Day: March 21, 2007

Last week, the boy wanted to make Inca masks. I told him we might find something on the Internet, so he typed away. Didn’t get a great response from the Safari address bar, but I think he’s starting to get the idea. Note: I never did find useful instructions for such a craft project, even with some later searching. Pointers welcome!

I have not yet turned Growl back on, but Growl was not the problem. I took the iMac G5 into the Genius Bar last Saturday night (yes, I’m that much fun), for the second trip in three days.

Good news, though, was that I left the computer there that night, and had it back, free of charge, with a brand-new power supply on Monday night. All is well once again, and my computer wakes and sleeps easier than I do once more. The Genius Bar experience was quite good all the way through, especially with the availability of online appointment scheduling. I didn’t want to be there, but all three visits were quick, and I got competent helpful people, at no charge. That is ever more rare, so it is notable.

Norman Mailer‘s best-known book The Naked and the Dead filled my nights over the last few weeks. I didn’t plow straight through, but I became more interested the further I went on.

My grandfather served on a destroyer in the Pacific during World War II. The island warfare depicted in this book, following an army platoon, wasn’t his war, directly, but I wondered about how his Navy experience jibed with these descriptions.

The profiles of each individual sharpened the book wonderfully. The range of characters gives every reader of the book someone to identify with. Mailer’s characters were better than his story, but the story isn’t bad.

I knew Mailer’s name, and several of the titles of his books. But I had never read him until now. I was prompted to read his work after seeing him twice in recent months. Once was on film, in the documentary When We Were Kings.

The second time was at the City Arts & Lectures series early last month. I was happy to have a ticket, even though it was back row of the balcony. Very entertaining conversation, in a way that I wouldn’t necessarily assume is true of all authors.

Being able to engage on the page, in an extended, polished flow of words, is not the same skill as speaking and thinking in full sentences and connected thoughts. Mailer has both talents, polished over a lifetime. After all, Mailer ran for mayor of New York and generally enjoyed the celebrity (literary and otherwise) that the success of The Naked and the Dead brought him at the ripe old age of 25. Nearly 60 years later, he’s physically frail, but mentally acute. We can all only wish for so much.