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Many years ago, in the early '80s, Mailer participated in a program that brought Eminent Persons for a week's residency at the mid-Atlantic university where I studied. The house I lived in was one of his principal hosts for the week, a dubious honor as it turned out, as he was, to be kind, a fair amount of work.
My memory of him is dominated by two things: his leading a discussion, for a religious studies class, of his book on Marilyn Monroe and of Monroe as a goddess-figure - he seemed startled by the seriousness with which we approached the actress, even though his book was without doubt one of the most solemnly portentous things I've ever had to read.
The lowpoint of the visit, though, was a post-prandial session in our dining hall, when what started out as a discussion of campus life turned into a truly Mailerian tirade on Ungrateful Youth, with an odd fixation on the fact that the recently redecorated room featured plastic chairs, a fact, he declared, that would doom us all to mediocrity. Vidal's comment - "interesting but longwinded" - was more or less spot on, at least on that occasion, if more of the latter than the former.
Looking back, I realize that I must have been a somewhat fetching young thing - aggressively androgynous, New Wave-haired and made-up, and fairly solemn myself about, to Mailer, hot-button issues like gender and (lack of) traditional masculinity. He seemed genuinely fascinated, if I say so myself, and ended the evening by saying, "Well, if you are a boy, it's a loss..."
I think I was flattered, but I'm still not sure.
