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Author
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Topic: Norman Mailer (Of a Fire on the Moon) dies
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FFrench
Member Posts: 3161
From: San Diego
Registered: Feb 2002
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posted 11-10-2007 09:20 AM
  
I see the news this morning that American novelist Norman Mailer has died. For the space audience, he may be best remembered for his book about Apollo 11, "Of a Fire on the Moon."A moment of silence is signified by an entry with no words and only a period. |
Lunar rock nut
Member Posts: 911
From: Oklahoma city, Oklahoma U.S.A.
Registered: Feb 2007
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posted 11-10-2007 10:10 AM
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Apollo-Soyuz
Member Posts: 1205
From: Shady Side, Md
Registered: Sep 2004
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posted 11-10-2007 10:25 AM
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SRB
Member Posts: 258
From:
Registered: Jan 2001
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posted 11-10-2007 10:43 AM
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Jay Gallentine
Member Posts: 287
From: Shorewood, MN, USA
Registered: Sep 2004
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posted 11-10-2007 11:36 AM
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fabfivefreddy
Member Posts: 1067
From: Leawood, Kansas USA
Registered: Oct 2003
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posted 11-10-2007 04:36 PM
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randy
Member Posts: 2176
From: West Jordan, Utah USA
Registered: Dec 1999
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posted 11-10-2007 07:22 PM
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dss65
Member Posts: 1156
From: Sandpoint, ID, USA
Registered: Mar 2003
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posted 11-10-2007 07:41 PM
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ea757grrl
Member Posts: 729
From: South Carolina
Registered: Jul 2006
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posted 11-10-2007 10:33 PM
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cspg
Member Posts: 6210
From: Geneva, Switzerland
Registered: May 2006
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posted 11-11-2007 12:31 AM
.(and maybe his works, including his Apollo book, will be reissued, preferably in French. Didn't know he wrote a book about Apollo...) |
Rick Mulheirn
Member Posts: 4167
From: England
Registered: Feb 2001
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posted 11-11-2007 05:12 AM
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Cliff Lentz
Member Posts: 655
From: Philadelphia, PA USA
Registered: Mar 2002
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posted 11-11-2007 09:17 AM
It's a shame that Norman Mailer passed away. I know him from several sports-related works. I wonder how many people have read "Of a Fire on the Moon."? I read it and I own it. It's not really a flattering picture of Apollo 11. As I remember, he talks about how boring covering the event was. Maybe I'll go back and read it again, but I know there's a reason that it's on the back shelves of my space collection and I never made an attempt to get it signed even though I could have.Cliff |
Robert Pearlman
Editor Posts: 42981
From: Houston, TX
Registered: Nov 1999
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posted 11-11-2007 09:36 AM
quote:
Originally posted by Cliff Lentz:
It's not really a flattering picture of Apollo 11.
James Hansen spent several pages in First Man deconstructing Mailer's impression of Armstrong: quote:
Not until he constructed his own myth out of Armstrong could the creative mind of Norman Mailer be satisfied. It did not matter that Mailer would never meet Neil face to face, never once talk to him directly, never ask him a single question of his own. Mailer, too, had sat before the oracle, "the most saintly of the astronauts," someone who was "simply not like other men," who was "apparently in communion with some string in the universe others did not think to play." It was up to Mailer, up to Aquarius, to decode Armstrong.
And later... quote:
There was no denying the brilliance of Mailer's exposé. Yet Mailer really did not care about Armstrong, the man, on a personal level, only as a vessel into which the author could pour his own mental energy and profundity. What Mailer wrote in his chapter "The Psychology of Astronauts" was highly provocative and insightful as social criticism, but as history, biography, or real psychology, it shed considerably more heat than light.
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cddfspace
Member Posts: 609
From: Morris County, NJ, USA
Registered: Jan 2006
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posted 11-11-2007 11:10 AM
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