The Fight

If there's anyone who could stare death in the eyes, knee him in the nuts, and then return to write a 2,000-word rambling tome making death a sympathetic character, it would have to be good old Norman Mailer.  The 84-year-old Mailer, whose latest book is about, well, God, is currently recovering from lung surgery and is said to be making a slow but steady recovery. 

Comments

[Richard]

On "Fresh Air" today, there was a terrific commentary about the 40th anniversary of the 1967 March on the Pentagon which led to Mailer's The Armies of the Night, the subject of an academic conference this weekend.

Included is a tape I'd never heard, Mailer speaking out against the Vietnam war as he left the jail where he was held overnight. He sounded very eloquent.

I've met him four or five times over the years -- mostly at PEN events in NYC in the 1980s -- and he always seemed extremely kind, gentle and very funny.