Book Beat; 81

We're talking about an amazing book about the moon shot and the astronauts visit to the moon of a fire on the moon by Norman Mailer. The book is published by Little Brown and we'll be back with Mr. Mailer in just a moment. This is book B. Each week introducing you to leading authors and critics this program is made possible in part by the National Book Committee and the American Booksellers Association. Your host is Robert Crumb a daily columnist for The Chicago Tribune and a contributing editor of book world the Sunday Literary Supplement of the Chicago Tribune and The Washington Post. This book is hard to write as I think it must have been or rather was probably the hardest book ever. Just in the sense of a bump. Myself most of the physical labor rather. You know they're booked so I'm going to write a book you burn more energy literally you're more tired at the end of the day. There are other books and this one I said to them was really a little bit like I'll. Take a wheelbarrow full of cement and rolling up a ramp. And then going back for another wheelbarrow full of cement and rolling it up the ramp and doing that all day. For one thing when they made it very hard to

to write is the first book I've written I had to keep looking up things I wrote. And checking things and getting my quotes in order and of course as a drop of scholarship I never done it and just as a matter of craft and technique I had to learn as I went and what made it what makes it difficult I think is that's very hard a bit of a mood where you get deep into a mood you're really writing into it and doing your thinking and suddenly going to stop it all and up you know look for the quote. And of course that means it breaks the mood you know open up again and each time you do that the work gets heavier so it was a it was a hard book to write. OK well could you you're a Harvard graduate. Yes and did you study for years of engineering. I studied that. Not really I studied lightly I had it. I majored in engineering. Yeah but Harvard because I was a college still is I had a particularly easy way of taking engineering Otherwise you could take as many courses as you want to me you could take a minimum of six courses in engineering and related subjects like math and physics and chemistry is over and I took a minimum of courses because halfway through Harvard

and writing it was too late to change. My major. Yeah so I stayed in engineering but I didn't take that many courses in it but I did have a scientific background revelation I was leading up to could you have written this book do you think nearly as well or nearly as quickly or written it all without an engineering background. I don't know I would have never taken on the subject in a way you know and I don't think I've done just for the simple reason I think that people haven't had an engineering background to have too much respect for science. There's that they think it's a perfect discipline and they think that knowledge resides in science and they believe that you know that all the fundamental questions they assume all the fundamental questions are answered in physics of course they're not. Physics is as much of a mystery as a human relations if you will that number fundamental questions are answered in the film and that's why things go wrong. Route. For one thing generally. Things go right because they've been worked on in terms of engineering Otherwise things worked because they worked in the past when they've been breakdowns they've investigated the breakdown you know if you take a tour of

cars for example. And they look to see what made the breakdown happen the way it happened and usually what you've got is 99 percent of engineering one percent of the physics is really simple with machines because of his work at 100 to 200 to 300 years ago and the engineering it's more more complex I would add more and more men making more and more tests and studies of the materials they find out what a piece of metal is going to break not by theory but by practice. You know as they break the metal over and over and over again and they take an average which might be the shearing coefficient or whatever the particular term is and it's you know sort of hit and miss and pick and choose and a tremendous amount of experience accumulates around each piece of technology. And this experience which is engineering that gets transmitted on to the next invention you say which is always builds on what has been done before when you know that if you've had engineering training you don't have quite the same respect for these processes as you do if you come from a literary background. And so what was fascinating about the moon shot. Was not. That it was a

perfect performance. But that the technology was so advanced that they could literally dare to do this. They could take on that many unknowns with how many miles of wiring in the. I forget the other figures now but was it something like a few hours as a 15 or 15 or 15000 I forget there are tremendous amount of wiring and I just want you to use Yeah well as a long for you to some incredible figure that I remember you know what it was fifty thousand miles or I don't want to watch it but it was certainly amazed me and all that. Did you. Find it hard to weave together the scientific in the human element. Well I think I think it's the interesting difficulty in the book you know whenever you start to write about science. So if there's a tremendous depth to science you know this is the live as if you were writing about medicine after all you go on and on and on if you start to write about nuclear fission you can go on and on and on. And as you do more and more readers fall off after a while you need various kinds of mathematics such as you know literary discipline is going to be able to present to an average reader. So you have to

decide at what level you're going to. Attack some of these problems to you know bring in basic physics to people who don't even know basic physics or they may be very intelligent in literary matters. You've got to decide at what level you want to write this book and I decided for myself that what I would do is I keep inboard of intelligent woman who let's say would be very intelligent but would not assume you know anything at all about physics and so I would explain the basic physics where was necessary. But for a woman not for a man you would presumably have might have had some disciplines of the sciences. And it was a way of doing the book I'll say that you know it did. I kept having my register that I was Is this an unfair way to treat a lady. Will she be able understand this or will she not. You know by asking something over that's absolutely outrageous because she had no preparation for it so it helps that I think when you also of course brought in black magic and superstition and the influence of the moon the tides and humans and the devil and God and who was behind the moon shot. So you made it.

You almost restored the mystery to the moon which is what I resented about the moon shot frankly that it took the mystery away from me. Yeah well I riz I found as I wrote the book that I began to resent it more and more. I had particularly mixed feelings. About the movie shot I thought that was a good reason to write the book. Which is why I took this psalm in the first place was it saying we have that right from the beginning. The question I asked myself on the first day when the sign was first proposed to me you know that life. You know I just turned and I said well I don't know I don't if you want to write this story for you because A. Let me tell you that. I don't know whether this is just the noblest achievement a mark of our fundamental insanity and yet it is all in the world maybe that's why we picked you. That's why we thought of you. And this question and I just came up instantly stayed with the book every day every day was right there in front of my typewriter you know is this nobility or is it insanity or is it some extraordinary 20th century mixture of both. We never really decided. You know when I when I decided in the course it was that probably we ought to go on with space to answer that question because it's a question it's got to be answered and if we don't go on

with space we're never going to we're not going it is going take us a century longer to answer that question. And if we all have a century to go on what with the. Various disruptions of the ecological balance. I like your analyses of the of the astronauts too. You took I think forty nine or something of the ones who did the flying and compared their vital statistics and their backgrounds and came up with a lot of similarities. I know it was fun that was that was my own little survey it was I remember most of them were blue eyed or gray eyed or hazel eyed for example are the ones who've been up in space. Fifteen of the 16 only one of the 16 had brown eyes that was Collins Yeah and I think 11 of the 16 of blue laws and four of the remaining five are either gray green or hazel and most of them from small towns I think yes. That actually was not the most known for small towns but not quite as many as you think I mean it was it wasn't as overwhelming as the blue was the heights of course were. Interesting I mean there all were I think some like half of them as I remember came in between 0 5 9 1 1/2 and 5.

Well that was partly a necessity you had to be to get into the capsule going to well it was more a matter of a weight that you had to be pretty much 135 pounds of weight. Most of my pecan as I was 38 pounds. Jerry speaking there. Yeah and since I was men are all common good shape there's a certain tendency for men are in good shape. Under 65 pounds came out of a certain height. I would assume you know. What impressed you most about the moonshot. Over to the left all of. You know it it was a fundamental experience I was just wasn't prepared for this that was fair of course before I left off. Everybody at Cocoa Beach just lives with as little as we respect. You realize that there's a culture there for people to grow up with this whole rocket and you know been there for years and it's a town that went from a wild west town to a spaceport in 15 or 20 years. And as a Wild West town in Florida

but you know in the early days of space it was minor town really was really like a gold rush town in those days and then of course it's very staid now and very respectable but everybody would always talk about left off you get bored listening to people say oh you haven't seen your first lift off. Well it's really quite experience you know and all that and so and I remember it was a bad day and I was perfectly edible by the time the other thing was approaching were just one of those days where you know when we're sweating on the job we had to line up to get a drink of Pepsi or so yeah you know what an hour to get a drink and all that and then when the thing happened I just was absolutely prepared for it. Quite an experience it's sort of a apocalyptic experience. Well I didn't realize until I read your book that that the the rocket itself was deliberately held down by my restraining arms until the force underneath it builds up to a certain level. Yeah well that explains why it starts out so slowly finally you know when it starts very slowly because up. You know what you've got is a certain point you've got I think some of the half million pounds roughly are approaching six and a half million yeah. Yeah well if you think that's as if

if you take some of this is rolling along. As if you took a five pound object on wheels and just put in one pound would start very slowly. You know one is dealing in millions of pounds of force. And actually that rocket literally lifts in the beginning it lifts no faster than my hand. It's literally starts this fast and just keeps going faster faster increases and fixed rate of so much a second you know. But it's going it up. By the time a. Get out I mean it's like 12 minutes later it's going at the speed of something like. I forget exactly the 18000 miles an hour you know. When did you and I know you did you had a feeling you want to be with them at one point in the book you would like to have made the trip which I well it's easy to say your common feeling among a lot of people of course I mean I think I think I have half a man American wouldn't want to make the trip or if somebody else did the work. Yeah but to but to make as a passenger to make it as a crew member be able to go there because me as a crew member even if you say that they were taken by men who were not pilots which is

possible I mean they were sort of taking up scientists in the next 10 or 20 years were not simply pilots but you'd start to put in a year or two of the worst sort of work. Yeah. So if I do if you have an idea of the moon and put in the euro to work I'm not at all sure certain that I would you know to go along as a passenger somebody gave you a ticket you would take it to go along as a poet laureate. Yes. You thought college probably had the toughest job because he wasn't allowed to land I felt very sorry for him. After reading your book because I think he did a marvelous job of concealing what had to be I would suspect a little and be understandably. Well I think that's always the great M&A or its kind of poker game the relations that all those assholes get into because they're all terribly competitive men. I mean one of the contradictions in the stories I want He's got a very competitive man he never got there in the first place got to believe is actually the best of us but you know these guys we're talking about players who you know it could be a team player but a real team player and it's a tremendous contradiction in a man and of course they're all aware of their emotions and all aware of the fact that the

man who was who was in the command module is going to be feeling envy. That's just taken for granted. The question is how does he handle his enemy and hide it and act around it and of course they all have great humor in relation to this role. So laughing at the pains and difficulties I was in college did very well. Yeah I think it almost becomes part of the competitiveness is you know the words to mask it. Yeah you guys will see just how well I can mask this so all out and he did have a tough spot. But of course it caught him in a couple. You know silly remarks as a result. I remember when we were watching them when the press was watching it and you were hearing it. At a certain point if they'd been on the moon for about an hour because of an out of touch a funny reached on the radio and they said well the view from here is great. As they spoke down to Houston they were on the move this broke down and used and then Houston spoke up the columns so it would be real late in the con..

Oh that's great that's great news finally broke just enough just a crack of a whisper of deadly in that noise and of course the whole press corps just burst out roaring because it was it was terribly funny that. Yeah and it's something you certainly could hold against him it would be quite understandable for him to feel that way. Did you get special favors as a book writer over the rest of the pressure. I thought they only one I got was to see the moon rock. Oh I never got to see the astronauts. I came to light the way it works with the Arsenal it was that they wanted covering it can get to see them when you show the press conference. Yeah I never got along without Yeah I always saw the president wasn't sure if I could spend a whole day of seeing the press conference which is an awful lot when you're the three different things you know when you really covering men you're used to doing it. You can learn a lot about a man a day every study and study every move but. If in the off season so to speak when men are not on not on a flight or on their own a flight was close you didn't get to see them for 15 minutes on Friday. Anyone anyone anybody at any minute as a credit member of the press can interview and they asked all of them to be in

town on Friday for 15 minutes. Yeah so but that was impossible by the time I hit this goes up and they were already in orange when that preflight quarantine. So I only saw the press conference and didn't any special favors except for this last one that the Moon Rock was going to be sent to the Smithsonian in two days and they'd stop showing it to the public in Houston when I got down there the last time so I asked if I could see it they finally smuggled me into a couple buildings and threw a couple buildings and threw a few holes and finally I sold the one rock under glass hermetically sealed medically sealed in a back room and that was it impressed you too didn't it. Yeah this little grey rock. Well you know it was funny but it really. You know it's ridiculous. You really felt so tender toward it with this you know it's all it's all to anything it's all for Iraq but. It was a little bit like looking at a puppy perhaps or I don't know if it was last you gave it a personality because you said you like the moon rock and you had a feeling the moon rock like you were it was

coarse a little so that I could you know want to funny things and things I found funny and amusing in your book which was the chapter about Provincetown afterwards in which you became annoyed with your good friend Pete. You know anybody and I don't think you quite said it to him but you wanted to say to him you know you've been drunk all summer and they have stolen the moon and it was a kind of a resentment that the establishment had done it instead of writers and the free livers and the you know the free souls you really really felt that way. Well of course it wasn't wasn't real way to think in a sense obviously. What in a practical way to think about it will understand obviously writers and artists were not going to be the ones to take that on my own. You know that they never thought of it they'd never be interested in it but I think I meant the remark metaphorically. What I meant is that they that others saw that world of technology an enterprising corporate business and patriotism and so forth and so on and all that had gotten together and they had gotten a concerted effort

out of themselves which have been huge and impressive and effectively stunned everyone who has seen it all on my end of it I've been doing for 20 years I've been sort of drinking and laughing at Square life and I just was this one moment I just thought you know what if we've been just all consuming our substance for just nothing just nothing. What if we've been wasting our end of the game and that other side's going to win not because they like good but because we've been absolutely without any concern with how everything turns out. Oh what a mournful comment and I thought understandable there's something else that struck me and I think I got a clue. You like to make a point as a writer. Yeah I think sentence for sentence along with I don't know the reason I said that was that you talked about Armstrong. And said that he was a crack flyer and he had to train to become an astronaut without any assurance that he was going to fly and you said it was almost a point he was told he couldn't write anymore since he was now studying to be an opera singer an opera librettist an

opera writer and with no assurance that not only by this but the music an opera composer no assurance of the Opera should ever be ever be heard. So I figured you liked to Poti or you would have used him in that particular analogy right. I don't like it I like the word very much a sentence for sentence in other words I think he writes in marble sentences I don't have much in common in any other way you know I don't think you know any more out of these letters of mine but I used to because he's a man who lives entirely for writing. I mean I don't know any other rider in America. You know except perhaps myself you never can measure that but sort of all the other guys I know he's about as much concerned with writing it as a life you know it's 90 percent of his life. I think notional again maybe maybe I mean I'm just I know you know him better than him. Yeah that might well be true of all good but in any case if you take any writing that to be true and any writer who really couldn't really live without writing and you put in a situation to say where he was suddenly decide you want to do operas and he just would never know his operas will be put on or anything that we did not have the kind of

pain that astronauts went through when they gave up flying which they were better at than packed anybody in the world and then they got to where they might never get up to space them out of the way years and then never get into space. Well Armstrong was a fighter pilot when you know about the other two. Collins was a fighter pilot and so was a soldier at all or all three. Yeah. Well Armstrong was in the Navy he was a carrier fighter pilot and almost crashed a couple of times very close to you lost a wing once in a plane came back brought back over enemy territory just one wing and he was in about several crashes he's a glider pilot too you know. So was luck. Well I didn't mean to get away from the moon by bringing up the podium but what struck you most during the entire moon shot was that the moonwalk itself for a look at the recovery. You said they left off I mean after that was that was it the fact that they got away from the moon's atmosphere finally Or was it the moonwalk or what that you found most engaging in the moon landing and studying it.

You mean as I was writing the book and as you were watching it started getting into it because the fun in running it was fun it was to recognize that you could tell the story you know the first experience I had was it was of course until you had this liftoff which was this extraordinary apocalyptic experience I mean it's unbelievable experience to see the see those flames cover an entire field of air isn't it. Stronger says the largest fire was ever seen in one's life and it's instantaneous almost as close. Had enormous fire and then the ground shakes as and some credible sound comes over you and the meantime this beautiful beautiful object rises up in the sky very very slowly and it goes up in the beginning it was slowly as a feather would fall. It's extraordinary. It's larger than the destroyer. It's half the size of a battleship. Yeah and it goes up into the air so that as an emotion experience is extraordinary it's an event I mean people who love both fights and overweight prizefights I would love this just to see one of those rockets go up. So that of course was easy to write about. It was all there was a world of

sensuous experience you could draw on. But then the rest of the flight was all remote it was matter falling on television and it was ridiculous to cover it as a reporter in Houston because we're covered as well by going to one's own home and watching on television. And so it was humiliating for a journalist to have to cover it this way you'd think you were reduced to taking handouts and you had nothing you could measure the little these handouts by the experience are so remote so have a little conversation maybe that you'd hear I suppose would you even do that. Well you know you have briefings but you know the men who work at last are men who are trained engineers first and they deal their own technical jargon which of course I don't understand as well as I did look at a point later when I studied much more about it. So you were in this position where you were having to listen to men tell you about things you had no way to evaluate whether you thought these men were highly accurate partially accurate or perhaps you know shopping at that particular axe to cover a political convention it's much easier because of after all one's love of politics or one's life will know something about you can a politician opens his mouth and you know immediately whether you think he's a phony or not.

I mean to begin with so yeah. Yes and of course sometimes it's interesting to know that he's funny most of the time but he may be sincere at this moment and you can begin to make those sort of judgments and it gets interesting and and it's fun. But here there's no way to tell so what happens or how to start studying it. And the excitement in writing the book to the point I realized that the story probably could be told in other words you could get enough evidence and enough clues and that there's just enough material one way or another so if you're good. Recreate that trip in such a way that people could read the book and have a reasonable fair idea of what it was like to make that trip to the yeah yeah. And what the sights were what the living or the quality of the living for those few days were and what the fears were and for me the most exciting moment of all by far was the landing on the moon. Because you know on television it seemed as if finally as upholding a bit of an enormous hype I mean here they got us all worked up about this landing and finally they did it it seemed like nothing in a minute but nothing to it. But actually there were extraordinary number of difficulties so that landing and you know a

great many great moments when people panic completely and you know well when they had they had trouble with the way that trouble to come surely instruments their computer alarm went off when they were at that. Everything went wrong they could've aborted the mission quite logically a couple of times couldn't they couldn't if they hadn't really gone through all sorts of all sorts of oh I mean it was a matter of judgment and judgment which they shouldn't but on the other hand if they had aborted that nobody would blame them because it was that close wasn't it. Never quite got that close with what they did is they live through this ferociously when the first alarm sounded. They go for sort of simulations of the things that go wrong and so they're prepared to handle it. This In other words they have prepared a dance that if a 12 hour Warner totoo alarm went off. They had ways of proceeding. With this alarm but they were in a situation that could deteriorate rapidly. In other words if this was wrong which is what I told the two alarm meant was the computer was overloaded and the computer was overloaded. The way this

computer was built was a little computer relatively speaking. What it meant was that they would have to cut off some of its functions and the computer was booming. Five major operations that have a code of the least important of the five major operations on the next least important and when they are down about three operators they couldn't kind of down anymore they'd have to abort the mission so that they had these particular problems which as. Well as situation deteriorate and so it was a hair raising because they were just watching the computer every moment they were going down to see whether the situation deteriorated any more and of course they're doing things in Mission Control led Houston to save the situation others are taking over some of the functions of the computer but of course in doing it it created a lag because it takes about a second and a half for the messages to go each way so roughly as they got in those difficulties that it always in a waiting for it was a hair raising as it could to deter a completely as about the time they started getting close enough to land and we got about 7000 feet. They start looking for their landmarks on the

moon. The flight down had not at all the way they prepared it where they prepared it was that everyone read the computer and give all of all the information the dolls are strong and also be looking out the window. Yeah if I could be a fly on the thing and that of course also had to be looking at the dials tubes that are both look at the dials on the way in and I got down low enough to start looking for landmarks I couldn't find a landing most of the way in other words instead of a visual. Yeah I couldn't find the landmarks and of course also there was as you pointed out the danger. At least I thought it was a danger that the legs would just keep going and they didn't how deep the thing would go in a 12 hours I want all the no work absolutely element of the unknown that I didn't know but if it had started to sink they would have had a blast off immediately without day for fear of the thing and them and the people would disappear. The BME reaction jet and all official reactions to know nothing from the US at all or been out long enough so I should think you would have heard a little something to me. I really think that they were to begin with. I just don't think they believe it and I don't think they really care that much about books they're written about I think they care about good

publicity by Apple as I think their feeling is that newspaper blysse can be very good or very bad magazine because they can be good or bad a book but it's a funny thing that affect anything. They're telling you you know there's a set of extraordinary insulation over there. And of course the terribly touchy I mean it's as if. You know you are writing about a church and. You know I think to me it's if I were at Mass I'd be fascinated read a book by someone who came in from the outside with someone who would tell you in some equipment to do the job yeah. But who was a professional and really looked at them with a fresh eye always liking certain things I did very much and disliking other things I did very much. And just the way that I would be interesting but I probably it's not you know that they had ferociously just please with the slightest touch of negative reaction. Well bureaucracies are I guess but this is a passionate bureaucracy it's a church and it's a fraternity lodge and it turns so I mean according to churches in Turkey there's a kind of oh there's an assault on the home.

You know it's a brotherhood. There I mean it certainly is there is devoted as the scenes were of them. I don't know what your next book going to be. Well that's going to be about liberation of women. I wrote in November that I have a lot of feelings about that. I wrote I wrote an article for Harper's. We'll have to read the articles are coming out soon. Good to be on oh yeah a few weeks we'll have to read it. We've been talking with Norman Mailer about his book of a fire on the moon which of course deals with the astronauts trip to the moon the one in which they got out and walked around. I Bob coming from the Chicago Tribune. This is an amazing book Norman. I didn't think it could be brought off this well. I thank you for watching us and I hope we see you again and Norman. I'm so glad to see you again. Well I just your book is A. Book beat has been made possible by a grant from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. This is the national educational radio network.