So let's say you've finally managed to work your way through Lee Siegel's 6,200-plus-word NYTBR essay on Norman Mailer, where (and we checked the math) he doesn't start to discuss the new novel, The Castle in the Forest, until just about the seven-tenths mark—and after all that, I find out that my cheap joke about Hitler's testicle is actually an accurate reflection of the storyline? (I mean, seriously, WTF? Maybe Mailer's got one more book left in him, about how John Dillinger's massive penis is kept in a jar by the FBI. Actually, that might be a pretty good Dan Brown novel, now that I think of it.) Well, that means you might be ready to watch NYTBR editor Sam Tanenhaus interview the author tonight at Hunter College's Kaye Playhouse, where $25 gets you ninety minutes of Mailer in what's billed as his only NYC appearance.

"It'll be free-form, I think," was the only clue Tanenhaus would give me about what they might talk about onstage, but recent interviews Mailer has given might yield additional hints. With Daniel Asa Rose for the Washington Post, we learn that "Hitler is the devil's answer to Jesus Christ" and that the grand old man doesn't bother reading what the kids today are up to ("which I think is one of the reasons they're not particularly in love with me"). For Gregory Kirschling of Entertainment Weekly, he expands on that last revelation: "I don't read other books anymore because it's all headaches. I get too excited when I read a good novel. When I think a novel is good, I stay away from it."

We also learn in EW that God once ordered the young Mailer to pull a dine-and-dash, after which he offers up, if I can mix my metaphors atrociously, a straight line you could drive a truck through: "You do things when you're drunk that you find it hard to explain." Too bad all we get from that line of discussion is that Mailer doesn't like to drink after dinner any more. So let's look at his NY Sun conversation with Colin Miner, where he admits that he blew off the sequel to Harlot's Ghost to write about Hitler and he's never going back, credits Ron Rosenbaum's excellent Explaining Hitler with setting him in motion, and for good measure explains the Bush presidency: "People believe that buying things is one of the most significant acts they can take, and that is the handmaiden to stupidity. The country has become more and stupid over the past 15 to 20 years, and George Bush is the fruit, the flower, of that tendency."

photo: Tyler Hicks/NYTBR