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Remembering two great men

Taki

Wednesday, 16th April 2008

Taki lives the High Life

New York

Their memorials were held five days apart, each in one of Manhattan’s most hallowed venues, each one attended by more than 2,000 worshipping fans, both attracting A-list mourners as well as the poor and the humble. William Buckley and Norman Mailer had great send-offs, the former, as a devout Catholic, in St Patrick’s Cathedral, on Fifth Avenue, natch; the latter, as a non-practising Jew who called himself an atheist, in Carnegie Hall, where art and imagination have flourished for decades.

As both men had been mentors of mine, their families kindly sent reserved-seat tickets, but it was not to be. Death unites the fallen and abjures snobbery and privilege. Paying homage to the dead means first come first served. One does not tell an old Jewish lady from Brooklyn, or a Catholic for that matter, that they’re sitting in one’s seat. I was in the next-to-last row in St Patrick’s and on the third tier in Carnegie Hall. Never mind. Both the service for Bill and the eulogies for Norman were once-in-a-lifetime occasions. Tom Wolfe, sitting in the last row in the cathedral, whispered that the hymns were out of this world. ‘Yet the Muslims have passed us in numbers,’ I whispered back, ‘and all they listen to are screams.’

Only Kissinger and Bill’s son Christopher spoke in St Patrick’s, a conservative number for the man who actually invented modern conservatism in America. This was not the case with Norman’s eulogists. There were 27 of them, including his nine children, all of them talented and smart, all of them in the arts; plus writers, actors, directors and Muhammad Ali’s wife. Never have I been less bored by listening to 27 speakers. In fact, Norman’s offspring should take their act to Broadway. Each one spoke on a particular subject about their father, but with one unifying theme: how a man with six wives and nine kids, a drinker, a doper and brawler, managed to weave together a single family unit which works. One of his actor sons, Stephen, swaggered to the podium, cleared his throat in the characteristic style of his father, and growled, ‘Carnegie Hall, Carnegie Hall, well, why not?’ Christopher Buckley also mentioned the venue. Forty years ago, his father told him that if he were famous by the time he died, he would like to have the service at St Patrick’s. ‘You’ve got your wish, dad.’ My close buddy, Michael Mailer, talked about boxing, Norman’s obsession, and how poignant it was when he, Michael, got too good for Norman and they had their last match.

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