Norman Mailer

by J. Michael Lennon

  A few days later when Lennon stopped by, Mailer said he had an epiphany at three A.M. and almost called him. He explained that he wanted to do another book of conversations, this one on cancer. It would explore the idea that besides stress, trauma, repression, and guilt, cancer is caused by boredom. His plan was to have someone read the obituaries of corporate leaders in The New York Times over a one-year period to see how many died of cancer, his idea being that it kills a disproportionate number. Challenged over long, busy lives, executives get bored after retirement and succumb to cancer. He wanted Lennon to assemble all the references to cancer in his interviews and writings on the topic. He went on for forty-five minutes and then said he wanted to sleep. Before he lay down, he said that his doctor told him that if he didn’t start eating he would die. He said he was trying hard, eating steak and eggs in the morning, soup, more chocolate and ice cream and fish at night.

  William and Dana Kennedy visited him, as did his Chicago friends Gene and Sarah Kennedy, and many others. On September 19, Bill Majeski came, and there was poker for several nights running, Mailer’s last games. On the 22nd, Danielle and her (second) husband, Peter McEachern, drove him to Brooklyn. Norris had finally convinced him. They made numerous pit stops on the six-hour drive. He now weighed less than a hundred, and Peter was able to carry him up the four flights of stairs to the apartment. His plan was to return to Provincetown in a month for the Mailer Society meeting.

  Matthew recalled seeing his father in Brooklyn.

  I was in denial as to how bad off he was. He was losing weight and didn’t look good. I brought Salina and Mattie over for a visit. He’d just gotten up from his nap; he was sleeping a lot at that time. Got to the table and I learned he was planning on going to the hospital. It dawned on me that this could be it. I asked him, “Are you afraid? Do you think this is going to be it?” And he said, “Look, I’ve had a great life, I just don’t want a bad end. I finished my novel, I’d like to write another book but I don’t have that burning desire to write another one, it’s just not there.” There was this dark cloud over him. Mom took a picture of us sitting there—I think it was the last picture ever taken, come to think of it.

  On October 3, he checked into Mount Sinai Hospital on the Upper East Side of Manhattan. Copies of On God arrived that day, and he signed a few. Surgery was scheduled for 7:30 the next morning. At one P.M., the surgeon told those waiting that the operation was successful. Larry Schiller and his then-wife, Kathy Amerman, had just flown in from the West Coast and joined everyone in the waiting area. The doctor said that she had drained and inflated Mailer’s lung, and that his heart was strong through the operation. Family and friends were allowed in a few at a time to see him later in the afternoon. When they went in, they saw right away that he was still feeling the painkillers. He was ranting. He had a dream that Schiller was the Devil and he was God and they made a pact to rid the world of technology. He flirted with the twenty-nine-year-old nurse, who took it with good humor. He told her that she should write a novel and use her meeting with a famous author as the first chapter. Later, he had her write a vignette about a weekend with her boyfriend and promised to critique it.

  The next day, more family members and friends arrived. The doctors said that the lack of oxygen in his blood had all but destroyed his appetite. The prognosis was good. He was in a private room where the lights could be lowered and he had a full-time nurse. Everyone was optimistic. Norris was feeling wonderful. She gave a bravura reading at a Barnes & Noble in Manhattan on the day after the surgery, and answered questions about her book and her husband’s health.

  But a few days later, everything changed. On October 9, he came down with pneumonia, and the doctors found that he had lymphoma of the stomach—cancer—and this had been the cause of his weight loss. These problems could be treated with drugs, but Mailer was pessimistic. He told Norris to get him transferred to the Hyannis hospital on Cape Cod and from there he would sneak home. “He wants to die,” she said. She was worn down by the long daily trip from Brooklyn to see him, as well as visiting her mother in assisted living.

  The media was eager for information, and e-mailed and called friends and family. So many people, some of them crazy, were trying to visit him in the hospital that finally a guard had to be posted to screen visitors. He looked somewhat better toward the end of the month, but he wanted to pull out all his tubes and wires. For obscure reasons, he had a tracheotomy, and so could only mouth words, and write notes, most of them illegible. He wrote a note to Donna Lennon, and then pointed to the word “P-town,” and then to himself, indicating that he wanted to go there. The family discussed getting him there, but the risks were too great. On October 29, he was operated on for an infection in a vein in his groin. He told his nephew Peter, “My ass feels like Iraq.” Seeing one of the most ferocious, intense communicators of the last hundred years, the man who had written forty books and been interviewed a thousand times, locked into silence by his ailments was heartbreaking. The look in his eyes was woeful. He was angry and very frustrated that no one could read his chicken scratches.

  He was cheered a bit when New York published excerpts from On God. The cover of the magazine had a head shot of him, white hair flowing, with clouds behind him as if he were a celestial being. He nodded his head in approval, and enjoyed the sections Norris read to him. Earlier when he could still talk, he saw Norris crying and said, “You must really love me.” She answered, “Of course I love you, you silly old coot! Why else do you think I’ve stuck around all this time?” Peter McEachern, knowing that Mailer missed the ocean, drove to Provincetown and taped the sound of waves from the master bedroom window, complete with an occasional groan from the Long Point fog horn. He played the tape, on a loop, in Mailer’s room.

  During the second week in November, he began sinking. Family members took turns sitting with him. At one point, the phone rang. It was Michael, who had an idea: a last drink for the old man. Peter Alson went through a drink list with him, and Mailer nodded his head yes for rum and orange juice. Peter told the story at Mailer’s memorial some months later.

  Michael finally returned with a bottle of rum and a container of orange juice. But all we had was a plastic cup, which if you knew my uncle, was worse than no cup at all. So Michael went to the nurses’ station and managed to get a real glass, and we started to mix the drink. Norman took over at this point, indicating the correct proportions for water, orange juice, and rum. One last problem: how to give it to him. Because of the breathing tube in his throat, he wasn’t supposed to drink; he could choke. Sacrilege, but we gave him the drink on one of those lollipop-shaped sponge-on-a-stick thingies. I dipped the sponge in the glass then put it in his mouth. He gave a look of utter exasperation. Then he grabbed the glass out of my hand. I looked to Michael. He shrugged. We all watched Norman put the glass to his lips and take a nice long sip. Then another. He was going to drink that drink the way it was supposed to be drunk even if it killed him. After a few sips, he allowed himself a smile. We all did. Norman held up the drink and pointed at each of us. He wanted us to share the drink with him. So we passed the glass and we each took a sip.

  A few hours later there was a conference with the doctors, who said that he would go quickly if all the tubes were removed. The family agreed that this would be done in the morning. Stephen, who had just flown back from the West Coast where he was in a play, said he would stay the night with his father, and everyone else went home.

  “About five A.M.,” Barbara wrote in a memoir,

  the telephone rang and woke me. It was Norris, who had just received word from the hospital that Norman had died. Sue and Marco were staying with me. We threw on some clothes and grabbed a cab. Stephen was there, of course, with his tale of how the bells and whistles Norman was attached to had awakened him and that as he stood at the foot of the bed, Norman sat up, gave him a beatific smile, and then fell back. A medical team came into the room and pronounced him dead. We sat in the room with Norman’s body for s
everal hours until the usual arrangements could be made. The family began to arrive. We were pretty quiet and grim to begin with. I think at one point Betsy went over to the bed and held Norman’s hand. And Marco got a copy of the Hebrew prayer, Kaddish, from the hospital rabbi, and he and Michael and Stephen read it, and we all said “Amen.” But as others began to arrive, the usual Mailer élan revived, and we were all talking at once. Leading to a moment of ghoulish comedy. A young doctor, probably an intern or resident, opened the door and entered the room.

  “Well,” she said cheerfully, “you seem to have a nice party going. But I have to give Mr. Mailer an injection.” There was stunned silence until someone blurted, “But he’s dead.”

  Oops. She was out the door. She fled so fast we couldn’t help ourselves. We burst out laughing.

  I hope Norman’s spirit was still there. It was a moment he would have relished.

  The official time of death was 4:28 A.M., November 10, 2007. The cause on the death certificate was acute renal failure.

  Laudatory tributes appeared within forty-eight hours on the front pages of newspapers around the world. Kakutani’s was among the most thoughtful.

  Mr. Mailer used his copious talents—quick skewering eye; a gift for the cameo portrait; bat-quality radar for atmosphere and mood; and blustering, bellicose prose—to capture the American spirit as it lurched from the civil rights and antiwar demonstrations of the ’60s into the Watergate era of the ’70s. In his best work Mr. Mailer made America his subject, and in tackling everything from politics to boxing to Hollywood, from astronauts to actresses to art, he depicted—or tried to depict—the country’s contradictions: its moralistic prudery and grasping fascination with celebrity and sex and power; the outsize, outlaw past of its frontier; and its current descent into “corporation land,” filled with cheap consumer blandishments and the siren call of fame.

  About two hundred people paid respects at McHoul’s funeral home in P-Town, mainly locals. Several of his children and friends spoke at the grave the next day. Stephen sang. Everyone threw handfuls of sand on his coffin. Norris was poised and serene throughout. She posed for photos for the flock of reporters who were there, and answered a few questions. After that, she invited everyone back to the house for food and drink, including two ex-wives, Beverly and Carol.

  Before the coffin was closed, John Buffalo put the ace of spades in one of his father’s pockets; his poker friend Pat Doyle slipped in another card, and Donna Lennon a white poker chip. His grandson Alejandro contributed a handcrafted piece of orgonite. Matthew placed a photograph of the family taken in Maine on his father’s chest. Norris added a note. Norman Mailer, singular, unprecedented and irreplaceable, was prepared for his next voyage.

  APPRECIATIONS

  First on line is Mailer himself, who asked me to write this biography. Beginning in the late 1970s, I worked with him on various projects, served as his archivist, and edited several books by and about him. In December 2006, after the death of his close friend and authorized biographer, Robert F. Lucid, Mailer asked me to take over. I had been working for several years on an edition of his letters (still in progress), while filling the role of biographer understudy. Lucid had covered Mailer’s life only to 1951, and our perspectives and styles differed considerably, so with Mailer’s blessing I decided to make a fresh start. In his final years we completed over twenty interviews focused largely on his personal life and beliefs. My wife and I had purchased a condo in Provincetown in 1997, and during the last thirty months of Mailer’s life I stopped by almost every day and when he was in the mood drew him out in conversation. Even as his health declined, he insisted on detailing people and events from every period of his life, for example, devoting an interview to each of his six wives. These interviews and my notes on our conversations (“Mailer Log”) are one of my most important sources, surpassed only by his massive correspondence, more than 45,000 letters over sixty-eight years. While always his own best lawyer, Mailer never hinted at how he wished to be portrayed, nor did he ask my intentions. He answered all my questions candidly and with much good humor, enjoining me to “put everything in.” I had full access to his papers, library, and correspondence. Few biographers have had a more cooperative subject.

  Mailer’s last wife, the late Norris Church Mailer, his sister, Barbara Wasserman, and the rest of the family were invariably helpful, patient, and bighearted. Not only did all of them stand for interviews and answer follow-up questions, they provided documents, read portions of the manuscript, and made corrections and suggestions. Barbara read all my chapters as I wrote them, edited them with care and irreplaceable knowledge, and helped me understand her brother, the Mailer family, his circle of friends, and the spirit of his times. Her confidence and editorial acumen have been sustaining. Barbara and Norris (until her death in November 2010) also fed and housed me on my regular trips to New York. My deepest thanks go to them. I am also grateful to Mailer’s cousin Sam Radin; his nine children, and Barbara’s son, Peter, and their spouses: Susan Mailer and Marco Colodro, Peter Alson and Alice O’Neill, Danielle Mailer and Peter McEachern, Elizabeth Ann (Betsy) Mailer and Frank Nastasi, Kate Mailer and Guy Lancaster, Michael Mailer and Sasha Lazard, Stephen Mailer and Elizabeth Rainer, Matthew Mailer and Salina Sais, Maggie Mailer and John Wendling, John Buffalo Mailer and his girlfriend Katrina Eugenia. Four of Mailer’s ex-wives are living, and they answered my questions and/or provided copies of their correspondence with him. Thanks to Beatrice Silverman, Adele Morales, Beverly Bentley, and, especially, Carol Stevens, who spoke to me at length many times over several years.

  From the time my wife, Donna Pedro, took a photograph of me reading my first letter from Norman Mailer in January 1972 to the present, she has shared my interest in his life and work, and supported me with steady counsel and advice. Like Barbara, she read every chapter upon completion, provided shrewd feedback on matters of style and substance, and ran the household single-handedly for four years. My sons and their spouses, Stephen M. and Lauren B. Lennon, Joseph A. Lennon and Marika Beneventi, and James C. Lennon, read and commented on portions of the manuscript, and helped in uncounted and unselfish ways. My siblings, Peter Lennon, Kathleen Arruda, and Maureen Macedo, were similarly supportive. Peter read the entire manuscript, made many useful comments and corrections, and also passed on innumerable pertinent reviews, essays, and contextual material. Thanks also to my uncle, Hugh Lennon, for sending me Mailer clippings for more than thirty years.

  Four other people read the entire manuscript, all the while making hortative utterances that buoyed me up. Robert Heaman, my colleague at Wilkes University, read the chapters as they emerged and did an extremely thorough line edit. With me from the start has been my agent, John T. “Ike” Williams, who provided astute counsel and perceptive commentary on a regular basis. Robert Bender, my editor at Simon & Schuster, guided me over the three-plus years of composition, and helped bring the manuscript into its final form with his masterful ability to see every stitch in the tapestry, and the full tapestry as well. Fred Chase copyedited the manuscript and improved it considerably, ferreting out errors and tightening continuity. Elisa Rivlin, Simon & Schuster legal counsel, gave me detailed and thoughtful advice on a number of difficult issues. I am happy to acknowledge with a cheer the steady and careful assistance of the staff at Simon & Schuster, especially Maureen Cole, Gypsy da Silva, and Johanna Li. I must also salute Nancy Potter, my mentor at the University of Rhode Island, who has been a steadfast and wise presence in my life for many years. She read portions of the manuscript and made a number of subtle suggestions. I owe a large debt to all these good people.

  Several graduate students in the Wilkes University graduate Creative Writing Program did research on various aspects of Mailer’s life. Matthew Hinton was my graduate assistant for two semesters and created a regularly consulted event timeline. The following individuals spent a semester doing excellent research on aspects of Mailer’s life and thought: Amber Barron, the late Allen Boone Barton
, Rachael Goetzke, Maureen O’Neill Hooker, Bill Lowenburg, Nancy Slowikowski, and Michael Suppa. I am indebted to them for their able assistance.

  I was aided in conducting interviews by four people: my brother Peter, who interviewed Eileen Fredrickson and Richard G. Stern; John Buffalo Mailer, who interviewed Edwin Fancher and Anne Barry; Michael Chaiken, who spoke with James Toback; and Erin Cressida Wilson, who interviewed her mother, Lois Mayfield Wilson. Lawrence Schiller provided copies of interviews with him conducted by Lawrence Grobel, and also several that Grobel did with Mailer. I am beholden to the two Larrys. Beginning in 2007, I interviewed over 80 people (see accompanying list), a number of them several times. The interviews were transcribed by my wife, with the exception of a few early ones done by Julia Overlin.

  Several others require special thanks. The late Robert F. Lucid, my friend and mentor and the dean of Mailer scholarship, was my first guide to Mailer’s life and work, and discussed them with me for thirty years. Instrumental in creating Mailer’s archive, he instructed me on its contents and importance. My debt to him is tremendous. Six colleagues, Robert Begiebing, Philip Bufithis, Morris Dickstein, Barry H. Leeds, Phillip Sipiora, and John Whalen-Bridge, have written and/or edited important studies of Mailer’s work, and have engaged and enlightened me on Mailer’s place in the American canon. Mashey Bernstein helped me get a richer sense of Mailer’s deep Jewish roots; Stephen Borkowski, chair of the Provincetown Art Commission, cheerfully helped on numerous research and logistical matters, and been a knowledgeable and reliable consultant; Fred and Nancy Ambrose, and Christopher Busa, editor of Provincetown Arts magazine, carefully delineated Mailer’s Provincetown history; Sal Cetrano, Ron Fried, Michael Mailer, and Jeffrey Michelson provided vivid accounts of Mailer’s boxing exploits; Michael Chaiken was my guide to the American film scene in the 1960s; Ivan Fisher, William Majeski, Barbara Probst Solomon, and Naomi Zack helped me re-create the Jack Abbott affair; Mark Olshaker, president of the Mailer Society, has been inordinately generous with his time and knowledge; and Richard Stratton illumined Mailer’s temperament with candor and intelligence. I owe much to Eileen Fredrickson and the late Lois Mayfield Wilson, who magnanimously contributed candid and detailed memories of their long, intimate relationships with Mailer. Finally, Lawrence Schiller, Mailer’s most important collaborator, has been unstinting. He kindly opened his archives, shared his memories of his friend and their several joint projects, and provided thoughtful feedback on my manuscript. I would also like to thank my colleagues at Wilkes University for their interest and warm encouragement, especially those who commented on parts of my manuscript: John Bowers, Philip Brady, Jason Carney, Bonnie Culver, Jaclyn Fowler, Kaylie Jones, Nancy McKinley, and Robert Mooney.