Tuesday, June 28, 2011

Back to Insults-Mailer v. Vidal



Gore Vial's Crime:
Comparing “The Prisoner of Sex” to “three days of menstrual flow” and Mailer to Charles Manson.

Action taken:
Head-butting him in the green room of The Dick Cavett Show in 1971, then telling him, on-air, that he ruined Kerouac by sleeping with him. Six years later, he threw a drink at Vidal—and punched him—at a Lally Weymouth soirée.

Blowback: Still on the floor, Vidal said, “Words fail Norman Mailer yet again.” Days later, Vidal went on Cavett’s show to assert that Mailer had—literally—stabbed his second wife in the back. They reconciled in 1985.

PS-The woman is Janet Flanner, no intellectual slouch herself. Can you imagine a talk show today hosting these three or anyone not pushing a movie or TV show.

Every word she writes is a lie, including and and the.
  • Mary McCarthy, in a statement about Hellman in a 1979 interview on The Dick Cavett Show; this prompted a defamation suit against McCarthy which was dropped after Hellman's death.

22 comments:

Anonymous said...

True.

He stabbed her in the breast with a penknife, just missing her heart, then stabbed her in the back. When someone went to help her he said "Let the bitch die."

Jeff M.

Dana King said...

I wasn't old (or educated) enough to appreciate Cavett when he was in his prime. Every quote or video I see of him makes me sorry I missed him when he was readily available.

Al Tucher said...

And the victory goes to Janet Flanner.

pattinase (abbott) said...

Yes, because even Cavett seemed like an ass before it was over. How could he not know what Mailer meant by finger bowls. Something big enough to contain a small intellect. And you can't treat guests like this. Even boorish guests.

Todd Mason said...

Well, Cavett lost his temper, and always was a bit of self-consciously precious interlocutor...but the typically overripe metaphor from Mailer, about how fingerbowls would be sufficient to encompass the intellects of his perceived antagonists, is pretty damned weak to have to pick up on the fly.

Even after Cavett's insult (about the chairs). Which perhaps overconcretizes the metaphor, but at least is clearly meant to refer to a badly swollen head as much as anything else.

But, frankly, you don't have Vidal and Mailer (or Vidal and Buckley)(or Mailer and nearly anyone) on if you don't want childish boorishness.

Anonymous said...

Todd's last point is it, exactly.

That has now pervaded television (and society) in general. You don't get on a show (not that most of us would want to) like SUPER NANNY or REAL HOUSEWIVES or JERSEY SHORE without behaving badly. He (or she) who can act out most outrageously gets the attention.

See Charlie Sheen, the Octamom, Lindsay Lohan and countless other examples.

If we didn't give them publicity would they still exist?

Maybe so, but no one but their immediate families would know...or care.

Jeff M.

Charles Gramlich said...

I thought it was pretty hilarious. I will watch it again.

pattinase (abbott) said...

Too true. But I would probably watch any show with writers, artists, directors on it just for some serious discussions. England still has shows like this. Why can't we?

Todd Mason said...

Because most of our chat shows are run by the likes of BBC's Graham Norton.

Craig Ferguson, after he gets his hit and miss improvisations and usually bad skits out of the way, famously can talk with writers. But beyond him (and Winfrey's now vanished presentation of her favorite writer things), you have to turn to radio, and the more ambitious very localized television.

Lewis Lapham's excellent series BOOKMARK wasn't supported by the PBS stations, and the very few indy public stations at the time...so it's hard to imagine there'd be much improvement in receptivity now. THE DAILY SHOW and THE COLBERT REPORT, in there way, rarely do the thing to a certain extent.

But, say, BOOKWAVES on Pacifica Radio (the show Richard Lupoff co-founded) is the kind of thing that reminds good...

Todd Mason said...

And, of course, Charlie Rose and Tavis Smiley manage to make discussion of such matters, when they get to them, too often inane.

pattinase (abbott) said...

Charlie Rose is good but it veers toward political or economic discussions most of the time/ Can I get that Pacifica online?

Anonymous said...

Patti - Things have really changed on talk shows, haven't they? I remember Dick Cavett and David Frost and some of the other legendary talk shows. They're certainly different now....

Todd Mason said...

I'll have to disagree with you about Rose...he wasn't bad doing overnights on CBS, with a three-hour show (iirc, repeated for the next three), but in the 56:46 he has (not counting credits sequences) on PBS, he annoys me, with his jumping-bean obliviousness to all but the most simplistic of his guests' statements.

BOOKWAVES, at least:
http://bookwaves.homestead.com/

BOOKWAVES isn't superb, but it is decent, particularly when Lupoff drops by.

Erik Donald France said...

I love these -- and the comments. Very interesting. Mailer-Bukowski-Henry Miller = essentially the same guy. Glad that Vidal still lives among us.

Mike Dennis said...

I'm not familiar with the woman, but Mailer, Vidal, and Cavett deserve each other. They're all extremely arrogant, elitist snobs.

Deb said...

I read a review of Dick Cavett's recent book (which is a collection of essays expanded from posts he wrote for his New York Times blog) which said, in part, you almost feel that Dick is writing these essays to preserve his sense of the past now that his wife and so many of his guests have died.

Back in the day (on non-school nights), I'd go back and forth between Johnny Carson and Dick Cavett (and it seems to me that Joey Bishop was in the night-time talk show mix there at one time). Talk about an embarrassment of riches!

pattinase (abbott) said...

I am not sure Johnny was much different from Jay et al, but Dick really was. I miss that sort of guest list although I guess Charlie Rose has some of it. With all the cable stations, you would think one would feature talking about culture and books.

Deb said...

No, I'm not equating Dick Cavett's guest list with Johnny's, I'm just saying I would watch them both without really understanding a difference between the intellectual and the pop culture (a difference that still often evades me today). Also, upon reflection, I think Merv Griffin had a late-night talk show and I used to watch his show too ("Hello, Mrs. Miller!")

pattinase (abbott) said...

Merv was in the afternoon here along with Mike Douglas. May have been syndicated and in different times.

Todd Mason said...

Well, if anything, Tavis Smiley will actually engage with his writer guests in a less robotic way than Rose does these days. Albeit it's always about Tavis. And, as I mentioned, Craig Ferguson. The best writer interviews on national television currently are on C-SPAN's IN DEPTH, but only occasionally do they have a writer worth three hours of time, and their interviewers tend to be Very stiff.

Joey Bishop preceded Dick Cavett as ABC's answer to THE TONIGHT SHOW (in the film TARGETS, the psychopath's family is blithely watching THE JOEY BISHOP SHOW while he seethes in the foreground at one point)...Merv Griffin was tapped to be CBS's late night guy for several years around the turn of the '70s, after his afternoon show was doing OK in competition with Mike Douglas's Philadelphia-based syndicated show for Westinghouse. After CBS let him go, Griffin went back to afternoons.

Todd Mason said...

And, frankly, when THE TONIGHT SHOW was 90 minutes, they had more writers on. Much as did Tom Snyder's TOMORROW SHOW.

Todd Mason said...

Joey Bishop's much-chivvied sidekick was Regis Philbin.