November 13, 2007
Norman Mailer II Posted by Joshua Zeitz at 09:50 AM EST In his classic film Sleeper, Woody Allen has his character awake from a frozen slumber to learn that he is the sole survivor of a nuclear disaster that annihilated American civilization. Among the material artifacts that his futuristic hosts ask him to interpret is a picture of Norman Mailer. “He was a very great writer,” Allen explains. “He donated his ego to the Harvard Medical School for study.” After reading Mailer’s obituary in The New York Times, I half-suspect he didn’t mind Allen’s quip. Simply put, the man seemed to crave attention. No matter one’s position on his literary achievements, he clearly demanded his due in column space. I’m not sure whether Mailer’s entire career was a study in egomania, but certainly his ill-fated 1969 candidacy for mayor of New York City was. Running in a crowded primary field that included such liberal heavyweights as former Mayor Robert Wagner, Bronx Borough President Herman Badillo, and Rep. James Scheuer, Mailer stole just enough votes from the second-place finisher (Badillo) to hand a victory to City Comptroller Mario Procaccino. Though nowhere near as conservative as his opponents liked to portray him, Procaccino was ill-equipped to take on the incumbent mayor, John Lindsay, and became an unfortunate and unwitting agent of white backlash in the November election. Some time ago, in one of our rare moments of agreement, John Steele Gordon and I wondered whether New York might not have been better off under Herman Badillo’s stewardship than John Lindsay’s. We’ll never know, and for that we can thank Norman Mailer.
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