THE HAT SQUAD: NORMAN MAILER

Trapper:
"Frank! What are you doing?"

Frank Burns:
"Burning books."

Hawkeye:
"Oh. Any special reason, Dr. Hitler?"

Frank Burns:
"One of the greatest living Americans is coming
And I'm not going to let him see some of the trash that's read around here."

Trapper:
"Plato's Republic? The Life of Red Grange?"

Hawkeye:
"Revolutionaries."

Frank Burns:
"Right!"

Trapper:
"Robinson Crusoe?"

Hawkeye:
"Everybody runs around half naked."

Trapper:
"Norman Mailer."

Frank Burns:
"It's got *that word* in it."
'M*A*S*H'

If Frank meant the bleep that I think he meant, actually Mailer coined the word "fug" to replace it....

Even in the Television Universe, Norman Mailer was a polarizing presence. Along with the TV characters who reviled his work, there were also those who wanted to aspire to his skills and power with the written word.

Billy Campbell:
"I'm a writer."
Alison Parker Armstrong:
"Writer? What kind of writer?"
Billy Campbell:
"A novelist."
Alison Parker Armstrong:
"You mean like Jackie Collins?"
Billy Campbell:
"No, I mean like Norman Mailer."
'Melrose Place'

Just based on the references to Mailer and his books would be enough to accept that he had a televersion of himself living in Toobworld. But Mailer is one of a handful of writers who could be found living in the same universe as the characters he wrote about. He finally made his way into the League of Themselves by sitting down to an interview at the Dragonfly Inn in Stars Hollow, Connecticut. (Real interviews on news magazines and other types of TV profiles don't really count towards the League of Themselves, unless something remarkable happened during them.)

As Norman Mailer himself described it, his televersion was a "cantankerous curmudgeon" who told a journalist (played by his son Stephen) that his favorite authors were Garcia-Marquez, James Joyce, and Tolstoy. Behind the scenes, it seems that landing Mailer to appear as himself on 'Gilmore Girls' only happened because one of the writers was friends with Stephen Mailer. Otherwise, it may never have happened: "I hate sitcoms," Mailer said. "I don't wanna go near 'em."

Luckily we now have his actual presence locked into the TV Universe, and thanks to syndication, he's gained a different kind of immortality. Because here in the real world, Norman Mailer died today at the age of 84.

BCnU.....
Toby OB

"A lot of exceptional writers contribute to Playboy.
There's Philip Roth, uh, Norman Mailer, the late Roald Dahl."
Dr. Joel Fleischman
'Northern Exposure'