A Great Amazon Review

Review Written by
H. F. Corbin "Foster Corbin" (ATLANTA, GA USA)
"A Thousand Really Good Mornings", February 2, 2010
Amazon Verified
From April, 2003 to November 2007 Dwayne Raymond worked for Norman Mailer as his editorial assistant, cook, driver, errand runner-- in short his Man Friday. More importantly he became Mailer's friend and confidant. Mr. Raymond made the great writer's life-- as well as the lives of his wife Norris and his nine children-- better. Because of Mr. Raymond's assistance, Mailer in the last years of his life gave the world four more works of literature including MODEST GIFTS and THE CASTLE IN THE FOREST. Mr. Mailer in turn gave much to Mr. Raymond as well. He offered him kind advice about life-- "You need to recognize exactly who you are. No one is going to do it for you. People will point out your flaws and sometimes, if you are lucky, your strengths, but their voice will always be varnished with envy and awe"-- and his relationship with his partner Thomas as well as on writing. He encouraged Raymond to read his words aloud, that they should "flow from the page to the eye with infinite ease." (I would argue that Mr. Raymond took Mr. Mailer's advice.)

In MORNING'S WITH MAILER Mr. Raymond in honest, beautifully-written prose recounts the precious time he spent with Mailer and gives us an unsentimental portrait of this great writer with all his quirks and biases. He believed that shopping malls were "America's supreme illustration of bad taste." He loved Hershey Bars and Dove Bars, calling the latter the perfect dessert. Raymond says that Mailer was almost always gracious to him, describes his sense of humor, his contempt for George Bush, his love of his country and Provincetown. Mr. Mailer could be stubborn-- Raymond calls him the last-word king-- but was surely magnanimous in that he paid one of his many ex-wives alimony for forty years and was un-judgmental when it came to what Raymond calls understanding "the oddities of living in an unconventional town like ours." After sharing a cab with Raymond's ex-partner dressed as Cher for his job at a drag bingo game, Mailer's only comment was, "He makes a good showgirl."

In Mr. Raymond's hands, Mailer comes alive as a fascinating and loving human being who worked crossword puzzles to comb his brain and gave us the recipe for "Berry Trio," raspberries, blueberries and chopped strawberries mixed into a sauce of cover honey and the juice from half a lemon.

This writer's silky prose would surely have pleased his mentor-- with phrases like "cluttered truth" or his early-on meetings with Mr. Mailer before he started working for him as "happy accidents seasoned with significance." Drinking is "bottled bravery." Then there are these beautiful words: "The day was gray, tarnished with a drear that persuades the ocean and the sky to merge perfectly into one destination."

The last time Raymond saw Mailer, shortly before his death, was in a hospital in New York City. Because of a breathing tube, he could only speak with his eyes; but Raymond understood them to say "a thousand really good mornings." I would describe this first-class memoir as three hundred or so really fine pages.