Eye on the Press
February 6, 2002 

Commentary
Mailer mixes it up to usual effect
"Norman Mailer -- the Naguib Mahfouz of American novelists -- waxes poetic about the state of the world, and especially the US, in the wake of September 11 in this BBC interview. And while the interview format inevitably leads to truncated thoughts, take a look at how far-reaching Mailer's bursts can be.

He goes from thoughtful..."The worst thing that can be said about my country in one sentence is that, if you are going to characterize Americans in one sentence, you would say that they don't like any question that takes longer than ten seconds to answer."
...to cliche without skipping a beat: "What you've got is a huge war shaping, in which what you've got, let me speak like a Jamaican for a moment, we've got "Allah versus the Almighty Dollah."" 
He's also not to happy about Bush: "He can't make a speech without using the word "evil" 13 or 15 or 22 times," Mailer says.

But this quote, which appears near the end of the interview, has me flummoxed about what Mailer is even talking about:
"Fighting evil is a way of dulling people's minds. It's as if in America, because we have so few roots, an Israeli in America, you can find the place where they were born. They even redid the hospital where the person was born, because we rebuild and rebuild, and we make things uglier and uglier every time we rebuild." Is it a mis-quote, or did he really say that? And if so, what does it mean?

Mailer -- author of the The Naked and the Dead and dozens of other epoch-summing works (including one with an ancient Egyptian theme) -- ends his BBC tirade with a metaphor about the US post-911.  
"... the attempt in America has been to close the wound quickly, and if it putrefies later, some other doctor will take care of that."

Symbolic strike ignored: Top Marlboro man born in Egypt, Al-Azhar sheikh in London, and more great links (January 31, 2002)
The "lion" of Egypt?: Links galore, starring Ashcroft in Saudi-mode, mosques in the spotlight, the Egyptian-American running for Congress, and cross-cultural Hobeika media. (January 30, 2002)
Osama's debut...Rapping pharaohs, smelly daddies, and Rumsfeld's Sinai wavering...Don't miss today's news links (January 23, 2002)
When common sense seems radical: Tales of media bias and radical cartoonists; plus, learn how the multiplexes took over (January 20, 2002)
The problems with big media, and an examination of bin Laden as an architecture critic... (January 3, 2002)

Browse our complete coverage of the attacks on the US and the war on Afghanistan

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