Sunday 30 October 2016

Norman Mailer on Queen Hillary


The Queen Hillary was about to dock, the engines were throttled back to assure a coast to victory and a glide to grandeur. Mentally the spoils were distributed, chines, hocks, liver and the succulent trotters for the faithful.

And then:
The reporter has in his time toyed with the power of coincidence in his view of a universe in which destiny orders things past the petty power of meddling agents. However the latest twist surpassed a writer's invention to revive a flagging story. Wienerwald my pretties. You would be thrown out of a script conference for suggesting it. But to the higher ground of serious commentary which is a dismal tar pit of viscous boredom compared to which Sartre looking at the roots of a tree in the park were Sartre looking at the roots of a tree..... Such boredom is recursive, he thought, I'll have none of it and he thought of a nobler time when pecadillos were absorbed in a grand narrative - who was inside the tent and who outside, who was the manic micturator marking a spot he might have to return to in the grim afternoon of his career. A sour whiff of old folly might be just another lamp post that lights our way to dusty death. So the reporter thought.

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