Q: What about men?
A: The way to stop war is to castrate all men.... (海纳百川 www.hjclub.com)

JBM: It's so absurd, it's funny. No rational person would say that seriously. When you're talking to someone face-to-face and you make a joke like that, one sees the twinkle, one hears the inner laugh and knows you're kidding. But today we live in a world of sound bites. No humour allowed. I'm scared that good minds will be written off as insane or misogynists or racist - it's too easy to discredit anyone who may potentially be a threat. (海纳百川 www.hjclub.com)

NM: All right. My fear - not my attitude, but my fear - is that there's such a foul atmosphere in America, such powerlessness for most of us - it's almost like the more power we have with the internet, the less power we really have - you can feel this in the emptiness of so many blogs. There's a kind of dissipated fury in people today. They're fustrated, they're angry, and they are full of bad conscience.... (海纳百川 www.hjclub.com)

When that remark was made about women and cages, I was talking to Orson Welles on television. The year, as I recall, was 1970, and Welles was most aware of women's lib. ( It had not quite come into the public consciousness yet.) But he was ahead of me on that, and he kept going on and on as we spoke about how wonderful women are. I thought, 'Here's Orson and myself, both been married and divorced a number of times. We know a lot about women, their positive sides and their negative corners, our lives have been altered profoundly by women, yet Orson is carrying on shamelessly about how sweet and lovely and good they are - as if nothing bad could ever come from a woman?" And I said, "Come on, Orson, they should be kept in cages."  I didn't mean it any more than I would have if i said men should be kept in cages. I couldn't resist. Man, have I paid for that remark. (海纳百川 www.hjclub.com)

JBM: You stirred up a little trouble last summer with the Michiko Kakutani joke you made to Douglas Brinkly in Rolling Stone. Now, by my estimate, that was a foolish thing to say. I'm no fan of hers, but it was inaccurate, even as a joke. However, when I read that, I saw the twinkle in your eye and the laughter that came with the remark. The joking nature of it, but - (海纳百川 www.hjclub.com)

NM: I don't want to get into it. It's old spew. Let's face it. I made a big mistake. The fact is, Kakutani is no kamikaze. They, at least, were brave, whereas she may not have the outdoor guts of a pissant. She never appears in public. I don't know anyone who's ever met her. She writes in what must be a secret and most guarded hole and does her best to destroy any number of good writers. In the last month she gave hideous reviews to Michael Cunningham and dissed John Irving and Cormac McCarthy, she seems to have taken a vow to reduce the reputations of the best male American authors. Now, many reviewers have their tics, even the best. Clifton Fadiman, who was top dog in his time, had nothing good to say, nonetheless, for William Faulkner. Every time a Faulkner came out, he would trash it. But at least Fadiman waited until the book was in the stores. He didn't review two weeks ahead of time. That's my querrel with Michiko. If a bad review is the first you read, it takes three good ones to overcome it. She knows exactly what she's doing. (海纳百川 www.hjclub.com)

JBM: Maybe it's because you once made a joke that 'All women should be kept in cages." (海纳百川 www.hjclub.com)

NM: Thanks for bring that one up. I believe I said it thirty-five years ago. (海纳百川 www.hjclub.com)

[ NM: Norman Mailer
In 1948, when he was 25, NM published his first book, The Naked and the Dead in 1969, The Armies of the Night won the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize. Mailer received another Pulitzer in 1980 for the The executioner's Song. He lives in Provincetown Massachusetts, and Brooklyn NY. (海纳百川 www.hjclub.com)