Domestic Bliss

There are things we can do to upset married life. You know those little nagging things that add up and split people up. Of course, women can be so tolerant. Norman Mailer (pictured here on the cover of the August 29 LIFE magazine) recently died. In The New York Times obituary (November 11, 2007) there is this paragraph:

In November 1960, Mr. Mailer stabbed his second wife, Adele Morales, with a penknife, seriously wounding her. It happened at the end of an all-night party announcing Mr. Mailer's intention to run in the 1961 mayoral campaign, and he, like many of his guests, had been drinking heavily. Mr. Mailer was arrested, but his wife declined to press charges, and he was eventually released after being sent to Bellvue Hospital for observation. The marriage broke up two years later.

Well, um, that's so rich, that paragraph! Does the Times' habit of giving everyone a honorific even when describing the most despicable deeds make this sound funny? Is there a tone of excusing stabbing your wife if you'd announced a political move and, after all, just drank as much as your buddies? She did give up on him, though. (Or he her?) After two years. Then, of course, one ponders what would have happened if she had died. If she hadn't been around to forgive this tiny transgression in spite of his 'seriously wounding' her?

I'd always known Mailer did this (stabbed one of his wives) but this description in the Times really brought a flood of thoughts of the unintended consequences of domestic violence, living or dying after an assault and, of course, of running for political office.