The Ticket That Exploded

MANAGING MAILER by Joe Flaherty. 222 pages. Coward-McCann. $5.95.

"What we are running on," New York Mayoral Candidate Norman Mailer told the voters last year, "is one basic simple notion, which is that till people see where their ideas lead, they know nothing." For years Mailer has been following and accepting the consequences of his own ideas, most notably those about the revitalizing effects of physical violence. Indeed, the main point that lunges out of former Campaign Manager Joe Flaherty's shrewdly conceived, vigorously written and entertaining account of Mailer's Visigothic raid into forum politics is the novelist's need to test his genius in constant confrontation. Many voters may have been fascinated by a man of Mailer's dark, risky imagination. But in the end, they didn't want their city to marry one.

Radical Conservative. To begin with, there was the problem of the campaign slogan: "No more bullshit." In fact, to discuss the Mailer campaign without generous samples of the excesses that salted his speeches and staff communications would be like discoursing on American democracy without mentioning De Tocqueville. Fornication and cancer are used so often as aggressive metaphors that they seem to take on the roiling essence of Mailer himself.

Admirers of the writer will not find this surprising. In his books, creation and destruction are rendered as one indistinguishable and irresistible life force. By extending this seemingly paradoxical vision into his political career, Mailer could claim to be a radical conservative -a candidate who could honestly run on a platform of "Free Huey Newton -end fluoridation." The ultimate contradiction implicit in Mailer's radical conservatism was his argument that New York City should become a separate state composed of totally autonomous neighborhoods. If a neighborhood voted for compulsory church attendance on Sunday, so be it. If the majority in another area wanted compulsory free love, that was all right too. What would happen to a celibate atheist who lived in either area is never made clear. Presumably he would have to abandon his convictions or start his own neighborhood.

As candidate for city council president, Mailer picked Jimmy Breslin, an ex-newspaperman who got so much practice writing fiction as a columnist for the late Herald Tribune that he had little trouble producing the bestselling comic-Mafia novel, The Gang That Couldn't Shoot Straight. Mailer-Breslin was a ticket compounded of booze fulminate of mercury, and laughing gas It was too volatile to survive. There was also the problem of Mailer's vanity. Near the end of the campaign says Flaherty, Mailer encouraged some of his staff to shave off their beards as a gesture of loyalty, and curtly rejected scripts for spot radio announcements in favor of an abominable jingle from his own pen.

TV Fiascoes. The crowning debacle, and the funniest bit in the book, was Mailer and Breslin's appearance on their own TV show. It cost them $3,400 and untold votes. For starters, Mailer insisted on a live production with no rehearsal and no notes. To add to the studio men's panic at such conditions, he slipped out for a few drinks ten minutes before air time. During the broadcast, Breslin forgot the punch line to an otherwise effective speech. Then Mailer, contrary to instructions, leaped out of his seat and began to roam the set while he delivered his spiel. As cameramen frantically tried to keep him in their sights, they repeatedly picked up Breslin who was rocking back and forth in his chair with his head buried in his hands.

Of this and other fiascoes, Flaherty writes: "The things I cherished in Mailer as a writer -his daring, his unpredictability, his gambling, and his bluffing -were the very things that made me want to strangle him as a politician. It was a revelation that returned my sanity." Flaherty might have got it back a lot sooner had he realized from the start that for someone like Mailer New York is a great place to campaign in, but you wouldn't want to win there.

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