in the next instalment , even if this did some violence to credibility or logic . Violence was , naturally , what the novel was about . It tells the story of Stephen Richard Rojack , a war hero , former congressman and “ existential psychologist ”, who murders his high-society wife – Mailer had recently separated from the British aristocrat Lady Jeanne Campbell – before having sex with her maid Ruta and then , in remarkably short order , falling in love with the night-club singer Cherry Melanie . She is taken to be a version of Mailer ’ s new girlfriend , subsequently wife , Beverley Bentley , a former lover of , wait for it , Miles Davis , with whom Mailer had a tense real-life relationship partly as a result . Miles appears in the novel , awkwardly transformed into the jazz musician Shago Martin . Given that Miles , like Muhammad Ali , and to a degree Mailer himself , was already a fictional character on the outsize scale of Moby Dick , any attempt to capture him in print was doomed to failure and Mailer ’ s portrayal of Shago is inconsistent , spiteful and as a result rather lame . However , Miles knew very well who was being portrayed and didn ’ t like it , not least because in one of the novel ’ s multiple climaxes ( no pun intended ), it is Rojack who administers a beating to Shago . In real life , these were two small men , wannabe boxers , always keen to be photographed sparring ( though not with one another ; that continued at a verbal level only ). In real life , too , Mailer displayed the odd outbreak of violence , notably the near-fatal stabbing of his second wife Adele Morales , for which he was briefly confined in the Belleville psychiatric hospital , but which he typically turned into a semi-heroic existential act . Miles was more often the recipient of violence , more than once at police hands , and had , perhaps , the more honest understanding of its nature and implications . For a time a feature of New York party society , their rivalry and contention was more likely to involve acid comment than actual fisticuffs . Mailer took his revenge in print , Miles his by always being the cooler of the pair , a living realisation of Mailer ’ s unreachable hipster ideal .
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