"... like canceling Booth Tarkington or James Whitcomb Riley — a pointless kick to a fundamentally anachronistic character.... [Mailer's] reputational decline is so overdetermined, his persona so intensely out of step with our own era — the brawling macho solipsist who stabbed his own wife with a penknife — as to make him a comically easy and therefore pointless target for cancellation.... You want to impress me? You want to flex some cultural muscle? Let’s see you cancel Joan Didion.... In the recent obituaries you could see it enfolded into a larger narrative of her career, in which the conservative aspect of her writing... was something she gradually questioned and then transcended.... This narrative, in which Didion (to quote
Hilton Als of The New Yorker) inherited a mythology and then 'began to see the cracks, and to wonder what those cracks meant,' is part of her protection against contemporary cancellation...."
From
"Joan Didion, Conservative" by Ross Douthat (NYT).
These days, Germaine Greer is cancelled.
Posts
67 comments:
Dr. Seuss cancelled himself. It was his estate's decision to cease publication of a couple of his early books.
"not this dreary business we've got going today"
Speak for yourself. Progs rejoice. They are winning. As long as nice and reasonable women declare their victories "dreary," they will keep winning.
Of course, by the very existence of this blog Althouse is part of the #Resistance. Credit to her.
To my knowledge I have not yet been cancelled. I feel so pathetically insignificant. Perhaps I need a Twitter account?
The Soviet left are on the march.
Cancel Norman Mailer? The ghost of Gore Vidal smiles.
The problem Freder and his Fascist allies have is that there is no stopping point.
They are jackals and they have to feed on someone. They will never stop finding people to "cancel."
They have to destroy.
They don't make anything anyone else wants. They can only tear down what others build.
That is why everywhere they seize power turns to shit just like everyone is leaving the blue states now.
Poor Achilles. He is helplessly plagued by armies of strawmen living in his head. He's got a lot in common with Antonio Brown. I pray both get the help they need.
I realize more and more that one driver of purges is that they clear the way upward for the purge's supporters (this relates to the January 6th story).
One thing about the dead: they are a lot less ambitious than the rest of us.
Mailer was a "left conservative," which meant that he was further left politically than the NYT of his day, but he despised the upper middle class Karenish ways of the paper's readers. He'd dislike today's woke left, but also would disdain Establishment conservatism.
Old Mailer would have voted for Biden. Young Mailer might have run against him. Weighing the wife-shooting thing against everything the Bidens have gotten up to would have been difficult for voters.
Achilles said...
"The problem Freder and his Fascist allies have is that there is no stopping point.
They are jackals and they have to feed on someone. They will never stop finding people to "cancel."
Once they run out of people to cancel on the other side of the political aisle, they'll continue with their comrades who aren't ideologically pure enough. "The Lives of Others" is instructive.
If you cancel Mailer, you are also canceling the brilliant replies to Mailer, as none of the criticism makes sense without the original nihilistic bull shit. The responses to Mailer are a perfect example of fighting bad speech with more speech. Of course that takes effort and it's easier to just cancel speech you don't like.
As foreseen by George Orwell, cancellation devolves sooner or later into a dreary job for anonymous bureaucrats. Today, Winston Smith would be working at home on his laptop.
Back in the day, some feminists were kind of hot...former Playboy Bunnies even.
Today? Shrew, woke, scolds who still can't open a pickle jar without a man's help.
Unless that woman happens to be a guy, in which case pickle jars are a cinch : )
What I noticed skimming that video from 1979 was an adherence to orderly debate, and a demonstrated need on the part of speakers to try to persuade the entire audience with logic, wit and appeals to classical liberal values.
Bringing into sharp relief why today's left sees that process as a problem.
Norman Mailer stabbed his wife with a penknife and almost killed her. He was instruemental in getting a Killer Jack abbott out of prison. Abbott then murdered a co-worker because he "Disrepected him". Mailer wasn't apologetic. We needed to "take chances" he said.
And yes, he pushed back against Feminisim but in a wordy, abstract, Left-wing way. He reminds me of those goofy macho Men's advocates you can find on Youtube, talking nonsense about women in some odd way, leaving out family and society. But I'm sure it was new and exciting back in the 60s and early 70s. Now, its like stale moldy bread that's been sitting around for 50 years.
Somehow i got derailed, because my intent was post about Ross Doughnut. What a useless wimp this guy is. Notice that he will NOT take a positive stand for Mailer, or launch an all out attack on Cancel Culture. Instead he writes in this weird, "well, if you're so brave cancel Joan Didion".
Rich Lowrey writes in that same passive-agressive, roundabout way. You read them and you're supposed to work at it and detect under all the vagueness and asides that they don't like some action by the Left.
Surely a student of the Civil Rights movement in mid-20th Century America (hell, mid-century culture in general) would need to read "The White Negro". How would you even begin to fully understand what happened without knowing about this influential writing and the responses to it. It's just flat out bizarre to suppress it.
>The back-door apologies at Random House include as the proximate cause...a junior staffer’s objection to the title of Mailer’s 1957 essay, “The White Negro”<
Because what is of course imperative in America now is that we kowtow - always, in all things - to The Black Negros.
"Freder Frederson said...
Dr. Seuss cancelled himself."
That didn't happen in a vacuum. They reevaluated the books based on a movement by libraries to do the same with all children's literature. They self censored before anyone else had the chance to cancel them.
Vidal probably should have been cancelled by now, but he left us a few spiteful quotes that will survive everything else that he wrote. Mailer was a more significant writer (maybe even a better one), but not a great quotemaker. Norman would rather fight (literally ... with boxing gloves ... in a ring) than quip.
The left ARE the FASCISTS they have been looking for. All they need to do, is look in the mirror.
Here's my March 2021 piece in Quillette on Mailer, Greer, and the 50th anniversary of the making of Town Bloody Hall:
https://quillette.com/2021/03/22/mailer-and-the-second-wavers/
Joan Didion is dead. Norman Mailer, dead. Wouldn’t the real flexing of “cultural muscle” be to cancel Ross Douthat instead?
Norman Mailer sucks, by the way.
Always has. Always will, Kay.
Self-hating nebbish…
rcocean, 8:50:
"[Mailer] pushed back against Feminism but in a wordy, abstract, Left-wing way."
Well, there was the time he gave a speech to a somewhat hostile student crowd at Berkeley. At the end, he invited all the feminists in the audience to go ahead and hiss at them. After a good many did, he remarked, "Obedient little bitches."
Only the cool kids are cancelled.
Is it too early in the day to ask why Ayn Rand is not considered one of the great feminists?
@Charlotte Allen—Great essay. Thanks.
Everything--everyone--every time---MUST revolve around St. Blacks.
Field Marshall Freder: "Dr. Seuss cancelled himself. It was his estate's decision to cease publication of a couple of his early books."
LOL
Under extreme pressure.
And if it was just about a couple of books, how do you explain the National Education Association altering their "Read Across America in 2017" program to exclude ALL Dr Seuss books and Seuss-related activities?
Seuss was driven out. Completely.
That's why the Dr Seuss Foundation made their move to cease publication of several Seuss books, to try and stave off the lefty mob.
But it didn't work. Because the mob still cancelled them.
But a funny thing happened on the way to another lefty-mob driven cancellation: too many people refused to go along with it, thus saving Seuss books and associated "stuff".
JK Rowling has also learned, with some difficulty, that she can survive the lefty-mob cancellation teams that Freder claims don't exist (apparently lefty mob cancellation has gone the way of antifa and is just a myth) but not without some financial pain and impact.
This proves a well established and large enough entity can withstand the mob....as long as they have FU money.
It's the average folks who are put into existential crisis by these marxist idiots.
Kay said...
Joan Didion is dead. Norman Mailer, dead. Wouldn’t the real flexing of “cultural muscle” be to cancel Ross Douthat instead?
No need.
Nobody listens to people like him anymore.
Except to mock.
Aside from the Executioner's Song, I can't think of anything by Mailer worth reading. He was nearly forgotten when he died, so the idea of cancelling him is redundant.
"Wouldn’t the real flexing of “cultural muscle” be to cancel Ross Douthat instead?"
Cancelling Ross Doughnut could be done by lifting a pinky finger. The Dude's 90 percent self-cancelled already. He makes Rod Dreher look like a Macho Right winger.
I miss the Dick Cavett show.
I had to look up that poet from Indiana.
I suspect people will have to look up Joan Didion before they have to look up Norman Mailer. Maybe if one of her screenplays had been turned into something like The Magnificent Ambersons things would be different.
Meade said...
@Charlotte Allen—Great essay. Thanks.
Agree - thank you for linking. All of it was good, and this made me laugh, cut and paste:
"There is something ironic about the fact that a long-term consequence of women’s liberation has been the erasure of “woman” as a definable category."
If James Whitcomb Riley were alive today, he'd have been cancelled long before now.
According to the Little, Brown Book of Anecdotes, Riley was told of a tragedy at his neighbor's home, where the long-time cook there had fallen asleep over her stove, and burned to death.
Riley suggested that the epitaph on her grave marker be, "Well done, good and faithful servant."
rcocean: "Cancelling Ross Doughnut could be done by lifting a pinky finger. The Dude's 90 percent self-cancelled already. He makes Rod Dreher look like a Macho Right winger."
Funny, cuz its true.
rcocean: "Cancelling Ross Doughnut could be done by lifting a pinky finger. The Dude's 90 percent self-cancelled already. He makes Rod Dreher look like a Macho Right winger."
Funny, cuz its true.
Looks like somebody needs to be cancelled
"Aside from the Executioner's Song,"
Haven't read it, but some liked his Eygptian Novel. Others his Monroe book. His Book "armies of the night" won a national book award and covers the time that 70,000 leftists tried to storm the Pentagon in 1967. Notice this was stopped by the 82nd Airborne and hundreds were arrested and released without almost no jail time or a small fine.
This was in the midst of a War. yet, no "insurrection". No "Sedition". No one sent to prison for years, or rotting away in jail for a year WITHOUT BAIL or TRIAL DATE.
Of course, the Left cares, the Left fights, and the Left organizes and exerts power. The Right does NOTHING.
Ms. Allen’s acute essay would be worth the time of the sour-faced commenters who feel qualified to kick the corpse of Norman Mailer.
It’s not that their criticisms are wrong so much as myopic in failing to acknowledge the magnitude of the personality and the gravitational force it exerted upon 20th century culture.
Despite the self-promotion, the conscious aping of Hemingway, the bracketed boozing, the sheer chutzpah, and his many vile episodes, Mailer had two Pulitzers (fiction and non-fiction), and was a member of the great mid-century, Jewish literary infield that also included Saul Bellow, Bernard Malamud, and Pbilip Roth (with John Updike as honorary gentile DH). That with the possible exception of Malamud their reputations (as well as Hemingway’s) have, in more recent times, been questioned on grounds of excessive “masculinity,” says more about the narrow timidity of these times than about the artists.
Regarding Mailer, as Ms. Allen’s essay and the “Town Bloody Hall Film” illustrate, one could appreciate him for the wit of his egotistical self-deprecation, the quixotic readiness to put himself at a seeming disadvantage, for his willingness to risk “going too far”—to being wrong—as well as for his brash “fuck you” charm, none of which was lost on the formidable Germaine Greer.
As for the dismissive Mailer haters here, and with due respect: whether from remoteness in time or place, they don’t “get” Mailer. That's fine, but he would have worn their dislike as a watch fob. As Bellow wrote in The Adventures of Augie March , “Columbus too thought he was a flop, probably, when they sent him back in chains. Which didn’t prove there was no America.”
I felt yanked out of my chair. Two fellow Hoosiers, Booth Tarkington & James Whitcomb Riley compared to Norman Mailer?!? Putting those three together is the start of a bad joke. T&R now RIP near each other in Crown Hill Cemetery in Indianapolis. Mailer is picking a fight wherever he went.
"was a member of the great mid-century, Jewish literary infield that also included Saul Bellow, Bernard Malamud, and Pbilip Roth (with John Updike as honorary gentile DH)." Bellow appeared on Dick Cavett's show in the early 80s. Cavett asked him about Mailer, and Bellow said something like, "Norman has an enormous amount of talent--and he needs it to get through all those platitudes." Those other four writers were vastly more talented. Mailer's problem was that he was more interested in being a celebrity than he was in doing the work of a writer.
As I read Allen's essay, my mind went back to Irving Howe's eviscerating essay "The Middle Class Mind of Kate Millett."
"Miss Millett is a writer entirely of our moment, a figment of the Zeitgeist, bearing the rough and careless marks of what is called higher education and exhibiting a talent for the delivery of gross simplicities in tones of leaden complexity."
I read some of Norman Mailer's books and some of Joan Didion's. I can remember parts of Mailer's book, but Didion draws a blank. Advantage Mailer. He was definitely a more memorable character, read jerk. Didion was a far better spouse, so she's got that working for her, but that's not what writers or feminists are remembered for.....My choice for posthumous cancellation would be Edmund Wilson. He is presently on the cusp of oblivion. You would have to publicize him in order to cancel him, but with sufficient will it could be done. He was a big deal at one time-- New Yorker editor and America's foremost literary critic. He never stabbed any woman, but while in his cups, he would occasionally slap Mary McCarthy around. I recently read part of his book The Twenties. The book is comprised of his journal and diary entries from the the nineteen twenties. He uses the n-word quite frequently. He doesn't use it in a meta or ironic way. He uses it as a contemptuous put down. Nobody made a fuss about it back then. The way you could tell if someone was enlightened and progressive was how they felt about Sacco and Vanzetti. Black people didn't much figure into their equations of equitable societies. Wilson was outspoken in his belief in the innocence of Sacco and Vanzetti. That made him a good man. That was then, but this is now. His book should be burned. We would all be better people if we made an effort to remember Edmund Wilson in order to banish him from our memories.
--- Booth Tarkington
Can boast of 76 movies and TV productions from his works. (F. Scott Fitzgerald, short storier superba, 75.). Hollywood wanted these stories! A great storyteller, Tarkington is overdue for rediscovery, IMO. Ambersons (Georgie) a great read; has two more in a trilogy, The Turmoil (Bibs) and National Avenue (haven't had that treat yet). Characters are alive. Excuse this brief tangent!
You might want to consider the source of this story first...
Earlier this week, the journalist Michael Wolff, author of the Trump White House exposé Fire and Fury, claimed in an article for The Ankler that a planned collection of Mailer’s political writings to mark the centennial of his birth next year had been cancelled by Random House. According to Wolff, one of the reasons for the cancellation was “a junior staffer’s objection to the title of Mailer’s 1957 essay, The White Negro”.
Link to The Guardian "Norman Mailer has not been ‘cancelled’, his son insists"
Hey, Guitar Joe:
Mailer, Bellow, Roth, and Updike all had tart criticisms of one another from time to time (Malamud tended to stick to his knitting).
I disagree that Mailer was less talented, and as authority refer you back to the comment by Bellows that you quoted. Mailer’s shortcoming was his relative lack of discipline compared to the others (especially Roth).
I don’t regard any of Mailer’s novels as the equal of those of Bellows or Roth. But, they are not the sum of his literary output, and none of the other four ever matched Mailer’s switch-hitting ability for non-fiction. Both The Armies of the Night, and Miami and the Siege of Chicago are classics of New Journalism. Their emotional range—from antic hyperbole to fine-grained meditations on aspects of meaning and intention—conveys both the absurdities and the tragic aspects of historic events. One can almost smell the tear gas.
Topical non-fiction tends not to age well, however, so some of Mailer’s best literary output may look less impressive to those living in later decades, especially those whose experience and education may have left them less attuned not only to history, but to absurdity and tragedy as well.
Regards.
P.S.: Love the quote about Kate Millett.
"He makes Rod Dreher look like a Macho Right winger."
So, in the world, Rod Dreher is a liberal?
William: Burn books and future generations will not have the warning of their example.
Ozymandias: "I disagree that Mailer was less talented." I think Mailer was very talented, but undisciplined and easily pulled into trendy ideas. The Executioner's Song is a very strong book, and if he hadn't written anything else he'd have that. The Armies of the night, another very good book. His fiction, though, is mostly unsuccessful.
You're right that those guys (Bellow and the rest) went after each other. I read an essay by Mailer about Updike and other writers in Cannibals and Christians, and avoided Updike because Mailer wrote that his prose had the air of a talented kid showing off for his English teacher. That's true, but when I plunged into the Rabbit books and Updike's stories, I thought his self conscious prose style was transcended by his storytelling and his ideas.
Bellow's journey from a fairly typical post war lefty to a conservative is an interesting one.
"The Naked and the Dead" is a great war novel.
"I can remember parts of Mailer's book, but Didion draws a blank. Advantage Mailer."
That's true to an extent. Mailer could write brilliant pages and passages, especially when he was writing about himself or some historical/celebrity figure. But he couldn't tell an interesting story, and he lacked the imagination to create real-life vivid characters. He was a better journalist than a novelist. He also lacked humor. Not in real life, I mean funny on the page. One page of Nabakov is funnier than 5 Mailer novels.
He's pretty much forgotten except for those over 50 or even 60. Usually great author's have one great book or novel that will last. With Fitzgerald it was The Great Gatsby, with Tarkington it was Magnficent Ambersons, with Vonnegut Slaughter house five. Does Mailer have one? I don't thnk so
"The White Negro" was pathetic. It didn't merit culture cancelling but cultural mocking, handled adeptly by James Baldwin in his essay, "The Black Boy Looks at the White Boy."
Some clever feminists criticized him too, but they were just culture cancelled. Hierarchy, ladies!
Mailer ran for mayor of New York in 1969. His fellow Jews weren't voting for him, so he made a convoluted rant about Jews. His running mate "voice of the neighborhoods" Jimmy Breslin was surprised that the intellectual Mailer ended up being the bigoted one and said, "How do you get off a ticket? I didn't know I was running with Ezra Pound."
John Lindsay was reelected that year. The Mets won the World Series. People felt the city must be doing something right in spite of everything. The Mets sprayed Lindsay with champagne in a locker room celebration and people thought he must be a regular guy after all and must be able to take a joke. Big mistake, but people were easily deceived back then, too.
Mailer and Didion (and Vidal) made the shift from being known for their fiction to being known for their non-fiction. Mailer wasn't as much of a phrasemaker, and he couldn't get away from the "Mailer" persona. Didion had a persona, too, but she was a sharp observer of people. Mailer was too much a prisoner of his own oversized ego. Not for nothing did he put "Mailer" as a character into his reportage and write about himself in the third person. Didion was more subtle. She didn't appear to stamp everything (and stomp on everything) with her personality. Her attitude colored her perceptions, but she gave readers a sense that she was writing about other people rather than just herself.
guitar joe: "So, in the world, Rod Dreher is a liberal?"
Rod Dreher is the sort of conservative the democraticals love to have around as he poses no threat to them whatsoever.
"Rod Dreher is the sort of conservative the democraticals love to have around as he poses no threat to them whatsoever."
I don't see how anyone who has read Dreher could come to that conclusion. He has written two books about the threat to conservative Christianity by forces on the far left and the culture in general. Anyone who has any familiarity with his work would know that he has reservations about Trump, but understands why people who are culturally conservative would support him.
guitar joe: "I don't see how anyone who has read Dreher could come to that conclusion."
Because, like I said, Rod Dreher is the sort of conservative the democraticals love to have around as he poses no threat to them whatsoever.
Rod is incapable of engaging the left in any way that moves any needles anywhere near where the rubber meets the road.
If fact, Rod would very much like conservatives to abandon the field. See both his The Crunchy Con Manifesto and the Benedict Option.
Rod is a pleasant fellow with some interesting ideas.....who is able to lead no one anywhere.
But hey, he is great to have around to discuss things at dinner parties....which is always a useful skillset in the middle of an attempted marxist transformation of the nation......
Why, he's almost as pleasant as Jonah Goldberg, who now spends his time with Stephen Hayes helping Facebook deplatform pro-life groups! You know, to "conserve" conservatism.
And those Covington Catholic kiddos had it coming too, didn't they?
guitar joe: "He (Dreher) has written two books about the threat to conservative Christianity by forces on the far left and the culture in general."
Wow! Really!
Well, thank goodness he did that otherwise no one would have known that was happening! Here we were sitting in darkness and thinking everything was going just swimmingly but Dreher really opened our eyes to what has been happening since the Wilson administration.
Not a moment too soon! He's worth every penny I guess.
Is it too early in the day to ask why Ayn Rand is not considered one of the great feminists?
-------------
bite your tongue :
in her own words - As far as the feminist movement is concerned, I am a male chauvinist. Proudly!
I would advise readers of this forum to give Drago's comments a skeptical eye and actually read Dreher at https://www.theamericanconservative.com/dreher/.
I disagree with Dreher on plenty of issues, but he goes after wokeness daily. And if you read articles about him in the New Yorker, the Times, and WaPo, you will not see affirmation of Drago's assertion that Dreher is liked by liberals.
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