MADONNA

For all her success, by mid-1994 she was undoubtedly a damsel in distress. «Very few people came to my rescue. It was an incredibly eye-opening experience» she said of the period. So given that Madonna's life is an almost classic exemple of contemporary fairy tale, it would not be complete without a couple of knights riding to her rescue. Since, however, this is also a post-modern fairy tale, in which poses are struck and principles deemed passé, it is suitably ironic that the saviors of this icon of agressively sexy strong, modern womanhood should be a pair of old-fashionned gentlemen, in the unlikely shape of a cricket-loving English knight and an elderly american writer. Like a latter day Don Quixote, the rotund, heavy-jowled figure of Norman Mailer was first into battle, gallantly wielding his literary sword in her defense in a piece in Esquire magazine in August 1994. It was a timely reminder to the nation's intellectual and cultural elite that Madonna belonged to the tradition of Andy Warhol and artist who had examined the void while attempting to push back boundaries and challenge orthodoxies, particularly regarding the eternal themes of sex and love. «We have among us our greatest living female artist» Mailer prononced portentously.

-Madonna
Andrew Morton
p.202