Forty years ago, at the tender age of 17, I found in the book rack at Reade’s drug store on Belair Road in Baltimore–improbably enough–a copy of Managing Mailer, an account of Norman Mailer 1969 campaign to become mayor of New York, written by his manager Joe Flaherty. As I have previously written, this book made a huge impression on me, though it took me decades to grasp its impact.
The book begins with an account of a meeting of possible backers, including Gloira Steinem, Peter Maaas, Jack Newfield, Pete Hamill, Jeremy Larner, Jimmy Breslin, and the man who was later to become one of my mentors, John Scanlon–that Mailer held in his home in Brooklyn Heights. “The meeting took place on the top floor of Mailer’s brownstone, which directly overlooks the water and offers a panoramic view of the New York–symbolically, I supposed, our military objective. The warmth of the room appealed to my Irish heart; it seemed like a blend of wood and whiskey, combining the best aspects of the womb and the coffin. Books by the hundreds lined the walls, and to accentuate the sense of impending adventure, rope ladders hung from a planked ceiling, giving the room and its occupants a hint of voyage.”
Man, I could just see that apartment! It immediately became the beau ideal of New York sophistication. I was positive of it in the spring of 1977, a short six years later, when my wife and I saw not the apartment but something like the view–standing on the Brooklyn promenade on a sunny first Saturday in May, we fell in love in with the view of New York, and the golden future it promised us.
With the death of Mailer and the last of his wives, Norris Church, Mailer’s children have put the apartment on sale, and on Sunday The New York Times ran a photo essay on the property. Apparently Mailer took down the rope ladders some time ago, but the rest of it is much like I imagined it these last forty years. The apartment is being listed at $2.5 million.