Everyone knows that “The Good Die Young” but do “The Bad Die Old”? The demise of Norman Mailer, aetat 84, would seem to answer my question in the affirmative.

I’ve never read any of Mailer’s works that I can remember but his name has been familiar to me in the same way that the name Eldridge Cleaver (Soul on Ice – which I also never read) remains in my mind.

In a sense, one never really had to read the literary works (for want of a better term) of the illuminati of the 60s. They all pretty much said the same thing: it was all “Turn On, Tune In, Drop Out” or similar concoction, more a noxious witch’s brew than a philosophy of life, and a lethal drug it was too, for the young and naive. For not only did many heed the call to “Drop Out”, they also, alas, as a result, “Dropped Dead”.

But the main reason I was never attracted to the writings of these lost souls is that they seemed to me to be unflinchingly infantile. Like, you know, they never seemed to grow up. In fact, the older they got, the sillier they seemed to act. (Allen Ginsberg features mightily in my mind in this respect).

There’s nothing more embarrassing than to view a pop concert today featuring “artists” well into their 60s running around the stage, dishing it out on their electric guitars, tight pants and all, as if they were still in their early 20s. Haven’t they already made enough money? Is there no self-respect left? Pathetic is the only adjective that I can think of that describes this sort of spectacle.

Thus too with Norman Mailer. He continued to be – or pretended to be – l’enfante terrible right up to the last, but the biggest joke of all was really on him in so many ways.

Someone once said “Anyman’s Death Diminishes Me” and in the great scheme of things, I suppose that’s true. But in my estimation, Norman Mailer can only be considered as the exception that proves the rule.