PROVINCETOWN - It was a spare epilogue to an expansive life writ large and long in books and in combative public appearances that for decades made him the best-known writer in America.
Surrounded by a few dozen family members and close friends, Norman Mailer, whose career spanned nearly six decades and more than 30 books, was buried yesterday afternoon in Provincetown Cemetery.
One by one, a dozen speakers and musicians walked to the front and stood next to the mahogany casket, which was flanked in a semicircle by six photos depicting Mailer from childhood through his very public years of giving speeches in New York City, his wild, flyaway hair seeming to seek other venues.
Mailer's long life and literary output were matched by his taste for respect and fame, not necessarily in that order. The speakers drew tears and much laughter yesterday recounting the writer's tenderness and outrageous exploits.
Years ago, Mailer penned his own obituary and asked his son John Buffalo to read it at his funeral. Titled "Novelist Shelved," it began: "Norman Mailer passed away yesterday after celebrating his 15th divorce and 16th wedding. 'I just don't feel the old vim,' complained the writer recently."
Mailer, who died Saturday in New York City at age 84, actually was married six times. His wife, Norris Church, sat in front, next to Mailer's sister, Barbara Wasserman, and his sons Matthew and John. The funeral was held under a green tent that barely blocked the bright afternoon sun that shined in a cloudless sky.
"I'm just so grateful to have spent 35 years with him," Church said at the conclusion of the service, before returning to the tent with other family members, as Mailer's casket was lowered into the grave.
In an interview after the service, away from the cemetery, Buffalo spoke about the obituary his father wrote, published years ago in Boston Magazine.
"One of the elements of him was an absolute lack of piety," he said. "And I think that obituary says it all, having a sense of humor about it right up to the end."
The service was private, but the family allowed a pool reporter from The Provincetown Banner to attend and share details later with other media. Only a handful of photographers and reporters were present, perhaps because Mailer's graveside service was held at the tip of Cape Cod on a weekday. The venue kept to a minimum the number of bold-face names and paparazzi, despite Mailer's decades as a celebrity author.
Mailer began spending summers in Provincetown in 1945, and had lived there year-round since the 1990s.
Richard Goodwin - former presidential adviser, political consultant, and author - was among the speakers, along with his wife, historian Doris Kearns Goodwin. He drew a cheer when he addressed Mailer, a boxing aficionado who was quick to put up his own fists in the company of a book critic or another writer.
The bout is over, Goodwin said, the fight is done, the decision rendered: Norman Mailer is the undefeated champion of the world.
Earlier, Mailer's son-in-law Peter McEachern began the service with a trombone solo, "Lament," a jazz standard by J.J. Johnson. Later, a daughter-in-law, Sasha Lazard, sang an Irish lullaby. And near the end, accompanied by a guitarist, Mailer's son Stephen sang Elton John's "Your Song."
Stephen McLeod told the gathering he had been in the hospital room with his father when the respirator alarm went off early Saturday morning. He said that when he spoke to his father briefly, Mailer smiled, and his face looked as if he was seeing something truly remarkable.
Mailer's own words were part of the service. His books ranged from "The Naked and the Dead," published when he was 25, to volumes on Marilyn Monroe, the writer Henry Miller, and the condemned killer Gary Gilmore. He won a Pulitzer Prize for fiction with "The Executioner's Song," about Gilmore, and a Pulitzer for nonfiction for "The Armies of the Night," his account of the march on the Pentagon in 1967.
J. Michael Lennon, Mailer's literary executor, chose to read part of last year's "On God: An Uncommon Conversation." The passage dealt with the hereafter, Lennon said in an interview afterward, "which he thought about a great deal over the last few years."
After the service, Lennon met with reporters at a theater nearby, along with Mailer's sons John Buffalo and Michael Burks. Burks said his father's love of Provincetown began in the 1940s, when the writer was attending Harvard and took trips to the Cape. The zeitgeist of the community captured Mailer's imagination, his son said.
Mailer used to say that "Provincetown is that last democratic town in America," Lennon said. "He loved the democratic spirit of the town."
