Booked: Best-selling author Norman Mailer said the...

Booked: Best-selling author Norman Mailer said the Soviet Union is no “evil empire. . . . They can’t even make soap. How can they make a missile that can hit me?” But Soviet literature is another question. “Russians have kept alive their love of literature. . . . (It) kept them alive, free and independent,” Mailer, 67, said late last week in Iowa City.

Movie Fans: Vice President Dan Quayle surprised patrons at an Indianapolis movie theater when he showed up for a Saturday afternoon showing of “Teen-Age Mutant Ninja Turtles.” With Quayle were two of this three children, an entourage of Secret Service agents and at least 12 other children.

Petitioners: Some Wellesley College students oppose Barbara Bush as commencement speaker because, they say, she’s a college dropout getting by on her husband’s coattails. The First Lady will speak June 1 at the Wellesley, Mass., school. “To honor Barbara Bush . . . is to honor a woman who has gained recognition through the achievements of her husband, which contradicts what we have been taught,” asserted a petition signed by 150 if the school’s 2,200 students. Bush dropped out of Smith College after two years to marry George Bush.

Drug Strategy: Real estate czar Donald Trump spoke on the war on drugs to Miami business leaders late last week: “You add it all up, and we’re losing badly on the war on drugs. We’ll never win that war . . . . you have to legalize drugs in order to win the war (and) to take the profit out of these drug czars.”