Satan Speaks : An Interview with Norman Mailer

Last week BBC Radio 4 "Front Row" presenter Mark Lawson interviewed the US writer Norman Mailer, following the publication of Mailer's latest novel "The Castle in the Forest". This novel gives a fictional account of the birth and childhood of Adolph Hitler which is narrated by an agent of Satan. Not having read this book myself, I do not propose to discuss it here but rather to reflect on Mailer's cosmology as he described this to Lawson.

First, however, it should be said that Norman Mailer undoubtedly has more than a bit of the devil in him, although, by his own admission he has mellowed with age (Mailer in now 84). Never beloved of feminists, Mailer has been married 5 or 6 times, although his "final" matrimony has endured as long as the previous ones, and he now considers himself a happily married man. Mailer was jailed for seriously wounding one of his earlier wives with a knife : something he did not seem unduly contrite about in the interview. Indeed he was rather vitriolic about a current feud with a leading female US review editor.

Nevertheless, Norman Mailer has an interesting take on "god" (which he acknowledged could be female) and the devil (no gender specified), not least because it is resonant of earlier Christian (Medieval/Renaissance) and "Occult" cosmologies. In short, Mailer's universe is run by a kind of diabolic bureaucracy, by order of Satan, with God as the prime creative, but not all powerful, cosmic force : he used the analogy of an artist. Mailer also believes in a form of re-incarnation, and hopes one day to find "a new life" as a black athlete. Although gender was not specified, as I recall there was no suggestion that Mailer wanted to be a woman next time around.

This is hardly surprising because, I would suggest, the dynamic of Norman Mailer's universe is male pride, his own and in its more archetypal forms. This, and the fact that so many women seem to have "fallen" for him, is a testimony to my own belief that men take their "religions" too seriously, and women take men too seriously, foolishly treating them like gods. Therin lies one of the main problems of the human condition, however one may choose to construe good and evil.