34
GORE VIDAL
murmur "bullshit." Yet it is strange how our careers seesaw. Ten
years ago the English were comparing Mailer unfavorably to me.
Whenever I am up, he is down, and the reverse; currently he is very
much up for this is the age of writer as subject and Norman
is
a
most appealing subject. He looks like everyone his age. He makes
social messes which to our pre-pot whisky-drinking generation are
chillingly familiar (incidental intelligence: I have known or known
about most of the American writers of my time and I can think of
only three who are not - or were not once -alcoholics) .
Finally, Norman throws himself so wholeheartedly into current
events that the fact he invariably sinks like a stone makes no dif–
ference, perhaps is the difference. Certainly his Mr. Magoo approach
to history
is
profoundly endearing, and his perennial threat one day
to write that Great Novel (oh, lost, lost, and by
The New York
Times Book Review
grieved!) has, with time, become the Great
Novel itself. He need do no more; he
is,
until the fashion again
changes and he is forgotten with all the rest, good and bad.
Personally, we have always got on - the result of a tacit nonag–
gression pact (though not necessarily one of mutual assistance) ; after
all, each has distressed so many dominations and powers both pol–
itical and literary that it would be too much for either to have to
endure the other's sniping.
I am smiling, as I write. I always smile when I
think
of Norman.
I recall an evening we spent together in New York, discussing his
play version of
The Deer Park,
and drinking a good deal. Then
I took
him
uptown to an apartment where Paul Bowles was staying.
Norman had never met Bowles, or Allen Ginsberg (then unbearded)
and Peter Orlovsky who were also present. Conscious that literary
history might be made, Bowles tried to tape the conversation, but,
predictably, we all talked at once and only the sharp cries of a large
green parrot were ever entirely clear on the playback.
Suddenly, Norman lay down on the floor and shut
his
eyes.
Putting his feet comfortably on Norman's stomach, Ginsberg said,
very kindly, "Of course he's crazy."
But memory plays tricks. Although there is often a parrot pres–
ent when Bowles
is
at home, I now have an amending memory
that the cries on the tape were not a parrot's but Orlovsky's. Others
present
will
no doubt remember, although I have usually found
that whenever I read about an occasion where I was present, the
