Discussing Norman Mailer seems redundant. Isn’t that Mr. Mailer’s job? While “The Big Empty” (Nation Books, 240 pages, $14.95) is true to its descriptive subtitle – if not quite as sexy as you’d think for a compendium of “Dialogues on Politics, Sex, God, Boxing, Morality, Myth, Poker, and Bad Conscience in America” – mostly, it’s about Mr. Mailer. He’s enlisted his son, John Buffalo, and together they’ve put this ramble together.

The younger Mailer characterizes the book as a conversation between generations: “The political consciousness of my mother and the parents of my friends began with Vietnam and the sixties. While there is much to be learned from their experiences, I believe it is necessary to look further back in American history if we are to attempt an understanding of our present state.”

John Buffalo’s recommendation, it seems, is that we go all the way back to his father. “My pop and I have a dynamic relationship. Throughout the years it has resulted in laughs, confrontations, illuminations, many late nights, the occasional hangover, and above all, respect.”

What we are presented here, then, is the transcript of a couple of nights of conversation during which they kept the tape recorder rolling and titled the transcribed result with chapter headings such as “What Took Us Into Iraq?” and “Courage, Morality, and Sexual Pleasure.”

But through all of this, one cannot help but feel that whatever window the elder Mailer gazes through becomes a mirror before too long. Typical Mailer spin is along the lines of: ” ‘Anna Karenina’ is one of my all time favorite novels. I had that and ‘War and Peace’ on my desk while I was writing ‘The Naked and the Dead.’ In boxing, heavyweights are the most interesting, “Because we always have this feeling: ‘What if I get into a fight with a man that big? How would I try to handle him?'”

His is a powerful vortex.

At least the elder Mailer admits his fighting days are behind him: “Now I just watch.” Watching is, after all, what we pay our writers to do. But with Mr. Mailer, you can’t help but feel you’re throwing good money after bad.The observations in this notebook leave something to be desired.

Discussing patriotism, Mr. Mailer posits that some folks “seem to feel that one’s nation demands an unquestioning faith, and so you must always be ready to believe that the people of our nation are superior – by their blood alone – to the people of other nations. In that sense,patriotism is analogous to family snobbery. Indeed, one can ask whether patriotism is the poor man’s equivalent of the upper-class sense of inbred superiority.”

It’s a very flimsy theory that could be dismantled in a number of ways.There is nothing particularly attractive in the sense of superiority. Smugness is not an aspiration. In fact, the more interesting theory to explore about the relationship of patriotism and family snobbery would be the opposite. The wealthy have a privileged relationship with a nation – they hold more of its currency, attend its premier institutions, partake of the greatest gifts it has to offer in real estate and culture, and usually get to rule over it. Their sense of superiority is tied to the nation of which they are the upper crust, and is, in fact, a brand of patriotism.

But that doesn’t suit Mr. Mailer. He needs the poor too be patriotic, so the rich can be smug. He needs it to sound good, and to dovetail nicely with his descriptions of the vanity of President Bush. To Mr. Mailer, Mr. Bush’s “every grin is a study in smugsmanship.” (Which would be pretty sharp if it weren’t so self-serving.)

No surprise: Norman Mailer is Norman Mailer. But what of John Buffalo? Through much of “The Big Empty,” the son is rather absent, preferring the polite role of interviewer and occasionally dropping insight into the dialogue.

John Buffalo was briefly the editor of High Times, hired by the former drug smuggler-turned-outlaw journalist Richard Stratton. Mr. Stratton claimed in the New York Times magazine that the goal for High Times was to become “an outlaw version of Vanity Fair” – an excellent project. Marijuana is the last bit of the counterculture items that still has any counter to it, and John Buffalo seemed very aware of the potential.

But even when the Mailers are discussing marijuana, the son refuses to step into the spotlight. He mentions that hemp is “a potential threat to the oil industry, the cotton industry, and to the alcohol and tobacco industries as well.” His father tries to egg him on: “If you want to make a speech, I’ll sit back.” And the younger Mailer answers, “I wouldn’t dream of trying to make a speech to you.Thought in full pages are your end of the book. I’m content to question, listen, and on occasion, interject a thought or two.”

Norman answers: “Ah, go f- yourself.”

Mr. Watman is the author of “Race Day: A Spot on the Rail with Max Watman.”