Books: The Impish Iconoclast at 60

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It is also happily managed, without a hint of the domestic turbulence that made so many headlines during some of Mailer's earlier marriages. Friends give much of the credit for this newly found tranquillity to Norris, 34, a statuesque beauty and talented painter from Arkansas, whom Mailer met in 1975 and married five years later. Says Author E.L. Doctorow (Ragtime), who once served as Mailer's editor before his own writing career prospered: "My feeling is that since he's married Norris he's been happier than he's ever been." Torres views the success of this marriage from a slightly different angle: "The other wives had to contend with the image. Now, because he's closer with himself, he's nicer to this wife."

"It is not granted to the hipster to grow old gracefully," Mailer wrote in his middle 30s, and there certainly did not, at the time, appear to be a silver-haired patriarch in the author's future. Mailer is now a proud, picture-packing papa, ready to draw his wallet at the least provocation. The walls of the Brooklyn apartment are covered with photographs of the eight Mailer children; mixed in is an old-fashioned studio shot of little Norman, a well-scrubbed tot with jug ears and a mischievous smile. Mailer's and Norris' son, John Buffalo, 5, lives at home and basks in his father's obvious pride. The two other sons and five daughters drop by when they are in the neighborhood for visits of unpredictable lengths. The atmosphere is relaxed, bantering and full of mutual affection. Mailer's once terrible temper apparently left few scars on his children. Says Robert Lucid, an English professor at the University of Pennsylvania and Mailer's authorized biographer: "I think he's had great success as a father. With all eight of them, you'd think he'd have a disaffected child somewhere, but he doesn't."

Mailer works against an October deadline for his next book (the "small" novel promised against his big advance) both mornings and afternoons in a "barely furnished" rented room down the block from his apartment. He is again writing fiction set in his native land and era. Ancient Evenings was his attempt to escape from the contemporary: "I wasn't sure I could really write on America any more." Attracted to Egypt originally by its burial rituals and notions of the afterlife, he found a magic in the unfamiliar: "I began to understand that these were people where everything I'd learned wasn't much help in understanding them." He estimates that he read between 50 and 100 books on his subject, but he intentionally kept his research free-form and serendipitous. He consulted no scholars: "I just never wanted to cross that bridge and go over to the museum and put myself in the hands of a curator." His liberties include the ancient Egyptians' belief in physical reincarnation and mental telepathy (they held neither tenet). One Egyptologist gives Mailer mixed marks on his homework, particularly criticizing "his cannibalized or bastardized forms of good ancient Egyptian names." Two of Mailer's main characters are named Menenhetet I and II; according to the specialist, the names should have been Mentuhotep or Amenemhat.