BANGKOK THAILAND Norman Mailer on Monica Lewinsky by Richard S. Ehrlich

BANGKOK, Thailand — US President Bill Clinton had sex with a "reasonably attractive" Monica Lewinsky because Clinton was "terrified of his wife" and felt imprisoned in the White House, according to two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning American author Norman Mailer.

The "scandal which horrifies and titillates us" shocked many Americans, Mailer said, "as if nothing bad has happened to America before."

Mailer's trip to Bangkok included being honorary guest speaker of this year's 20th anniversary dinner presentation of nine literary SeaWrite Awards in September.

The winning Southeast Asian writers represent Singapore, Indonesia, Brunei, Malaysia, the Philippines, Thailand and Vietnam, plus new members Laos and Burma.

Mailer, speaking to a small audience at a library while visiting the Thai capital, began by reading something he wrote "about Bill Clinton" in 1996, "during the presidential campaign."

"If you screw around a lot, it may do a great many things for you, increase your experience, expand your ego, and reduce your chances of getting cancer," Mailer read.

"It will certainly make you more knowledgeable in the art of seducing the electorate.

"But in most cases, you cannot pretend that it is particularly good for the kids."

Mailer, considered by many to be one of America's best living novelists, has written about Marilyn Monroe, World War Two, feminism, murder, and his own life which included an unsuccessful campaign to become mayor of New York City in the late 1960s.

Mailer is also famous for analyzing sexual escapades, such as his 1960s fictionalized account titled, "The Taming of Denise Gondelman," which describes bedding a 19-year-old New York Jewess.

Mailer wrote, "Her college-girl snobbery so inflamed the avenger of my crotch, that I wanted to prong her then and there, right on the floor of the party."

When I asked Mailer about his feelings towards Lewinsky, and if the author desired to make love to her, Mailer grinned, gestured toward his wife in the library's front row and replied, "You ask me a question, do I want to make love to Monica Lewinsky, with my wife sitting directly in front of me?

"I will content myself with saying that Monica Lewinsky is a reasonably attractive young lady.

"But I'd rather put it another way. A very prominent woman I was talking to two weeks ago said the president is really like someone in jail. Because everybody knows where he is every 15 minutes. And, in fact, they mark that down.

"And generally, ultimately, whether it is a maximum security jail, or minimum security, or the White House, it is a state of mind.

"And if you feel you're in prison, you try to do something about it. Most people naturally, viscerally, react to being in prison. And the form it takes almost always is to break the rules.

"It hardly matters how attractive, or not attractive, Monica Lewinsky is. If you're a prisoner, it is exceptionally difficult to have any kind of sexual relationship, if you're always under scrutiny.

"And so, this relationship was possible. And then beyond that, since most humans who are put together, any two humans put together for an enormous period of time will tend -- you can almost assume this is like a psycho-physical law of nature -- will tend to fall in love a little bit. Or get ready to kill each other a little bit."

"I confess that Monica Lewinsky's story" is fascinating, Mailer added.

"If she was a great novelist, she could write a great novel. If she was a great novelist. But I am much more fascinated with Clinton."

Mailer predicted, "He will not be impeached."

Clinton's "immense popularity" is because "he is a prodigious soap opera hero."

Hillary, meanwhile, is "cold, strong, incredibly intelligent, organized, purposeful, to the point. So she's another soap opera character. And it is an interesting marriage.

"You have a man who is terrified of his wife, and at the same time, has to cheat on her because he's in prison.

"Everybody in America more or less understands what's going on, except Starr," he added, referring to Independent Counselor Ken Starr who recently released more than 2,000 pages of testimony and other information alleging Clinton was involved in a sex-and-lies scandal with Lewinsky.

The white-haired, blue-eyed, rotund Mailer, 75, spoke in a strong voice but complained about his hearing aid, and walked using a cane topped by what appeared to be a large silver cougar, which his wife bought in Russia.

Dressed in a tan safari suit, Mailer added, "You see how long I spoke from one question? Short paragraphs were never my vice."

Describing Lewinsky, Mailer added, "When I grew up in Brooklyn, you might say that was the general idea that many of us had of a what an attractive girl was. 'Zaftig' was the word we used in Brooklyn," he said, referring to a Yiddish expression for a buxom female.

Meanwhile, as a result of the White House sex scandal, Clinton's image was changing in "absurd" ways, Mailer said.

"The poor man, when the details come out, is even less of a womanizer than we had thought.

"What did he do? He obviously was so afraid of his wife, that he knew he was going for a cross-examination each evening. You know, 'What did you do today? What did you do while I was gone?'"

Mailer said Hillary's interrogations of the president probably included:

"'Did you screw anybody?'

"'No, honey I didn't.'

"'Did you get a blow job?'

"'No, honey, I didn't'."

Referring to Clinton's wife, Mailer added, "I'm speculating, but I would assume she is very fierce. Something about the set of her mouth."

The investigation into Clinton's sex life may also change American society, and morality, and prove dangerous.

"We will all have to face a new kind of Gestapo. A sexual Gestapo."

Mailer added, "Those of us who feel maybe sympathetic to Clinton think he might indeed be a psychopath.

"A good measure of a psychopathic mentality is if a person lies with more believability, more creativity, and more insight, than they tell the truth. Then they're a psychopath.

"And obviously Clinton takes a wonderful delight in a well-told lie.

"There is such a thing as reformed psychopaths. Which brings us back to the soap opera.

"The big question now in America is, will he become a reformed psychopath and eventually become redeemed?"

Mailer said of the Starr report, "It's not a bad minimal novel. You could put it up on that small bookshelf.

"I found it rather touching in a funny way."

Clinton's woes with Lewinsky may also be cheering Americans, Mailer said.

"One of the things that is making Americans rather happy, in an odd and perverse way, is they're thinking, 'Gee, I no longer want to be president. What a relief. What a lifting of the burden'.

"We always welcomed this idea that we've got to become president. And then when we discover that we can't, its pretty depressing in one way or another, that we will never be president.

"And then to find the president has a worse time than we do, oh boy. That's uplifting."

Worldwide publication of the Starr report's graphic sexual language -- on Internet and by much of the world's media -- may have advanced freedom of speech, but limits were also needed, Mailer warned.

"When I was a young writer, you couldn't even print the word 'fuck'. I had to use 'f-u-g.' It was impossible to use 'f-u-c-k'. It would have meant having a book I could not get published.

"But a year or two ago there was a play, it was not a bad play, but every third word in it was 'fuck'. And I said, 'We're over-doing it. We've blown it. We've used it up. It's becoming not offensive, just deadening.

"So, too much freedom of speech can be deadening, which is what people are beginning to complain about now.

"There is a thing as too much freedom of speech."

Asked if the Starr report is too much freedom of speech, Mailer replied, "No, no, no, no. I thought it was rather an interesting document.

"I thought, 'There's a guy [Clinton] who is afraid of his wife.' It made him human to me."

Mailer, putting on his glasses, also read from his book titled, "Ancient Evenings," set in Egypt in the year 1,000 BC.

Mailer chose a passage about a dead Egyptian undergoing mummification, but who is able to narrate the sensation of having his brain yanked out through his nose, while embalming fluids are pumped into his internal cavities.

Mailer quipped, "It has nothing to do with Clinton."