I met Mailer in November of 1979 when my brother Michael and I drove him to meet Jack Abbott at the isolated federal penitentiary in Marion, Illinois. I saw him a number of times after that at various events in New York and in Provincetown, and exchanged a few letters. As it happens, I’m a big fan of the work of Thomas Hardy, and have written extensively about him. I wondered what a conversation between him and Mailer, who had a lot in common, would be like, and that led to this closet drama. I sent Norman a copy right after I wrote it, and he replied, saying, “Peter, I see a movie, Norman and Thomas.”
Scene One
From far, from eve and morning
And yon twelve-winded sky,
The stuff of life to knit me
Blew hither: here am I.—A.E. Housman
(The scene is Norman Mailer’s apartment in New York. It is about noon. His unexpected guest is Thomas Hardy, dressed in a loose-fitting light green Harris tweed suit. Hardy is standing in the living room.)
Norman Mailer: (leaving the kitchen, enters the room) Hey! Who let you up? Are you . . . ? Aren’t you? Are you quite real?
Thomas Hardy: You recognize me then?
Mailer: (stepping back) Well, I’ve seen pictures. Not since high school.
Hardy: I suppose I am here, for now. That is what it said.
Mailer: It?
Hardy: We will come to that later.
Mailer: Do you know where you are? What time this is?
Hardy: Well, I am here as you can readily see. I’m being allowed to check up on a few things. It told me, in a certain way, that you were as good a person to chat with as there was. Apparently, we have some things in common. We’ve both been described as being morbidly imaginative.
Mailer: I can’t think of, I mean, I didn’t know we’d been compared. How long has it been since . . . ?
Hardy: 60 years. You were but a lad in 1928.
Mailer: I turned 5 on January 31 of 1928.
Hardy: I left this world earlier that same month. We were, then, briefly contemporaries. I feel a little bit better about all this because of that, Mr. Mailer.
Mailer: Norman. And . . . ?
Hardy: Thomas moves to window. I was greatly interested in your comments about this new architecture. That was once my profession. You have quite a view. Much has changed, no doubt, since your Walter Whitman lived hereabouts. I’ve talked to Howells about New York. I’m familiar with those two towers across the river and with that time-honored bridge, but not from this angle. Until today, I’ve only been offered a bird’s-eye view of things.
Mailer: Please sit down, please. What we build today constitutes an endless tragedy.
Hardy: Yes, and what we pull down does also. I’ve been complaining about it since 1865.
Mailer: Yes, yes, of course. I didn’t mean to imply . . . We are not here to talk about architecture, are we?
Hardy: No, no. It is nice to chat a bit though. I looked at several of the films that you have made. Unlike your novels, they didn’t seem to have plots. I saw a number of film plays in the 20’s and have always had an interest in the actor. My Tess has done well over the years. A man named Polanski did a middling job of it in France a few years back and Far from the Madding Crowd has been done well. Most of my other work has been poorly produced.
Mailer: I haven’t seen Tess, although I remember enjoying the novel. I do know of Polanski. It is curious that you mention him. I watch films all the time, which is too much. I don’t like many of them—hardly any of them. I acted in one called Ragtime a few years ago in London. They killed me off in the first scene. The film did OK; it did well enough. Recently I spent a good deal of time with the screenplay and direction of my Tough Guys Don’t Dance. Unlike the films made of my novels by others, which no one could stand to watch, I don’t have any excuse for this one. Like you, I have an interest in the medium. Perhaps this effort will surprise you.
Hardy: I’m sure that it would hold my interest.
Mailer: I would like to think so.
Hardy: You have written a lot of books, Norman. By the time I was your age I’d already given up on novels. They always animated the licensed tasters, the book chatterers, as your Mr. Vidal calls them. But they began to bore me. So before we all became bored I turned to poetry. I came out with the first part of the Dynasts at 63, when I was nearly your age and when that was out of me, in 1908, I concentrated exclusively on verse. I am full of poems, always was; not counting all the ones I burned, about 950 of them. It still bothers me to be thought of primarily as a novelist. I’m gaining on it though.
Mailer: Well, I don’t know where we are going here. Novels have been paying my bills for the last 40 years and I still can’t keep up. My expenses bring me back to the writing table more often, sometimes, than I would like. I spend an enormous amount of time writing.
Hardy: I know.
Mailer: Let’s get down to business. This trip must be costing whoever sent you here something big. Why me?
Hardy: You think a great deal about the costs of things, don’t you Norman?
Mailer: What do you mean?
Hardy: I mean that you don’t get something for nothing.
Mailer: That notion has been with me for quite some time.
Hardy: Let me say this. I stopped by to talk about some ideas and impressions that we have in common. Perhaps I can help you with a few things. Perhaps not.
Mailer: What sort of ideas do you have in mind?
Hardy: What you call God and the Devil.
Mailer: Lord!
Hardy: You never were one to content yourself with unchanging fixations. Those foundations were crumbling long before my day. I hope your Ancient Evenings finally ended it all for you. Your system of metaphysics began, from what I can tell, with The Deer Park in the mid-50’s.
Mailer: You’ve read Ancient Evenings? My cosmology is a way I have of rooting around for some answers. It is my recollection, if I’m correct, that you thought the Powers dumb to us.
Hardy: Surely you are not going to fall for that one. I am, after all, sitting here with you. Oh, a few of my more crusty characters may have believed that. But I am rarely seen or heard in my work. I prefer it when one doesn’t show up too frequently in one’s own work. I admit this notion of indifference certainly occurred to me—it’s quite obvious on first thought—though no one wants to hear it. It was another reason I turned to poetry. Galileo might have beaten the Inquisition if he had been more imaginative and written his observations down in a few poems. You have made much progress in this regard, Norman, but this literary freedom hasn’t done much for modern poetry, or for the kind of novels people now purchase.
Mailer: Well, I can’t see that I have done much for poetry. But I suppose we do have a great deal more freedom now. The fight, really, was about two or three everyday words. It all seems a bit foolish now. It wasn’t at the time. You knew about Lawrence’s problems?
Hardy: Yes, but I prefer to leave a little mystery about. The hidden line and gesture interest me. The cloak and veil. Lawrence preferred the visible.
Mailer: Well, the Bible-thumpers and the Reader’s Digest set were awfully worried about Henry Miller and Bill Burroughs.
Hardy: I have seen the New York book seller lists. I don’t recognize any names.
Mailer: Our good public!
Hardy: Why would someone want to read about the proprietor of a motorcar factory?
Mailer: Now that is something we can discuss. Can I get you anything? A drink? I’d like something.
Hardy: A little burgundy?
Mailer: Sure. (walks toward kitchen)
Hardy: You are kind to allow me some time. (gets up to look over a wall full of books)
Mailer: (returns) Do you recognize anything?
Hardy: Oh, yes. They outlive us all. Even the bad ones. Max Gate, my home, was full of books. It was all we could do to find room for them. I kept buying them even when I knew I would never have time to read them all. Jorge Luis Borges?
Mailer: He’s a very good one. He’s just died and will be missed. There are a number of South American writers doing good things nowadays. Magical things.
Hardy: We should all have a turn at it. W.H. Hudson was about London during my day. He spent years in Argentina. He loved birds and wildlife and wrote wonderfully. We were about the same age.
Mailer: Borges was from Argentina. He was their national librarian for a time.
Hardy: A librarian? I passed a young librarian not long ago named Philip Larkin. He was full of questions. I like some of his poems. I believe he left a book with me. Did you know of him?
Mailer: No, but I recall reading that he recently . . .
Hardy: Yes, moved on.
Mailer: (returns to kitchen, refills his glass and pours Hardy another burgundy) This is quite a conversation. Will I remember this visit?
Hardy: I hope so.
Mailer: I would like to get back to the purpose of it.
Hardy: Very well, I see that you are a bit uneasy. I am talking too much.
Mailer: No, no, not at all. I mean, what would you have done if, say, Dr. Johnson had dropped into your drawing room?
Hardy: I passed near him about 10 years ago. Couldn’t get a word in. I do understand your position. Let’s, then, get on with it.
Mailer: I suppose I have to ask again where you have been? Where you are from? I mean . . .
Hardy: How familiar are you with my poems, Norman? Or with my Dynasts?
Mailer: I have not thought about them, other than a few lines here and there in anthologies. Now that you are here, however, I sense some things becoming apparent to me. Are you helping with this?
Hardy: In a fashion. I have been where I was before my birth.
Mailer: What?
Hardy: You are, I know, somewhat interested in the Night Sky—the Heavens, if you like. Do you know of a place called Waghdas?
Mailer: No, I don’t believe I’ve heard of it.
Hardy: As that monstrous mass called the Heavens creeps, I am usually found near this ancient oasis, which was once, I’m told, an earthly place. Surely this doesn’t surprise you? It’s a very old line to repeat that we all have to be someplace. There are many other forms of life. By comparison, Earth’s creatures are primitive.
Mailer: I was thinking that not a day ago! But you have returned to this world of men.
Hardy: I cared for them once; but there is another that has concerns, although unable, for now, to communicate them. It suffers also, the more so for just now It has a notion of what Its presence, so to speak, has created.
Mailer: So a conflict exists, an entanglement of which we are a part?
Hardy: Go slowly now.
Mailer: Is there an opposing force? A dark side? Does It have a nemesis? Are sides taken and battles joined?
Hardy: There have been some difficulties. There has been a neglect. It, in short, has blundered. There are forces—entanglements as you say. Urgings and thrustings. They are woven into the fabric of all things and all men and It has not given them a thought—an earthly thought—since before the creation of the Sun. This little Earth has been, for want of a better phrase, an unregulated side show.
Mailer: You know, this doesn’t surprise me.
Hardy: I know that you believe those on Earth are not being taken care of by something all-powerful.
Mailer: What, what is that? (a large bird settles on the writing table)
Hardy: I say, it’s a wood pie. I haven’t seen one in 70 years. A reminder perhaps.
Mailer: A wood pie?
Hardy: A green woodpecker (bird flies off through open door). Maybe there is a prize to be had on your table. They are quite capable creatures—much abused. The cruel treatment of birds, animals, and other wild creatures has disturbed me since I was a small boy. The old theologies, now in ruin, allowed for this treatment, but surely they do no longer. These creatures, as the trees of the forests in our natural world, also share in our earthly enterprise. Their abuse and our lording over them do not go unnoticed.
Mailer: The bird was quite remarkable. Thomas, how long can you stay here? I mean, you must be awfully hot in that tweed suit.
Hardy: No, I am very comfortable, yes, most comfortable.
Mailer: I wish I could say the same. Might I ask . . . ask about some friends?
Hardy: There are so many. Too many. There is much that I do not know.
Scene Two
(Mailer, waking from an uneasy sleep, finds Hardy, magnifying glass in hand, reading Of a Fire on the Moon. He appears to have made himself a cup of tea. His feet do not quite reach the floor from his chair.)
Mailer: And what does Fire have to tell you?
Hardy: Oh, I haven’t quite caught up with you yet. Nor, for that matter, with Mr. Melville there (looks to picture on the wall). You think of him from time to time?
Mailer: Yes! And his whale. That inscrutable thing is chiefly what I hate.
Hardy: You awake from a dream sleep?
Mailer: (puzzled) I must have dozed off. Melville lived not a long walk from this house. Yes, he has been on my mind. He has inspired me more than once.
Hardy: You have a fascination for metaphor, Norman. I once found them to be quite useful in novel writing but left them largely out of my last works. I began to take an interest in the act itself—maybe too much. Poetry became a great comfort to me then. There lies my fascination.
Mailer: There is more explaining to do nowadays. Readers want explanation in this world of confusions. Word-shows to engage our deadened senses. There is much that we miss—which brings us back to your visit here.
Hardy: Yes, I feel like Henry James. Never getting to the point.
Mailer: That’s better than not having one. Please, go on.
Hardy: Talk we must. There’s been, Norman, to use one of your new words I see here, a glitch in the nature of things. A disruption which, in part, allows me to visit here. As I told you, there is much that I do not know and I sense, further, that the answers that we seek—the knowledge— might be terrible. Some of these matters I know you have pondered. Others, I hope, will become evident to you. It is important for me to talk to someone familiar with the shape of art. Art and theology.
Mailer: You drive toward the center of my thicket. You may get more than you bargain for.
Hardy: I believe the right choice was made.
Mailer: And so you ask my help?
Hardy: Well, my Woodlanders is now 100 years old. Suppose I desired to write a new preface for it. How could it be done? How could I now publish a new tale or even a small poem?
Mailer: That’s a good point.
Hardy: I appeal to your ability to command attention Norman; to your knack for bringing some people meanings.
Mailer: What does It know of us?
Hardy: What you ask is difficult. Let’s not, if you’ll forgive me, attempt to dwell on the nature of things. That knowledge, as I’ve mentioned, might be cataclysmic. It may not be discoverable by any thing or by any means. The character of It, however, I know to be discernable, although It changes as we change. Future changes are what concern me.
Mailer: You know much of what I’ve had to say these many years.
Hardy: I’ve made some adjustments. I’ve rearranged a few things. Does this bother you?
Mailer: My ontological diversions speak for themselves. They are not my hopes or fears. They are notions that I believe in.
Hardy: Very well.
Mailer: Then even your future is not resolved. We share a common predicament.
Hardy: Don’t we all. The significance of the past and what is passing has yet to be determined.
Mailer: Tell me more.
Hardy: To properly explain my notion of the character of It requires a reordering of some current earthly assumptions. This is particularly true, obviously enough, in regard to the supernatural elements of the Church—not to mention all the numerous other iron creeds that we murder each other over. Some old lines return to me . . .
Mailer: Yes?
Hardy: Peace upon earth! was said. We sing it, And pay a million priests to bring it. After two thousand years of mass We’ve got as far as poison-gas.
Mailer: Yes, we keep up with the times. Go on.
Hardy: Our character study, Norman, would also, ideally, demand knowledge of the sensory perception of men living, say, 10,000 years ago. Its awareness must be described in terms of feeling rather than comprehension, at least for now. The future has yet to be created.
Mailer: A master plan never made much sense to me.
Hardy: There is no one, let us say, being carried about on a sedan chair. It is not an entity to be discovered. The future is something that is formed and shaped by everything that there is. It is a joint-stock enterprise that we participate in. Time serves.
Mailer: But now you manage to appear—with talk of ancient men and men at war.
Hardy: And war to come.
Scene Three
(The sun is beaming into Mailer’s living room in a brilliant ray that separates the two. Each has a look of translucency to the other.)
Mailer: What better way to spend an afternoon? Pondering beginnings and endings with a hundred-and-fifty-year-old man.
Hardy: Yes. The return of the native! And what greater or more pressing problem is there? Are you acquainted with Arthur Schopenhauer?
Mailer: To many women I’m his reincarnation.
Hardy: I read your Prisoner, and kept thinking of my Tess.
Mailer: I’ve had more than a share of trouble with prisoners. But what about Schopenhauer?
Hardy: It once bothered me to think that he would class most men in the same category with creatures of the animal realm. He felt that men could be labelled thinking beings only in the broadest sense of that term. I slowly came to the same conclusion—aided of course by the licensed tasters. Men will concern themselves with anything other than our problem. I notice that Americans seem to spend their leisure time looking into one of those glaring boxes that’s in every home; indeed, in nearly every room. And they carry on in this regard perched alongside their pets.
Mailer: Yes, our machinery; malignant, wicked and bristling with dots. We are destroying our culture faster than we can create it. You have your Kings of Wessex, old Lear, and Arthur. A rich and ancient culture to draw upon. On our side we’ve got Reagan and Nixon, born two years apart, appearing before Herman Melville is discovered and read. Perhaps, however, we can create something large enough to make the necessary connections for us.
Hardy: So the time is ripe for something magical, as you find in your South American friends?
Mailer: Well, I agree with Schopenhauer. What matters, to me at least, is the soundness of my method. Grim reading may no longer be the way to bring people news, or fight old wars.
Hardy: My works have never sold so well!
Mailer: Are you looking for an agent?
Hardy: (smiling) It’s odd how we fall back into old habits. (for an instant, Hardy completely disappears, then reappears, without his shoes)
Mailer: There are times when I rely on old habits to help pay the bills, so in that regard, I have a fondness for them. The ordnance requirements of the war that you speak of, however, are another matter. Each engagement, as you know, even if we learn from our mistakes, becomes more demanding, especially if we are going to use the Novel. Yet, we pay a price for not changing.
Hardy: George Meredith had a line for this predicament.
Mailer: Yes?
Hardy: More brain, 0 Lord, more brain!
Mailer: And there are those who say you have no sense of humor!
Hardy: If we don’t look too deeply, there is a good deal of humor in nearly everything we do.
Mailer: I’ll agree to that.
Hardy: I’m surprised, Norman, to find that we still rely on the Novel to express how life strikes us. Just as It was apparently unprepared for earthly drama, no doubt the original word-makers were unaware of what we scribblers would eventually require to express ourselves in a modern world. My Dynasts was an experiment in this regard. I was inclined to draw out the whole of Europe for my purpose, horribly re-enacted to some extent, though more impersonal, soon enough in the trenches of the Great War. We no longer look our enemy in the eye. Indeed, it appears that you moderns may not know who the enemy is!
Mailer: Or what the enemy is. Since your time, Thomas, we have incurred the considerable wrath of a more refined and sinister technology; one which impels imaginative consumption, rather than the reverse.
Hardy: Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers; if one may quote Wordsworth in this century.
Mailer: Surely. The timing of an advance, however, must be carefully considered. There are those who revel in civic regulation and they, no doubt, are watching out, or, looking in. The planets, however, do seem to be aligned quite nicely. The Age of Aquarius. As you say, time serves. Thomas, you seem unsettled, and your . . .
Hardy: I begin to lose my way.
Mailer: And have we not lost ours as the stockpiles of annihilation take their place? Thomas?
Hardy: That end is not worth the writing, or watching over, is it? Tomblessness? No remembrance? The old truths and songs. These you know. Remember . . .
The sun is warm in the afternoon. NM sleeps.