can. I just don't
want to end up an old writer who isn't very good."
-- A 2000 interview with The New York Times.
(Compiled by Bill Trott)
