I really had to work hard on this one. My daughter was reading an article aloud to me from the June, 2010, edition of Vanity Fair magazine. James Wolcott, a regular contributor to the magazine, was reporting on the life of the late author, Norman Mailer.
At one point in the well-written article, Wolcott refers to Mailer and one of his six wives as being totemic. In doing so, Wolcott has used the term at the furthest stretch of the definition. His point is that Mailer, who was as misogynistic as any man I’ve ever read about, stood as a totemic figure…much in the same way as a totem stands as a venerated sign of a tribe or clan. What an unfortunate parallel.
In native culture the totem is an item which gives encouragement, strength, and courage to the members of the tribe or clan. The individuals identify with the clan’s specific “brand” (to use a modern meaning of the word.)
However, Mailer, in spite of being a brilliant author, turns out to be a despicable man who verbally and psychologically abuses any woman or girl who comes within the range of his voice. At one point in the article, Wolcott says:
“The crippler is that in his writing Mailer was psychologically, creatively, empathetically tone-deaf when it came to women, his female characters a creamy mélange of angel-whores whose lipstick was ripe for smearing—a Playboy Bunny mansion of haughty bitches and breathy ditzes whose dialogue bore no resemblance to indoor speech. One of the imponderables about Mailer’s career is that even though he bobbed and deep-sea’d in an ocean of women—six wives, countless mistresses and casual flings, five daughters—he doesn’t seem to have actually learned anything from them, because he never really listened. Because who needs to listen when you insist on and succeed in getting nearly everything your own way? Genius has its privileges, and male prerogative provides extra thrust.”
That, to me, doesn’t sound like a totemic figure. To the contrary, it sounds like someone the society would be well to ignore or forget. However, his brilliant writing kept him at the forefront of literary criticism for decades. In the Wolcott article we are made privy to some of the ins and outs of his sixth, and final, marriage to Norris Church. It is here that Wolcott says:
“…her May–December romance with Norman resulted in a marriage whose installments became a staple of the gossip columns and celebrity spreads, her Juno-esque height and his howitzer stare embossing them as one of New York’s most totemic 80s couples, matching accessories.”
I guess those who tend to worship “stars” can be very forgiving in the pursuit of that hobby. I don’t count myself in that club. Mailer (now deceased) sounds to me like someone I wouldn’t have wanted to have known personally. Sometimes as clans and tribes changed their location, their enterprise…their brand…it was necessary to redefine their totem by either destroying it and creating a new one or by changing the characters on the pole. Not a bad idea.
Photo Credit: Ron Galella
