Books: The Impish Iconoclast at 60

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Norman Mailer looks forward to a novel of old evenings

The window of the Brooklyn Heights apartment offers a panoramic view of New York harbor, lower Manhattan and three of the best-known landmarks in the world: the Empire State Building, the Statue of Liberty and the Brooklyn Bridge. It is possible to turn 180 degrees from this spectacle and observe a fourth famous monument, the apartment's owner. Like many first glimpses of the familiar, this one offers a few surprises. At 5 ft. 8 in., Norman Mailer is a bit shorter than those who have never seen him in the flesh might expect; at 185 Ibs. he is carrying a bit more of that flesh than he would like. But his ample waist looks solid rather than soft; he is heavy in the manner of Hemingway, not Hitchcock. His bushy hair is white and cropped more conservatively than in the past, when he was the Medusa of late-night television talk shows. His eyes are clear and surprisingly blue. He moves with the grace of the boxer he has sometimes pretended to be.

Awaiting the publication of Ancient Evenings, his 23rd book and the "big" novel he has been promising for years and writing for more than a decade, Mailer seems understandably edgy. He is remarkably fit for a man of 60, which is what he became last Jan. 31. The event was celebrated quietly. Mailer and Norris Church, his sixth wife, went out to a restaurant. A few nights later, Pat Kennedy Lawford held a sit-down dinner party for several dozen people in his honor. Such subdued celebration of this milestone seems uncharacteristic. "That was calculated," he says. "I didn't want a lot of stories in January and then have the book come out three months later and everybody saying, 'Oh no, not him again.' "

It is not easy being Norman Mailer. What other writer would have to soft-pedal a birthday? He braces for the approach of his publication dates, having a pretty fair idea of how the critical articles in response will be organized: "The standard joke of this household is, 'On what page do they get to the review [see box]?' In other words, the life always comes first."