probably because you obviously hate Dick Cavett so much. For all his obsequiousness, name-dropping, etc., he was smart, he had good guests, he let them talk, and he kept the conversation relatively intelligent. Who do you think is better - Charlie Rose? God help us, Larry King?

Anyway, yes, Mailer asked Cavett

"Why don't you look at your question sheet and ask your question?" You left out Cavett's answer:

"Why don't you fold it 5 ways and put it where the moon don't shine?"

Mailer, as I recall, was speechless (however briefly) for the first and only time that evening. I could be misremembering - it was a long time ago.

I could be misremembering

Not at all. That was exactly what was said, and that was exactly Mailer's reaction. I was at the time and remain a huge fan of Mailer's work, and I watched the Cavett show expecting bombast and brilliance in equal portions. Well, I got the bombast, and it seems drink does not lubricate Mailer's tongue well enough that the words he utters form magnificent prose. Consider the incomprensible tirades he indulged in The Armies of the Night, a perfect storm of bewildering profanity. I am glad he doesn't write with a few under his belt, as I think some of his best books would have been sacrificed for the sake of copping a buzz.

It gets even better. After the fold-it-five-ways comment:

(Paraphrasing.)

Mailer said, "Smart boy. Did you think that one up all by yourself?"

Cavett: "Why, I'm surprised, Mr. Mailer. Surely a man of your considerable intellect recognizes a quotation from Count Leo Tolstoy."

Mailer: Silence and a look of humilated defeat.

(As Cavett admitted later, Tolstoy had said no such thing, but it was sure fun to make Mailer look stupid.)

There was also a point when Mailer announced that he was the smartest guy on the panel. Cavett asked Mailer if he would like to have his seat so he could have more room for his massive intellect.

You guys are good! And are you sure that wasn't Tolstoy? Maybe it was Henry James...

I remain unaccountably fond of Armies of the Night, which hit just the right note. The audacity of the whole personal/political mishmosh was so of its time. E.g., the idea of his quoting his dear wife's faith in Jesus, a real whopper (aren't you Jewish? didn't you stab her? oh, the other wife!), followed immediately by an image that brought you up short and brought tears to your eyes: "We are burning the body and blood of Christ in Vietnam."

Mailer has written several masterpieces in his long and quarrelsome career, and Armies of the Night is among the three or so books of his that will be read a generation from now. It was easy for people watching him on the talk shows to forget, or not find out ( or care less) how good a writer Mailer could be. Television certainly wasn't his friend as he attempted to fire a revolution in the collective psyche of his time. Even I , an unapologetic fan, thought he fared poorly in general audience perception. His saving grace was alway his books.

I remember that rebuke, but it wasn't with Mailer. It was the ex-governor of Mississippi (?), Lester Maddox, who got hit with it.

No, although the Maddox show was a great one, too. Cavett, charmed despite himself, said "I don't know why I love you like I do." The band played the song of that title as a segue to the commercial, and Maddox got up and sang the whole thing.

Anyway, that show inspired the first verse of Randy Newman's "Rednecks" in which a redneck pinhead refers to seeing Maddox on TV with some "smartass New York Jew." (Cavett, from Nebraska, is almost certainly a Protestant of some description.)

Good memory, Ex. Mailer never forgot that rejoinder by Cavett. He would often remind Cavett how stunned he was and that he had no comeback.

I remember the audience rolling on the floor. It was a very memorable line. How in the world could the author of this piece bury the lead and forget that line? Tsk, tsk.