Why Norman Mailer Won't Dance
Brandon Judell's interview for the LGBT magazine The Advocate (27 October 1987), pressing Mailer on why so many characters in the Tough Guys Don't Dance novel and film are antigay. Mailer insists 'none of my characters ever represent my point of view by themselves,' and revisits his 1955 essay 'The Homosexual Villain.'
Read an excerpt (rights pending)
“Why Norman Mailer Won’t Dance,” Brandon Judell’s interview, ran in the LGBT magazine The Advocate on 27 October 1987 (54–55). Judell presses Mailer on why so many characters in the Tough Guys Don’t Dance novel and film voice antigay sentiments. Mailer’s central defense: “none of my characters ever represent my point of view by themselves. I don’t have a character as a spokesman” — distinguishing a film that “has characters in it who are homophobic” from one that “is homophobic.” The piece revisits his 1955 essay “The Homosexual Villain” (written for the historic gay magazine One), where he confessed to having held “the equivalent of a ‘gentleman’s anti-Semitism’” before Donald Webster Cory’s The Homosexual in America changed his view. Mailer also offers a characteristically provocative aside on the sexes (“We’re living on women’s mercy”) before breaking off the interview.
A full transcription, held in the working archive pending rights clearance, is at full text.