Fans, if Not the Stars, Turn Out

Norman Mailer slipped into town Wednesday night without fanfare. The 75-year-old master of American prose appeared at the Writers Guild Theater in Beverly Hills as one speaker in the nonprofit Writers Bloc author / lecture series. According to guild President Andrea Grossman, the program “is dedicated to bringing great writers to Los Angeles. We were thrilled to get him.”

Mailer’s visit was part of a short national tour to promote his latest offering, the self-edited, shoe-box-sized anthology titled “The Time of Our Time,” released by Random House to coincide with the 50th anniversary of the publication of his first novel, “The Naked and the Dead.” In the intervening half-century, he’s written 30 books--many big in both pages and substance--helped pioneer the genre of journalistic “faction” and won two Pulitzer Prizes.

Perhaps the Hollywood elite were all glued to Frank Sinatra’s funeral, since none turned out for this rare opportunity to see one of the foremost living writers (Mailer has also written two screenplays and directed four movies). Also absent were any of those local authors whose names are usually kicked around when that (some charge oxymoronic) term “literary L.A.” is mentioned. Still, nearly every one of the theater’s 550 seats was filled. Mailer’s sixth wife, painter Norris Church, sat about five rows back.

“It’s not very often that Norman Mailer comes out for a public speaking thing where you can just go for $10 and listen to him chat,” said Charisse Hovey, who came up from Laguna Beach with her boyfriend. Hovey recently quit her job as a reporter for a Newport Beach newspaper to write a novel.

Many here--especially rank-and-file screenwriter and producer types--were nurturing literary aspirations. Although book lovers and book writers must invariably overlap, Mailer is a special case. It wasn’t only that he hit a critical and commercial grand slam his first time at bat and went on to have a long and (barring a few lapses) respectable career. He writes the kind of books that inspire people to write books.

The program began with a live interview with KCRW’s “Bookworm” host, Michael Silverblatt, followed by audience questions and ended with Mailer reading a selection from “Time of Our Time.”

The old man of letters now limps. He mounted the stage aided by a stylish cane with a handle carved in the shape of a crouching puma. Somewhat mellowed since the period when he could be counted upon to raise the hackles of women, homosexuals and quite a few Republicans, the author is still raw, candid and witty. He quipped that his hair “didn’t turn white until women’s liberation came along,” and he called sex in the age of AIDS “the condom sub-life,” adding that, “In my day, you got married so you didn’t have to use one.”

With Silverblatt setting the tone, most of the conversation took that almost religious attitude about the writer’s art and the writing life that still lingers on in the increasingly hermetic world of the bibliophile. “It doesn’t really matter whether Norman Mailer is right or wrong or whether I agree with him or not, but rather that I need to be inspirited by him,” went a typical Silverblatt comment.

Mailer and Silverblatt talked about prose being “ferocious,” and Mailer said he once considered himself part of the nation’s “intellectual shock troops.” There was a touch of melancholy to this. His impact was not limited to the world of writing, but, as a witness to and chronicler of our century’s greatest deeds and misdeeds, our national identity. The man who sat before all these would-be novelists spoke of the closing chapter of a bygone era--a time when literature commanded real power and books could be said to have “changed things.”

“Where do you see the place of the novel in 20 years?” someone asked.

“About where poets and poetry is today,” Mailer answered. “You got TV and now, my God, the Internet. Who can compete?”

“Do tough guys join writers groups?” went another question to the literary badass, the writer who lived large and showed that words could be wielded with the same macho swagger that Clint Eastwood had with his Smith & Wesson.

“What’s a writers group?” Mailer shot back.

To mollify Random House’s concerns about releasing such a thick volume (‘Publishers don’t like fat books,” Mailer joked. “People can’t take them on airplanes.”), the author agreed to provide his publisher 30,000 signed editions of “Time of Our Time” for bookstores, a task, he said, made slightly simpler since they sent him the pages before the book was bound. But that wasn’t the last of the Mailer autographs. After the reading, a huge line snaked around the lobby.

“I don’t sign pictures,” Mailer growled at a fan who thrust a head shot at him. “I’m not a movie star.”

You couldn’t tell that from the deference he was shown. Many in the line thanked him for inspiring them in their own efforts. Others sought the master’s advice. One person asked Mailer to write something for an aspiring writer. He laughed and said, “Good luck.” Mailer set the signing limit at two books per person, but he allowed people to return to the back of the line for more. Many did.

An attorney from Lake Arrowhead (who declined to give his name) brought 25 hardcover books in three shopping bags and wanted them all signed. Grossman asked him if he was a bookseller (‘Don’t worry,” she said. “We love booksellers. Where would we be without them?”).

“Don’t be sacrilegious!” the supplicant barked. “I’m a fan. Now, go away.”

He was on his third trip in line, had the woman he came with do the same and was also sneaking around trying to cajole anyone who only had one book to take one of his up as well.

“I’m humiliating and debasing myself for an autograph,” he said. “It’s worth everything. This is not some small rinky-dink writer. This is Norman Mailer!”