The Struggle and the Scramble

During a 1971 debate on feminism at Town Hall in Manhattan, immortalized in Chris Hegedus and D.A. Pennebaker’s documentary Town Bloody Hall (1979), a small, ladylike person stands up to ask the moderator, Norman Mailer, a question. It is in regard to something she says he wrote in The Prisoner of Sex, to wit: “A good novelist can do without everything but the remnant of his balls.” Gently, to howls of laughter, she says, “For years and years I’ve been wondering, Mr. Mailer, when you dip your balls in ink, what color ink is it?” The tone is a perfect, respectful deadpan, the rhythm lilting, the facial expression the picture of faux innocence. This is Cynthia Ozick. Cathleen Schine, The New York Review