{"id":12197,"date":"2014-03-07T10:32:27","date_gmt":"2014-03-07T15:32:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/?p=12197"},"modified":"2014-04-08T11:31:23","modified_gmt":"2014-04-08T15:31:23","slug":"remembering-norman-mailer-a-sorta-russia-policy-wonk","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/2014\/03\/remembering-norman-mailer-a-sorta-russia-policy-wonk.html","title":{"rendered":"Remembering Norman Mailer, Sorta Policy Wonk"},"content":{"rendered":"

I’m no policy wonk on Russia and neither was Norman Mailer. But the crisis in the Ukraine and an article in today’s New York Times about the impact of thinning ranks of Russia experts on U.S. policy<\/a> reminded me of remarks Mailer once made about the former Soviet Union, as though he were an expert. It was back in 1984 and Mailer had come to Chicago. He looked at 61 not unlike a retired seadog, although there was nothing retiring about him. What hadn\u2019t changed with age was his provocative charm. Although he was there to promote a new novel, he preferred chatting informally to engaging in a literary interview. And so, over a light lunch in his suite at the Whitehall Hotel, he unburdened himself of some striking opinions about little things like war and peace; the U.S. presidential election, which was just eight weeks away; the Soviet Union, which still existed at the time; communism vs. capitalism; and whatever else came to mind.<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

As we spoke I told him I detected a bit of the South in his Brooklyn accent. He explained that he had been \u201cin a Texas outfit\u201d during World War II and that he had been married to two women from the South. \u201cI\u2019m a chameleon,\u201d he told me. \u201cI sometimes think that if I hadn\u2019t been so shy when I was a kid, I would have been an actor because I\u2019ve always been an unconscious mimic. I take on the color of the person I\u2019m with.\u201d<\/p>\n

Which prompted me to ask whether that reflected a problem he had with his identity. Naturally, he enlarged the question in his reply: \u201cIdentity is such a 20th century demand. In the 19th century, and certainly before then, most people lived at so submerged a level that the question of identity never existed. They didn\u2019t think of themselves as having a personality or even a face. They were farm people. They worked like animals, not to mock them. Now you\u2019re your own definition of yourself.\u201d<\/p>\n

I said popularity rather than childhood shyness could make someone want to change skin: When rock stars become rich and famous, they often complain of going through an identity crisis. People treat them differently, and they become different. Mailer riposted by citing a famous line of Engels\u2019 that \u201cquantity changes quality,\u201d adding, \u201cHere\u2019s a kid who\u2019s playing a guitar and now you add $1 million to the kid and the guitar. You do not have the same kid.\u201d<\/p>\n

The subject interested him: \u201cTake a beautiful woman and add a beautiful dress. We say, \u2018You sure look beautiful in that dress.\u2019 The blacks have the idea that the dress also has a soul because it\u2019s so beautiful. And the soul of the dress is added to the soul of the woman. When a woman dresses up, she\u2019s no longer the same woman. When I\u2019m dressed up, I no longer feel like the same man. I feel like I have a different personality.\u201d<\/p>\n

I changed the subject to politics. Since it was an election year, and Ronald Reagan was running for a second term, Mailer had been going around saying he believed that Clint Eastwood could be president. When I asked him why, he jumped into the question as though I\u2019d asked him to do a swan dive from a three-meter platform. He was more than eager to perform.<\/p>\n

\u201cI have a dream that four years from now, in 1988, I want to see Warren Beatty run against Clint Eastwood. I want to cut out the crap. We\u2019re going for image in the presidency, so let\u2019s have real image. Let\u2019s have a real election. That\u2019s a real election in my mind. You want to elect a woman? Let\u2019s have Meryl Streep against Jessica Lange. Let\u2019s have real shootouts. That\u2019s a hard choice. Either one could win, and I\u2019d be a lot happier than I am right now.\u201d<\/p>\n

I wondered whether he was saying that for effect. He wasn\u2019t: \u201cI would argue that the jump in going from a standard politician to president is a greater jump psychologically and spiritually for this country than from Ronald Reagan to Clint Eastwood. Reagan, who had political experience, is still seen in everyone\u2019s mind as an actor. You don\u2019t have to become governor any more. If you put in the work, you can skip that. You can sound as intelligent as the next guy in a debate. And any actor can do that because it\u2019s a matter of learning lines, learning set speeches with small variations. Anybody who has been an actor for 20 years can learn a speech in a hurry.\u201d <\/p>\n

The question of substance snuck into our conversation. The U.S. was in a standoff with the Soviet Union at the time. Mailer didn\u2019t believe it would come to anything. \u201cNeither country has the ability to defeat the other country in a nuclear war without destroying the world,\u201d he said. I remarked that that was the conventional wisdom. So Mailer got down to specifics.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Russians have about twice as many tanks as we do. The reason is that they have a real third-world army. When one of their tanks breaks down, they just leave it by the side of the road. They cannibalize their tanks. They can\u2019t get enough spare parts. They can\u2019t get a system going in any comprehensive fashion. If you go to the Soviet Union, you\u2019ll believe this. I mean, when you can\u2019t get decent toilet paper, when you can\u2019t get decent ice cream, when you can\u2019t get decent towels and sheets, when the food has a certain awfulness \u2013\u201d I broke in for the sake of argument to say he was telling me that when you can\u2019t make good ice cream it means you can\u2019t make good tanks? <\/p>\n

\u201cAbsolutely,\u201d he said. \u201cBecause there\u2019s a culture to production. And if you can\u2019t do simple things, why assume you can do complex things well? Each set of generals on both sides talks about how marvelous the other side\u2019s army is, and what a threat the other army is.\u201d The implication, of course, was that having a solid threat helps to raise military budgets. I pointed out that expensive American high-tech weapons systems may not perform in the field as well as claimed. Perhaps simplicity was advantageous.<\/p>\n

Mailer didn\u2019t quite agree: \u201cOur systems may be half-gone, but theirs never existed. They do have simple systems. Force majeure. We still have the vanity that we can handle complex systems. They know they can\u2019t. But their simple systems are as inefficient as our complex systems. What a marvelous symbiotic relationship!<\/p>\n

\u201cI really think the argument with the right wingers is the \u2018horseshit\u2019 argument. I say, \u2018Why did we have to go to Grenada?\u2019 They say, \u2018To defend the Caribbean against communism.\u2019 I say, \u2018Why defend it against communism?\u2019 They say, \u2018What? Mexico will go communist.\u2019 So I say, \u2018What are they going to do, invade us?\u2019 So they say, \u2018No. But there will be an awful lot of wetbacks.\u2019 That\u2019s the argument they\u2019re reduced to. We\u2019ll have this infusion of wetbacks because all of Central America will go communist. Why should we care if they go communist? The more countries that go communist, the more trouble the Soviet Union is in. It can\u2019t handle complexity.\u201d<\/p>\n

Did that mean he wished communism on them? \u201cThey wouldn\u2019t be living any worse under communism in those countries than they\u2019re living under capitalism,\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s monstrous there. Even Mexico is a horrible place. They\u2019ll be miserable under communism. They\u2019re miserable under capitalism. Why should capitalism bear the onus?\u201d<\/p>\n

Mailer\u2019s reply was peculiar. I said it made him sound like he was defending capitalism. In reply, he began singing, \u201cI serve the Lord and the Lord serves me.\u201d So he was for saving the capitalist system? \u201cThat\u2019s a switch,\u201d I said. Mailer did not want to be put in a corner. \u201cI find capitalism a very interesting system,\u201d he said. \u201cI can\u2019t pretend that I love it. On the other hand, I don\u2019t really have a feeling in any way that government control from the top is going to work any better.”<\/p>\n

That answer didn\u2019t seem to satisfy him. Capitalism was hardly an antidote to government control from the top. After a pause, he said, “Capitalism is a very \u2018iffy\u2019 kind of system because, when it deteriorates, it always deteriorates into fascism. After all, capitalism is the government of the greedy. But if you have enough freedoms built into it and maintained and fought for, the greedy, like anyone else, can improve and can discover a civic purpose. One of the beliefs that I have is that the people in any system can get better. Khrushchev, for example, was a phenomenon after Stalin. Everyone believed that after Stalinism the Soviet Union was going to be a land of terror. And Khrushchev, who\u2019d been the butcher of the Ukraine, became a better man. Even monsters can become human.\u201d<\/p>\n

I told him he sounded \u201ca little dreamy.\u201d Did he mean to say that the world would work if everybody gets a bit better? More than dreamy, he sounded optimistic, even utopian. \u201cYeah,\u201d he agreed, \u201cI guess when you get older you get less pessimistic. I have so many children\u201d \u2013 Mailer was the father of nine \u2013 \u201cthere\u2019s no joy in being pessimistic. It lays a gloom on my kids and a gloom back on me and all of that. But optimism-pessimism? That has more to do with one\u2019s liver than with anything else. I don\u2019t take optimism or pessimism seriously. I\u2019m always embarrassed when a questioner asks me, \u2018Are you more optimistic today?\u2019 I say, \u2018Yeah, I had a very good meal last night.\u2019 Or, \u2018I didn\u2019t drink too much.\u2019<\/p>\n

\u201cBut,\u2019 he added, \u201cthat\u2019s not the point. The point is that we\u2019ve been running a neat little religious war for a lot of profiteers in this country. And that war has been anti-communist. Our system goes through a lot of fluctuations, and there are a lot of ways it works in an appalling fashion. Nonetheless, we certainly are in healthier economic shape than communist countries. And they\u2019re not going to take us over. They simply are not.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe entire world can be communist, and they would have to do business with us. All the communist countries would be vying with each other to have a special relationship with us. The threat that they will take us over is used to Mickey Mouse us. It enables the Right to keep control they don\u2019t deserve.\u201d<\/p>\n

So much has changed since that interview — not only in the new Russia where Putin’s iron-fisted nostalgia for the former Soviet Union<\/a> has scared the shit out of everyone, but also in the new China, where a top-down communist system controls an economy predicted to surpass the U.S. by 2030<\/a>, and in the new U.S., where a so-called leftwing president is joined at the gun-toting hip<\/a> with his rightwing predecessor — that Mailer’s take on specific political matters, if not his more general views, is now outdated. Can’t be helped, but what the hell . . . substitute “the war on terrorism” for the war on communism and he’s back in the picture. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’m no policy wonk on Russia and neither was Norman Mailer. But the crisis in the Ukraine and an article in today’s New York Times about the impact of thinning ranks of Russia experts on U.S. policy reminded me of remarks Mailer once made about the former Soviet Union, as though he were an expert. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":12210,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[17],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-12197","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-political-culture","8":"entry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/03\/Norman-Mailer-copy.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pbvgEs-3aJ","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12197","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12197"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12197\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12210"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12197"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12197"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12197"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}