The same arrogance the made Mailer a great writer also made him sometimes do dumb things. (Image from MDC Archives.)

I think the first time in my childhood that I heard the name “Norman Mailer” was in connection with one of the worst things he ever did. Mailer agitated for the release of convict/writer Jack Henry Abbott, who had spent much of his life in prison. Mailer envisioned Abbott as an American Genet.

It was, of course, a stupendously stupid thing to do. Within six weeks of his 1981 release, Abbott murdered 22-year-old New York waiter/aspiring actor Richard Adan. Whether he was springing cons, running for mayor or seething at Gore Vidal, Mailer often acted out of incredible hubris. But he was a magnificent writer, especially when he was in full-on non-fiction mode.

Some of his best work is collected in Miami and the Siege of Chicago, his street-level examinations of the 1968 Republican and Democrat national conventions, in all their depressing and tumultuous infamy. An excerpt from The Siege of Chicago, which concerns a protest march that was halted with utter brutality:

“There, damned by police on three sides, and cut off from the wagons of the Poor People’s March, there, right beneath the windows of the Hilton that looked down on Grant Park and Michigan Avenue, the stationary march was abruptly attacked. The police attacked with tear gas, with Mace, and with clubs, they attacked like a chainsaw cutting into wood, the teeth of the saw the edge of their clubs, they attacked like a scythe through grass, lines of twenty or thirty policemen striking out in an arc, their clubs beating, demonstrators fleeing. Seen from overhead, from the nineteenth floor, it was like a wind blowing dust, or the edge of waves riding foam on the shore.”