@spendius,
The Norman Mailer who blasted all the organized religions? Of course, he does believe in a he or she god, but as an artist, not a designer. According to Mailer, he/she (apparantly a bisexual or transvestite) brushed in the dinosaurs, saw what a bad mistake he/she had made, then allowed them to go extinct.
He is has always had some quaint opinions and deserved the verbal bashing Gore laid on him.
Vidal characterized the “The Prisoner of Sex” to “three days of menstrual flow” and Mailer to Charles Manson.
Mailer was speechless and head-butted 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.
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. The two reconciled in 1985.
What fun, but not nearly as fun as trying to trod through Ancient Evenings where every other page seemed to include one of the characters staring at his own feces.
Norman criticized Capote for "In Cold Blood," then proceeded to copy the concept.