The critic Irving Howe wrote, “Among uptown intellectuals there was this feeling of shock and dismay, and I don’t remember anyone judging him. The feeling was that he’d been driven to this by compulsiveness, by madness. He was seen as a victim.” Some people do not have a clear understanding of the definition of a victim. However, Norman did admit, “If any of us does something like that, people just don’t look at them in quite the same way. I think ten years went by before people forgot about it.” Ten whole years. Gosh.
