A couple of years before Norman Mailer died, he came to Portland for a big book event portentously marketed as WordStock. Mailer had been battling his failing body for the last few years. He inched his way across the stage on crutches and lowered his frail bones down in a big chair. Then he launched into a white-hot excoriation of the Bush administration and the complicity of the Democrats. The mind remained as lethally sharp as ever.
