Hello I'm Kristy Young and this is a podcast from the Desert Island

Discs archive. For rights reasons we've had to shorten the music. The program

was originally broadcast in 1979 and the presenter was Roy Plumlee. On her Desert Island this week is the American writer Norman Mailer.

Norman, how much does music mean to you?

I can't pretend to have any expert knowledge in it at all.

In fact, I can't even pretend to know much about it

Have you ever played an instrument do you sing? I have one of the world's worst singing voices

My children scream when I start to sing I was married to a woman who was a marvelous singer at one point and

I was also married to an English girl, couldn't sing at all.

One of the things that brought us together was that we could we could argue for hours ever who had the worst

voice but I did play an instrument one time I played a clarinet when I was a kid really yeah I used to play a deep purple and I go

to do to squawk. Do you find music can sometimes help concentration

while you're working? I don't use it. I'm ashamed to say that I live without much music in my life and I've sometimes felt that I'm keeping it.

There's no other explanation for it.

It isn't that I have any prejudices against music.

I have a few trauma in relation to music when I was a child in public school whenever music

appreciation started. I couldn't separate the songs and know which one was

which and I remember when we came time for singing I'd be in horror because the teacher would come along and say, you're a listener,

don't open your mouth.

That was hard.

Yeah, I used to hate music at that time, but I don't need more.

And in fact, when we started picking the records I picked them you know that

...