Gore Vidal vs Norman Mailer | The Dick Cavett Show

[Music] [Applause] we all seem to be standing yeah good to help noticing that you failed shake hands one of my guests I guess I forgot well now wait a minute are you fellas nut no well let's get are you friends are you or are you polite enemies let me put it another way or you impolite friends hey well I'll tell you where we are cuz it's interesting really I don't know any other case in my life like it we were friends last time we saw each other which is about two or three years ago and since then we've been doing nothing but right atrocious things about each other I don't like to book people on because they don't like each other and I and I don't even book the people necessarily a occasional opinion lettuce my but I did realize that you two written a number of things about each other and your doors will be long and one short but you said long uu time magazine asked you for a quote I think this is the beginning of the prisoner sex and you said that the subject needed some thought or something like that and if you want short quotable quotes he would go to somebody like gore Vidal but you made it sound a little more no it was worse than that I said that job that the need of the magazine reader for a remark which he could repeat at dinner was best served by writers write names like gordly dull that's right I badly miss quoted I'd really like to get into a discussion with gore he's been saying absolutely unspeakable things about me he's been acting even worse than he usually does as a polemicist and you know you know he's really he's shameless an intellectual argument he's absolutely about character a moral foundation or even intellectual substance I mean the perfect proof of what he does is that leave it to gore to write a play about Richard Nixon you know I'm getting to the point where I'm gonna end up liking Nixon I mean it's getting to the point if you want to make a million bucks you know carve up Richard Nixon's back with a knife you know poor president he can't defend himself you say before him well if I keep reading and hearing you know and you and Roth keep making these killings which just excites my economic Envy of course I'll vote for him I'll finally say that they're they're doing too much he's not a bad man he created peace with China you know watch out very quiet moment here I wanted to give you time to read to defend yourself slightly over there if you felt you needed did you feel you've been attacked Gore you can afford to be fun of me because you said the scarless things about me as I attacked your a piece I want to tell you something identifier if I make gourmet bring up everything because the contents of his stomach are no more interesting for the contents of the stomach an intellectual cow and Norman Mailer the veal while we're slinging meat at each other we will be good we'll be right back somebody bring this all into focus I'll try to bring it into focus that Norman did a book on women's liberation mm-hmm and his attitudes towards sex I'm very interesting some quite outrageous his very anti women's liberation piece and he was very mean to a couple of the girls particularly Kate Millett and I answered this his piece and a number of others you know I Norman is taking everything too personally I this is something I care about and he happened to be one of my examples of what was wrong with what the women's lib people would call sexism he has come out firmly against masturbation he has come out against contraception against abortion he has a line that good sex makes good babies well maybe it does but that was I worry I you you give us the exact word and my point give good babies yeah good blip gives good baby which may or may not be true but may or may not but interest rate no I didn't I didn't think it was very interesting no I know I think it's are this fascinating is a premise I mean did Muhammad Ali come out of a good giving people very often in disgraceful situations we're not talking about geniuses we're talking about good babies maybe they were delightfully good babies on some well they atrocious babies geniuses transcendence you know that we can't bring in genius to in any discussion we're in really genius is not so transcendent all the time ours still has to be changed and things of that sort no don't you think genius is transcendence really mmm what else is transcendence of what of the given otherwise we're not talking about genius we're talking about talent about job a style above manner oh my gracious I don't think I was a genius which is what which of us has ever met the genius I'm a chaplain he was a genius I think that's fair there was a question you didn't argue with it you will admit that you were accused of being a chauvinist of the worst kind but that's that's what's wrong with women's liberation which is it's a new and se-young just think now let's not go back onto that I'd love to talk about it for two minutes oh yeah oh dear oh dear we've hated it angel angel it's it's my time now and the law of the dinner table is that we now talk about what I want to talk about Bubastis God didn't you don't be agree who passed this law did you say just listen listen to you listen to you coffee I knew that when I came to your house for dinner I wouldn't get anything to eat but you could pass the coffee yes but no you were you have been you have been called in great detail a male chauvinist of the worst kind in various stories of yours as you know recited and this is all water I know reg I suppose but it's just nonsense it's just ridiculous you know if I have anything at all I have a complicated mind in fact I don't mind so complicated that Gore has said with some justice of my style is getting unreadable you know said one thing in his critique that I agree with my Styles getting difficult you know it's hard when you have a lot in your head to write something that's true gore has never encountered this problem [Music] small mind no matter no don't be autobiographical all the time what did you ask him if he had a copy of this notorious piece of writing notorious piece of writing as he brought the one-page of it which was my piece on women's liberation it's more of the same after that and piece on women's liberation and particularly on the people who had started to attack the women and some of the attacks particularly male is Irving how I thought uncalled for in their tone and I suppose I was kind of rough in mine but you know these things aren't personal illness to me as a physician that I'm taking that I have taken I'm very serious about politics I'm very serious about this kind of no gory or not and that's not objected to well and that's up to you to prove it's all a little it's our little argue and if you don't mind you know you're not serious about politics you've been in politics all your life and and you you've dabbled in a superbly well I mean you know you've made a marvelous racing for Congress some years ago in New York you worked very hard I admire the way you worked at that time you're a sort of a you know one of the wonderful things about you is that with all your sort of profound right essential right wing snobbery you become America's as a second or third or fourth most lovely liberal you know which is one of the prestidigitation games in the intellectual world of the last 20 years second third fourth well you know who's ahead of you Nader and there a couple other people and any rate because that you just you just have you have no status you have nothing you really are serious about and you pay and play terrible games you go in for intellectual adulteration and that's why I won't put up with you can do anything you want any piece I ever write you can rip it apart you can turn it up and by god I may be ruddy on the floor but if you taught me something about writing I'll look up and I'll love you for having taught me something about writing but when you teach me something about the tricks of adulteration that exist in the world when you talk about when you talk about that about we talk about the sort of rock that goes on in ecology usually you see about the rivers will never be clean again and you pollute the intellectual rivers good god I think it worries you that I made some comments about your recent writing not being very good well I think I wasn't sitting there I wasn't setting myself up as the famous writers school you know to give you any hints it's just that I thought just one score without yucks why don't you just talk to me instead of talking to the audience well by a curious thing we have not found ourselves in a friendly neighborhood bar but both bi-election are sitting here with an audience so therefore it would be dishonest and pretend otherwise all right all right Dora look we are here with an audience baba by choice but let us at least let us at least hey miss planner are you working as the referee or as mr. vidal's manager I'm probably willing to accept it either way but my mom is fragile I find it very hard to think and if you're muttering in the background it's difficult Wow New York I've never learned how you both lost in both your to and successful political can know he's no Gora Gora it was a very good politician actually he fought an uphill fight me almost won he did it he did very well he worked very hard at Iran absolutely foolish scarcely bad campaign a stupid campaign I was I was a total amateur and I am ashamed of that campaign it was awful I did the most to defeat myself so we're not it's not a matter of that I like that I'd like fair measure on things that we're done and or worked I know how Paul tough politics is now and gore was a very good politician when he ran a very good a serious sensible hard-working and he played the game which is a tough game what's happened to him since then according to your lights he's going up he's going down he's going up he's going down like at many another well I know what annoys him about you because he's written it I mean and it's the idea of you're having sort of assumed the Hemingway lifestyle when Hemingway died did he called it the Cup assume that once the boozing brawling like oh I assure fool worried about his liver what worried me that was an earlier period that was an earlier period that was the period of advertisements for myself but not Norman was sounding like that no he's he's changed again the good thing about him is constant metamorphosis he does reflect the Phoenix and what the next incarnation will be I don't know where you seem to have me figured out as the neck of next reincarnation for me is going to be Charles Manson well you left you read what you wrote you let yourself in for it and I will tell you I'll give a little background here that mailer we all know that I that I stabbed my wife no years ago we do know that Gore you were playing on that no I want to forget about this no you don't want to forget about it you're a liar and a hypocrite you were playing on it but that was never going to talk about it the fact of the matter is that people who read the New York Review of Books know perfectly well or they know all about it and and and it's your subtle little way of doing it you know the New York I'm beginning to see what bothers you know okay I'm getting the point are you ready to apologize I would apologize if if it hurts your feelings of course I know it hurts my sense of intellectual pollution well I must say I mean there's an expert you should know I would like to yes well I've had to smell your works from time to time and that has helped me to become an expert on intellectual pollution yeah well let's I was going to say I was I couldn't not only in public but you act as if you were in private that's the odd way it's the RNA television isn't it is very odd that you actor you act as if you resume do people here aren't we they are here he's here I am here and I'm becoming very very bored [Applause] [Applause] [Music] you still haven't told me whether your gore's manager or the referee if you make history here by punching a lady now look you you see this all thing that goes on now you say if I make history by punching you know perfectly well you know perfectly well that I'm the gentlest of the four people here I just hope it lasts through the next whatever we have left I guarantee you I wouldn't hit any of the people here because they are smaller in what ways intellectually intellectually smart but let's let me turn my chair and join these three perhaps you'd like two more chairs to contain your giant intellect [Applause] [Music] why don't you look at your question sheet and ask a question hey can I talk to the older why don't you fold it five ways and put it where the moon don't shine [Applause] [Applause] have it on your word of honor on your word about it did you just make that up or or it had it have you had a can for years were you waiting for the best moment to use it I have to tell you a quote from Tolstoy you just made it up in food you just made up on the spur amount you're a poet yeah you're really a poet you went all over the creative ability I'm always in all the creative ability whenever it appears and it's fair presence which is as itself and I won't get into something if I may I'd like to talk this audience because the audience has been curiously hostile to me from the word go now I want to ask only as something are you really all truly idiots or is it me all that was the easy answer come on guys really ask the audience what I was doing that was making them cheer every time the other side connected with a past from one to the other of my three opponents that's fair someone said I'm rude and someone said I'm being a snot no it is loaded with Libby's Oh Mike door my god it wasn't enough to trundle Jonathan flaner along those formal presents in the history of television which had a load the balcony with your Libby's your little Libby's oh no wait a minute there was only one lady's voice to bring up do you consider that loaded it was the voice of legions but not my guests my kissing orgasms it's your show [Music] [Applause] that's because that's because they are mature and full of dignity and they'd cut my throat in any alley and I answer rudely because I'm crude and allow for the club that's why now have we progressed at all can I reach you can I talk to any of yours it hopeless I mean you care to listen I do have a thing or two to say believe it or not well I'm bored with being misrepresented you see I've been misrepresented by my own paranoid lights for 25 years in this country something like that and to find an old literature like gore Vidal who knows his way around you know in prize fighting terms gore is like that fellow who was always right and he's been ranked at anywhere from number 9 to number 3 for to once in a while for 20 years he you know he's sort of like Archie Moore but not nearly as good and and he's been around all as if he knows the ropes and then suddenly after all these years he's starting to develop a particularly dirty literary game what it inflames me you know I'm a I've been so bold as pretend to be the presumptive literary champ you know whether I deserve to be or not the reason people always talk about me in relation to Hemingway is just of Hemingway in a certain point said to himself with his huge paranoia they're gonna kill me for this but I am going to be the champ it's all I care about and it shifted the course of American letters there was up that point people who wrote books were men of letters they were gentlemen they wrote books and Hemingway it's said in effect know people who write books take as much punishment as prize fighters and one of them has to be a champion now we've had a time that has not been interesting in terms of champions in Hemingway's time there were great writers there was there was for her and there was Hemingway and there are many other rise like Steinbeck and Ferrell and as pathos and Thomas Wolfe many many really wonderful writers our time has been much more complicated and there haven't been that many really extraordinary writers around and I have presumed with all my extraordinary arrogance and lavishness and Cruz to step forth to say I'm gonna be the channel 2 of what are you knocks me off well fine but you know they don't knock me off because they're too damn simply yellow and they kick me in and I don't like it all this is about as I wrote a book call the prisoner sex which started off to be a book about women's liberation and what I thought of it for for Harper's Magazine and the course what I found I could begin to think about what I thought about women's liberation until I began to started what I thought about sex well you know I'm 48 years old and I've lived a bit of a life and I found that what I thought about sex was extraordinarily complex to me and not simple at all and I had many thoughts about it back and forth and a huge number of feedings about women's liberation because I admired aspects of it and to tested other aspects of it and wrestled with it my mind changed a bit as I thought about it and this book was an attempt to write about these things and think about these things and talk about them and after the book was written it was as if I had not written the book the the word that came out is I was a male chauvinist pig well that's dull it just dull it's beneath us as Americans to think in thick frozen terms of intellectual pollution excuse me then gore no no gore comes along on his toes he's Marvis little boxer at as you saw and gore comes along and starts polluting these waters further but he knows what he's doing that's the trouble he's a bad man to answer Norman's charge about what a bad person I am the attack on him really if you want to know Norman simply what I detest in you and I like many things in you as you know I'm a constant friend despite this but your violence your love of murder your celebration of rage of hate American dream what was the dream a man murders his wife and the woman afterwards to celebrate an American man's dream this violence this knocking people down as carrying on is a terrible thing now it may make you a great artist it made me feel great at the end I'll listen but I demand one man at the end to return thank you an interesting artist I don't say that but to the extent that one is interested in the way that the society is going there is quite enough of the stress quite enough of this violence without what I think your celebrations of it your attitude towards women in this thing which I saw it really colorful and you said I compared you to Charles Manson I can't I said Henry Miller in his way Norman in his and Manson in his far out mad way are each reflecting a hatred of women and a hatred of flesh Norman Mailer to Charles Manson a logical progression period the miller mailer Manson man or m3 for short has been conditioned to think of women as at best breeders of sons at worst objects to be poked humiliated killed and from there on in the piece you speak of Miller the great writer Henry Miller the greatest writer alive in America if we're gonna talk like muckers I'll talk to like a mucker Henry Miller the greatest writer alive in America and myself and Charles Manson a hugely complex four scholar Korean figure are spoken of lumped together as m3 that you call that good intellect working to lump together three people as curious as Henry Miller Norman Mailer and Charles Manson well you must read the piece you can't read it you will have to read it but the audience is not you are selecting this one passage as representative of the whole I make my case very carefully but I will say given you a few minutes more on the program you will prove my point it is I come back to what I said I detest this violence in you you have actually written that murder is never non-sexual well as it Everett nonsense well I I'm even though not having murdered anybody lately no I don't know I'm going to give you a lion that Degas said to Whistler to celebrated painters and Whistler was a great performer like Norman and Degas said you know Whistler you act as if you had no talent yes you are and I represent yourself as though you really had no talent at all and of course you are one of our best player right at the same place you read it which is Edmund Wilson's answer to Vladimir Nabokov in last week's times what's that got to do with it I thought was marvelous good I'm happy that we both agree that the sentiment is correct differences that I'd savor the remark and you throw it into the battle he speaks of a character in a book of mine murdering his wife and a woman as a celebration of American man now I throw myself upon your court hanging judge I say that's intellectual mucker ism of a worst sort because the character I had there was a particular complex character and in fact he's not simply a woman or the other way as well and there was a particularly complicated well it's possible to I know you I know you've lived in France for many years but believe me Janet it's possible woman another way as well well this has been an interesting evening around the old table and miss Flannery I'm glad to see you've got that box of cookies that you wanted and you other two fellas could you kiss all us yeah let us know who you think one that would be interesting and we'll see you next time we're on the air if [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music]

Channel: The Dick Cavett Show

Views: 896,711

Rating: 4.8861804 out of 5

Keywords: The Dick Cavett Show, Talk Show, Dick Cavett, Chat Show, Interview, gore vidal, gore vidal (author), vidal, gore vidal author, gore vidal dick cavett, gore vidal interview, gore vidal and norman mailer, gore vidal vs norman mailer, gore vidal norman mailer dick cavett, gore vidal norman mailer feud, awkward interview, debate, norman mailer, norman mailer vs, norman mailer fight, crazy norman mailer, rip torn normal mailer, interviews, politics, charles manson, richard nixon

Id: Nb1w_qoioOk

Length: 24min 55sec (1495 seconds)

Published: Fri Sep 20 2019

Reddit Comments

[u/wutinthehail]

You have to give everyone on that show a lot of credit. They sat and listened without interrupting the speaker and when it was their turn to talk they responded. You don't have this type of back and forth on TV today. It's just people yelling over the top of each other.

[u/kwisatzhadnuff]

Weird that 10 years before this show aired Mailer stabbed his wife nearly to death and was able to return to public life afterwards. Imagine that happening in this day and age.

[u/Vlad_the_Mage]

Allegedly Norman Miller and Gore Vidal once met at a party after Gore had given Norman a scathing review for his most recent book. Norman Mailer assaulted Gore and knocked him to the ground, at which point Gore Vidal said "Once again words have failed Norman Mailer."

[u/Devistator]

I'm guessing Ben Shapiro got his inspiration and candor from Norman Mailer. They both are cocky and think they are better than anyone they are debating because they can eloquently string together sentences.

[u/Merlion2018]

That dude can put together a pretty amazing sentence but holy shit is he a pompous bigoted asshat.

Just read “The Fight.” It was interesting but I almost bailed when he diverted the story for a chapter to brag about how much he was being paid to write the book.

[u/La_Lanterne_Rouge]

As I recall, Norman Mailer was instrumental in the release of Jack Henry Abbot who went on to murder a doorman who stepped out to help him urinate when Abbot was drunk. A sad story for sure.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Abbott_(author)#:~:text=Jack%20Henry%20Abbott%20(January%2021,critics%2C%20including%20author%20Norman%20Mailer.

[u/fathervice]

"Stick it where the moon don't shine" is a Tolstoy quote?

[u/ThisProcessIsDumb]

15:20 is when he starts talking to the audience.

[u/Outrageous_Fishing]

Angry Bilbo