You missed out on some of the jabs pop culture has been taking at Mailer for decades, slowly chipping away at whatever reputation he once had as a literary figure. In 1976 Warren Zevon made a derogatory allusion to him and his thinly veiled confessional sex fantasy book about Marilyn Monroe in "The French Inhaler," one of the best songs from his debut album which later Judd Apatow specifically requested he play on The Larry Sanders Show. Mailer’s movies put him in that rare class of intellectual, like Bernard-Henri Lévy, that have been publicly humiliated by lowly paid film critics. He also got hit in the head with a hammer by Rip Torn, and the dreadful performance Ryan O’Neal gave in Tough Guys Don’t Dance became an early internet meme. The Shary Bobbins episode of The Simpsons takes a swipe at Playboy and “Norman Mailer’s latest claptrap about his waining libido.” Even Harold Bloom, who made a point of never apologizing for his taste, couldn’t disguise the fact that he was embarrassed to have enjoyed Ancient Evenings, the instantly remaindered Egypt novel you mention in the podcast.
William Burroughs may not have stabbed his wife like Norman Mailer, but he did kill her trying to shoot a glass off her head William Tell style. Just sayin'.
You missed out on some of the jabs pop culture has been taking at Mailer for decades, slowly chipping away at whatever reputation he once had as a literary figure. In 1976 Warren Zevon made a derogatory allusion to him and his thinly veiled confessional sex fantasy book about Marilyn Monroe in "The French Inhaler," one of the best songs from his debut album which later Judd Apatow specifically requested he play on The Larry Sanders Show. Mailer’s movies put him in that rare class of intellectual, like Bernard-Henri Lévy, that have been publicly humiliated by lowly paid film critics. He also got hit in the head with a hammer by Rip Torn, and the dreadful performance Ryan O’Neal gave in Tough Guys Don’t Dance became an early internet meme. The Shary Bobbins episode of The Simpsons takes a swipe at Playboy and “Norman Mailer’s latest claptrap about his waining libido.” Even Harold Bloom, who made a point of never apologizing for his taste, couldn’t disguise the fact that he was embarrassed to have enjoyed Ancient Evenings, the instantly remaindered Egypt novel you mention in the podcast.
William Burroughs may not have stabbed his wife like Norman Mailer, but he did kill her trying to shoot a glass off her head William Tell style. Just sayin'.
Thanks for this