In February 1973, Norman Mailer threw himself a lavish fiftieth birthday party at the Four Seasons in New York. The invitations spoke of “an announcement of national importance (major)” that would be made at the end of the bash. Figures as varied as Andy Warhol and Bernardo Bertolucci turned up, along with then senators Jacob Javits and Eugene McCarthy, and Jack Lemmon and Shirley MacLaine. After dinner, Mailer rose to divulge his plan. There should be, he said, a “fifth estate,” a citizens’ action committee to monitor the CIA and the FBI and to investigate their complicity in the murder of the Kennedys and Martin Luther King, Jr. Alas for the project — “a democratic secret police keeping tabs on Washington’s secret police” — Mailer got himself hog-whimpering drunk and emptied the room amid lurid scenes of cussing and head banging. “Fifth estate” blew up on the ramp.
Since then, and even though this fiasco took place on the eve of the hair-curling Watergate revelations, Mailer’s attention has appeared to wander from the domain of paranoia and conspiracy. Never afraid to mix it up in the real world with such taut-edged subjects as capital punishment and with such risky acquaintances as Jack Henry Abbott, in his fiction Mailer had nevertheless limited himself to antiquity (Ancient Evenings) or funky bits of the American landscape (Tough Guys Don’t Dance). Meanwhile, his involvement with the right-thinking folks at American PEN and with a succession of what might be called “good causes” has led to rumors of respectability, even to “grand old man of letters” profiles. Was the outlaw by any chance entering a Golden Pond era?