Shots in the Dark

The Times of London reports today that it gained exclusive access to the cache of personal papers relating to Norman Mailer that Harvard recently bought from his former mistress, Carole Mallory.

Mallory, a former model and actress who met Mailer at Elaine’s restaurant in New York in 1983, suspected him of having an affair with a male friend, was worried that he might contract Aids and refused to indulge his fantasy of three-way sex with a gay man.

At another point she writes: “He asked me to wash his bottom. So SAD. He is so ashamed of what he likes.” On October 24, 1990, Mallory scribbled in a black spiral notebook: “I think Rick Stratton is his lover. One of them.”

Stratton, a novelist and convicted drug dealer, laughs off the suggestion, according to the Times.

“The outlandish claims of scorned women never surprise me,” he said.

Regardless of whether Mailer wanted to sleep with men or not, the narrative of Mallory’s papers is tawdry and a bit depressing; their relationship never seems to include love, and as Mailer ages, and his sexual prowess declines, their sex seems more like unpleasant body work, a basic function that must be done but isn’t as natural or enjoyable or even successful as it once so easily was.

The sexual marathons of the early encounters – “One orgasm down. Two more to go? I hope so” – soon turned into tawdry sprints as Mailer, who by then was wearing a hearing aid and suffering from gout, dropped by for sex once a week. In return he got an earful.

“Why don’t you get me an apartment?” Mallory complains in one draft letter. “You are using me and conning me just to get laid . . . If you cared about me you’d pay my rent.”

From the pleasures of the flesh to the prerequisites of survival…

It proved extraordinary and occasionally painful reading in a hushed library full of Harvard scholars, one of whom was poring over a volume of 15th-century sermons.

Does this make stories of Mailer’s love-life our 20th century sermons?

The big day. The day we’ve long been waiting for. A day of simultaneous redemption and inspiration.

You know what I’m talking about.

“Harold and Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay” opens today.

The Washington Post doesn’t like it, which only proves what we New Yorkers have known all along: Washington doesn’t “get” high culture.

But in the Times, A.O. Scott loves it!

The simple fact that a movie exists with the title “Harold & Kumar Escape From Guantanamo Bay” is cause for hope.

You know who else probably wouldn’t think it’s funny?

Hillary Clinton.

In the Crimson, the ever-pugnacious Lucy Caldwell takes on Yale abort-artist Alisa Shvarts…and leaves her bleeding.

Over the past two weeks, the Aliza Shvarts story has been picked up by a number of national media outlets. This coverage tends to presume that Shvarts’s project was remotely academic, which it was not.

…In the academy, there has been such a rush to demonstrate a collective commitment to sociopolitical progressivism—to a tolerance of alternative sexualities and sexual lifestyles, that is—that we have suspended rigorous examination of these themes.

Such a promising start! But alas, Caldwell mainly wanders off into radical chic-bashing. I’m a fan of Caldwell’s contrarian writing—complacent Harvard needs more like her—but I wish she had resorted to a little less rhetoric and a deeper pursuit of her argument: that Shvarts’ project was neither intellectuallynor artistically serious.

And do we really need another uninformed and factually inaccurate sideswipe of Cornel West? No, we don’t. It’s long past time to put a fork in the idea that Larry Summers had the faintest idea what he was doing when he launched that attack on West…..

On TheAtlantic.com, Matthew Iglesias defends his colleague, Andrew Sullivan, from Leon Wieseltier’s charges of anti-Semitism.

For reasons I can’t quite comprehend, even some pretty hardened TNR-haters seem to see Leon Wieseltier as making a positive contribution to the world. Certainly, some very good stuff appears in the back of the book over there, but the man’s own work is a kind of writing-as-thuggery.

My favorite part of the post? The comments, which also reference Bill Kristol, whose column attacking Barack Obama started this whole round of intellectual name-calling.For example….

As Gore Vidal has said, Leon Wieseltier has very important hair….

Of course Kristol is not wrong because he’s Jewish, he’s wrong because he’s Bill Kristol and being wrong is what he does.…

Please excuse me for saying so, but Maureen Dowd is a catty tramp….

Not sure why Maureen Dowd got in there, and so far as I know she’s not a tramp. But she is catty!

The New York Post reports that Harvard has bought an archive of papers relating to Norman Mailer collected over a decade of amorous couplings by the late writer’s erstwhile mistress, Carole Mallory.

The storied Ivy League institution - where the Pulitzer-winning author received a bachelor’s degree in aeronautical engineering - has purchased a treasure trove of books, papers and letters relating to Mailer from his longtime mistress, Carole Mallory, including X-rated descriptions of their red-hot bedroom sessions.“There’s a 20-page sex scene from an unpublished memoir I wrote called ‘Making Love With Norman,’ ” Mallory told Page Six. “It’s very steamy. Norman was a real man and he knew what he was doing.”

Other Mallory lovers, according to the New York Observer, include Robert De Niro, Warren Beatty, Sean Connery, Rod Stewart (she must like Scots) and Richard Gere.

One senses a memoir in the (love-) making….

She won in Pennsylvania.

But how does she expect to win the nomination without destroying the party in the process?

I was watching CNN last night—one wishes its coverage were more intelligent—and analyst Paul Begala was arguing that this race won’t hurt the Democrats because regardless of who wins, the party will come together.

Meanwhile, Amy Holmes (remind me why she’s a political expert again?) argued that Hillary’s voters are actually becoming more entrenched, while Obama voters would be happy with either candidate.

I’m dubious of both arguments. (And I find it particularly irritating that CNN has Republican political analysts commenting on the Democratic primaries, as if one could possibly trust a word they say, when in fact it’s just an opportunity to present anti-Democratic spin in the guise of analysis.)

Every piece of data I’ve seen suggests that Obama has energized the party, bringing in hundreds of thousands of new voters (not to mention donors).

These are people who, like me, agree with Obama’s message that he’s the best candidate to move the country forward after eight years of President Cheney Bush.

If Hillary somehow managed to steal the nomination from him, a la George Bush in 2000, how many of these voters would turn out for her on Election Day? How many would just sit this one out?

And what of African-American voters, who won’t soon forget the ugly race cards that Hillary and Bill have been throwing down?

The political conventional wisdom is that Obama’s inability to beat Hillary in these Rust Belt states—Ohio, Pennsylvania, Michigan—reflects a fundamental weakness in his campaign.

Here’s how the Times put it:

Mrs. Clinton showed again that she is a tenacious campaigner with an ability to connect with the blue-collar voters Mr. Obama has found elusive and who could be critical to a Democratic victory in November.

Balderdash.

The issue is not whether Obama can beat Hillary Clinton in these states. She’s a vicious campaigner with substantial political credentials—a formidable candidate. It’s no surprise that she’s going to win some primaries.

The issue is whether Obama can beat John McCain in these and all states.

McCain is getting a free ride from most of the media at the moment, and the public’s not paying him much attention, and Hillary’s negativity is driving down Obama’s numbers nationally.

But McCain is a weak candidate. I think either Democrat could beat him.

But can we really live with the Clintons for four or eight more years? (Just imagine Bill, skirt-chasing away, and Chelsea, money-chasing away, still refusing to answer questions from the press on the grounds that she’s not involved in politics.)

Would that be the best thing for the country?

Think of the dreariness of a Hillary-McCain race—two machine politicians, both willing to do and say anything in the pursuit of their own ambition (does Hillary have the slightest idea what she believes in any more?), both long-time creatures of Washington, D.C.

McCain is actually slightly more honorable than Hillary; if Americans vote on character, he might in fact win.

McCain v. Clinton would be the definition of politics as usual, and that’s exactly what this country doesn’t need right now.

Hillary needs to do the first selfless thing she’s ever done in her political life: Drop out.

Alisa Shvarts’ senior thesis, involving footage of herself inducing miscarriages after self-impregnating, was supposed to go up yesterday at Yale’s Green Hall.

It didn’t.

Yale won’t let her stage her exhibition unless she admits that it’s a fiction; Shvarts won’t say it.

Meanwhile, the Yale Daily News reports that “medical experts” think Shvartz’s claims of self-impregnation followed by self-induced miscarriages are medically improbable.

“The most likely scenario,” said Dr. Edward Funai, associate professor of obstetrics and gynecology and chief of obstetrics at Yale-New Haven Hospital, “is that all Shvarts was seeing every month was her own menstrual blood. Half of the Yale community sees art of similar quality when taking care of their monthly hygiene.”

…Of the herbal abortifacients currently available over the counter, none contains ingredients potent enough to abort a embryo, [Yale gynecologist Edward] Funai said. Some could promote the miscarriage of an embryo “in theory,” he said, but would have to be ingested in extremely large amounts to do so. At such high dosages, Funai said, these herbal drugs would produce dramatic side effects, including nausea, headaches, anemia and possibly even death.

And finally, Yale history of art lecturer Seth Kim-Cohen argues that Yale is wrong to prohibit Shvarts from showing her art unless she admits it’s all made-up.

The University has decided not to allow the rest of us make up our own minds. I am considerably more troubled by their [sic] action than by hers.

There go his chances at tenure….

Is academia the dreariest (white-collar) profession?On the Atlantic.com, Megan McCardle proposes a number of explanations for why so many academics seem so unsatisfied with their lot.

They include (I’m paraphrasing):

—low pay relative to professions they might have gone into

— constant awareness of their place in the academic ecosystem

—low job mobility

—insufficient time for other pursuits due to demands of career

I’d offer another: a nagging sense that the social status of professors, particularly those in the humanities, has declined substantially in recent decades.

What say you?

Wanna-be performance artist Aliza Shvarts writes in the Yale Daily News that she did indeed repeatedly get pregnant and induce miscarriages.

For the past year, I performed repeated self-induced miscarriages. I created a group of fabricators from volunteers who submitted to periodic STD screenings and agreed to their complete and permanent anonymity. From the 9th to the 15th day of my menstrual cycle, the fabricators would provide me with sperm samples, which I used to privately self-inseminate. Using a needleless syringe, I would inject the sperm near my cervix within 30 minutes of its collection, so as to insure the possibility of fertilization. On the 28th day of my cycle, I would ingest an abortifacient, after which I would experience cramps and heavy bleeding.

This piece — in its textual and sculptural forms — is meant to call into question the relationship between form and function as they converge on the body… It creates an ambiguity that isolates the locus of ontology to an act of readership.

[Blogger: Say what?]

But Yale administrators say that Shvarts can’t show her piece unless she admits that it’s a fiction.

In a press release, Yale College dean Peter Salovey writes,

In the normal course of events, Ms. Shvarts’s project would be installed at the School of Art for critique and discussion with a committee of faculty. In this case, we will not permit her to install the project unless she submits a clear and unambiguous written statement that her installation is a work of fiction: that she did not try to inseminate herself and induce miscarriages, and that no human blood will be physically displayed in her installation.

[Hillary Clinton’s] commercial was the first in which a Democratic candidate had used Osama bin Laden in the presidential race, although Republicans, including Rudolph W. Giuliani, have done so. In her commercial, Mr. bin Laden, the mastermind of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, is featured along with grainy images of the stock market crash of 1929, the attack on Pearl Harbor, the fall of the Berlin Wall and Hurricane Katrina.

—today’s NYT