The Greatest Cigar Smoker of All Time Who Never Was

When you think of history's top aficionados, Churchill, Kennedy, Castro and Ruth are just a few of the names that come to mind. But I want to add a name no one associates with cigar smoking -- and that's because he rarely did.

Norman Mailer was the greatest writer and larger-than-life literary persona of his generation. His presence was so steadfast and forceful that, when his health started its descent over the past decade and a half, many of us failed to notice that Mailer, one of America's greatest writers, was still among us. That is, until we heard he had died.

Three years ago I saw Mailer at the University Club of New York read from a series of short stories about the War in Iraq, the Bush administration and, of course, Mailer. He walked up to the dais leaning heavily on two black canes. He wore a dark jacket and a bright white open collar shirt that looked loose on him -- as if he were shrinking in it there, that day. His eyes were as blue as the clearest sky, and his voice, though scratchy at times, was deep enough to fill the room with all we had come to see. He was Norman Mailer, and he was here with us.

I would've given anything to have spoken with Mailer that afternoon. I would've told him that his descriptions of night on patrol in the Pacific atolls remained the most frightening images of war I have ever read or seen on screen. Period. I would've thanked him for starting the Village Voice, which beyond the many decent columns and features, got me to see some of the best bands of all time, and connected me with a few not-so-terrible apartments. I would've have thanked him for his failures, which gave even the most pedestrian writers among us cause to forgive our own missteps. I would have thanked him for his literary stamina, which should inspire all of us to keep on doing what we do best. Keep on doing what we love, what we have to do -- just as Mailer did relentlessly for 60 years.

And, I would've offered him a cigar. Mailer was a heroic character who lived in history, not with me here: The kind that justify their own towering egos, who transcend the day-to-day of our lives, who punctuate their profound existence with a cigar -- one of the greatest symbols of great character. Like Twain, Kipling, Welles and J.P. Morgan, the images of whom aren't quite complete without their beloved cigars, I remember Mailer as one of the greatest cigar smokers of all time who never was -- except, of course, to me.

John von Brachel

5/20/08

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