F**king-A

[Jesse Sheidlower]

On Thu, Jan 16, 2003 at 10:34:57AM -0800, Dave Wilton wrote:
> >         From George Plimpton, _Truman Capote_ (1997), as
> > excerpted at
> > http://www.randomhouse.com/boldtype/1297/plimpton/excerpt.html
> > , Norman Mailer is reminiscing:
> >
> >         >>For example, there was Talullah Bankhead! For
> > twenty years she'd been enjoying the coup her public
> > relations man had given her when as the legend had it, she
> > said to me, "Oh, you're the young man who doesn't know how to
> > spell 'fuck.'" For those who are too young to know, it was
> > because I had used "fug" in The Naked and the Dead. Of course
> > we had never met.<<
>
> I have always heard this story told with Dorothy Parker as the protagonist.
> Roy Blount's foreword to Jesse Sheidlower's "The F-Word" attributes the
> comment to Parker.

And I have always heard it with Talullah Bankhead, despite the version
in my book featuring Dorothy Parker.

I wonder if anyone's ever asked Mailer about it directly.

Jesse Sheidlower