Dean John C. Stachacz and the staff of the E. S. Farley Library at Wilkes University have my gratitude for assistance over many years, with special thanks going to Brian R. Sacolic, who cut through many a bibliographic knot for me. I am grateful for the fellowship awarded by the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas–Austin where Mailer’s papers are housed, and am happy to acknowledge the creative and tireless help of Director Thomas F. Staley and his staff, including Patrice F. Fox, Robert Fulton, Molly Hardy, Jennifer Hecker, Cathy Henderson, Kathryn Hill, Steve C. Mielke, Richard W. Oram, Gabriela Redwine, Molly Schwartzburg, Joan Sibley, Apryl Sullivan, and Richard Workman. Thanks also to my friends and colleagues in the James Jones Literary Society, the Norman Mailer Society, and the Norman Mailer Center, whose good fellowship and enthusiasm have been of huge value to my work. Let me also salute the countless friends who listened patiently to me on Mailer matters over the decades.
Following is a list of others who have commented on portions of the manuscript and/or enabled me in various thoughtful ways: Chester Aaron, Neil Abercrombie, Rashidah Ismaili Abubakr, Steve Adams, Allen and Patricia Ahearn, Joyce Anzalone, Layle Armstrong, Peter Balbert, Anne Barry, Margaret Bay, Jim Blake, Larsen and Jeanette Bowker, Leo Braudy, Douglas Brinkley, Linda and Tom Bushar, Martha Campbell, Luceil Carroll, Jack Chielli, Vasundhra Choudhry, Antonia Colodro, Joseph Comprone, Harold Cox, Gerald H. Crown, Greg Curtis, B. H. Custer, Essy Davidowitz, Ann and Cullom Davis, Hope Denenkamp, Nicole DePolo, Patrick and Robin Dickson, Carol Dine, Robert M. Dowling, Michael Downend, Laura Adams Dunham, David Ebershoff, Ray Elliott, Judith Everson, Mia Feroleto, Diane Fisher, Thomas H. Fiske, Katherine Flynn, Dick Fontaine, the late B. H. Friedman, Russell and Betty Gaudreau, Laurel Guadanzo, Shawn Hatten, Tom Hayes, Wilbur Hayes, Patricia Heaman, John Hemingway, William Heyen, Alexander Hicks, Beverly and Harry Hiscox, Immy Humes, Mark James, Sheldon Kaplan, Donald Kaufmann, Dana and William Kennedy, Eugene Kennedy, Robert Klaus, Ross Klavan, Albert LaFarge, Dawn Leas, Michael Lee, David and Susan Light, Michael Lindgren, Laurie Loewenstein, Barbara Lounsberry, Jerome Loving, Gerald R. Lucas (my talented webmaster), Townsend Ludington, Melania Lumia, Jan Maluf, David Margolick, Jay and Robbin Martinelli, Deborah Martinson, Annette and Warren Mason, Lori A. May, Vicki Mayk, Colum McCann, Tim McCarthy, Maggie McKinley, Louis Menand, Martin Michaelson, Jonathan Middlebrook, Michael and Jane Millgate, Lee Moore, Laura Moran, Carolyn Olshaker, Christina Pabst, Dean and Denise Pappas, Mary C. Pedro, Paul Pedro, Kathy Perutz, Taylor Polites, Tom Quinn, Pam Radin, Dwayne Raymond, Christopher Ricks, Dana Riguette, Anna Schnur-Fishman, Maureen Seaberg, Lawrence Shainberg, Larry Shiner, David Sokosh, Claire Sprague, Barbara and Robert Springer, Charles Strozier, Anne Taylor, Marc Triplett, Ken Vose, Nina Wiener, and Guy Wolf.
I quote from Mailer’s letters approximately seven hundred times; his correspondence and interviews with him, his family, friends, and associates are my key sources, along with his writings. I thank the Mailer Estate for allowing me to quote from his published and unpublished work. I also benefited greatly from the work of the four Mailer biographers who preceded me. Thanks especially to Hilary Mills (the first one of us into the quarry), and Mary Dearborn, Peter Manso, and Carl Rollyson. Their books and my other sources are noted in my bibliography and source notes. I should add that The Mailer Review, a joint publication of the Mailer Society and the University of South Florida, has been an indispensable resource. I am indebted to all of these sources and individuals for insight and information; errors and oversights are my sole responsibility. Thanks to all, remembered or, alas, forgotten, who helped me research and write this biography.
BOOKS BY NORMAN MAILER
The Naked and the Dead. NY: Rinehart, 1948.
Barbary Shore. NY: Rinehart, 1951.
The Deer Park. NY: Putnam’s, 1955.
The White Negro. San Francisco: City Lights, 1959.
Advertisements for Myself. NY: Putnam’s, 1959.
Deaths for the Ladies (and Other Disasters). NY: Putnam’s, 1962.
The Presidential Papers. NY: Putnam’s, 1963.
An American Dream. NY: Dial, 1965.
Cannibals and Christians. NY: Dial, 1966.
The Short Fiction of Norman Mailer. NY: Dell, 1967.
The Deer Park: A Play. NY: Dial, 1967.
Why Are We in Vietnam? NY: Putnam’s, 1967.
The Bullfight. NY: CBS Legacy, 1967.
The Armies of the Night. NY: New American Library, 1968.
Miami and the Siege of Chicago. NY: New American Library, 1968.
Of a Fire on the Moon. Boston: Little, Brown, 1971.
King of the Hill. NY: New American Library, 1971.
The Prisoner of Sex. Boston: Little, Brown, 1971.
Maidstone: A Mystery. NY: New American Library, 1971.
The Long Patrol: 25 Years of Writing from the Work of Norman Mailer. Ed. Robert F. Lucid. NY: World, 1971.
Existential Errands. Boston: Little, Brown, 1972.
St. George and the Godfather. NY: New American Library, 1972.
Marilyn: A Biography. NY: Grosset & Dunlap, 1973.
The Faith of Graffiti. Documented by Mervyn Kurlansky and Jon Naar. Prepared by Lawrence Schiller. NY: Praeger, 1974.
The Fight. Boston: Little, Brown, 1975.
Genius and Lust: A Journey Through the Major Writings of Henry Miller. NY: Grove, 1976.
A Transit to Narcissus. NY: Howard Fertig, 1978.
The Executioner’s Song. Boston: Little, Brown, 1979.
Of Women and Their Elegance. NY: Simon & Schuster, 1980.
Pieces and Pontifications. Ed. J. Michael Lennon. Boston: Little, Brown, 1982.
Ancient Evenings. Boston: Little, Brown, 1983.
Tough Guys Don’t Dance. NY: Random House, 1984.
Conversations with Norman Mailer. Ed. J. Michael Lennon. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1988.
Harlot’s Ghost. NY: Random House, 1991.
Oswald’s Tale: An American Mystery. NY: Random House, 1995.
Portrait of Picasso as a Young Man: An Interpretive Biography. NY: Atlantic Monthly Press, 1995.
The Gospel According to the Son. NY: Random House, 1997.
The Time of Our Time. NY: Random House, 1998.
The Spooky Art: Some Thoughts on Writing. Ed. J. Michael Lennon. NY: Random House, 2003.
Why Are We at War? NY: Random House, 2003.
Modest Gifts: Poems and Drawings. NY: Random House, 2003.
The Big Empty: Dialogues on Politics, Sex, God, Boxing, Morality, Myth, Poker and Bad Conscience in America. Coauthor, John Buffalo Mailer. NY: Nation Books, 2006.
The Castle in the Forest. NY: Random House, 2007.
On God: An Uncommon Conversation. With Michael Lennon. NY: Random House, 2007.
1. Mailer’s paternal grandfather, Benjamin Mailer, probably taken not long after his 1900 arrival in South Africa from Lithuania. They never met.
2. Rabbi Chaim Jehuda Schneider, Mailer’s maternal grandfather (1859–1928), was born in Lithuania and died in Long Branch, New Jersey.
3–4: The four Schneider sisters: Rebecca (“Beck”) pictured here, (from left on following page) Fanny (Mailer’s mother, the youngest), Rose, and Jennie. All were born in Lithuania. Fanny was probably born in 1891 and died in 1985.
5. Mailer’s father, Isaac Barnett (“Barney”) Mailer, arrived in the U.S. in 1919 after serving in the South African army in World War I.
6. Fan Mailer and her son, whose middle name was Kingsley, outside Kingsley Court (summer rentals operated by the family), in Long Branch.
7. Mailer and his sister, Barbara Jane, four years younger, in the early 1930s.
8. The Scarboro Hotel on Ocean Avenue in Long Branch, operated by Mailer’s aunt Beck and uncle Louis Shapiro, where Mailer wrote his first, unpublished, novel. The hotel burned down in 1941.
9. Mailer, a sixteen-year-old high school senior, in the family’s Crown Heights apartment. His parents hung his model airplanes from the chandeliers in each roo
m.
10. Beatrice Silverman, whom Mailer met at a Boston concert in 1941. They married in 1944.
11. Private Mailer, wearing his Combat Infantryman’s Badge, after being busted from sergeant shortly before his May 1946 discharge.
12. Mailer and his army buddy from Arkansas, Francis I. “Fig” Gwaltney. They remained friends until Fig’s death.
13. Col. Philip L. Hooper and Gen. Julian W. Cunningham, both of whom commanded Mailer’s unit, the 112th Cavalry, in the Philippines, August 1944.
14. David Kessler, his wife Anne Mailer Kessler (Barney Mailer’s sister), Beatrice Mailer, Barbara Mailer, and Fan and Barney, at a social event, late 1945 or 1946.
15. Adeline Lubell Naiman, a Little, Brown editor, recommended The Naked and the Dead for publication. Little, Brown turned it down, but she became his lifelong friend.
16. Lois Mayfield Wilson at age twenty-three in 1947. Her affair with Mailer lasted almost sixty years.
17. Adele, Mailer’s second wife, in the mid-1950s.
18. Robert Lindner, a psychologist who helped to shape Mailer’s ideas, died in 1956.
19. Two of Mailer’s best friends, Mickey Knox (left) and James Jones, with Adele and Mailer in 1953.
20. Rhoda Lazare Wolf (Barbara Mailer’s best friend), and her husband, Dan Wolf, one of the co-founders of The Village Voice.
21. Lady Jeanne Campbell, Mailer’s third wife, late 1950s.
22. Mailer in his Triumph convertible with Jeanne Campbell shortly after their May 1962 marriage. Tibo is in the back seat.
23. Mailer and his secretary, Anne Barry, 1963.
24. José Torres, light heavyweight champion in the mid-1960s, traded boxing lessons for writing lessons with Mailer.
25. Mailer and Beverly Bentley, his fourth wife, March 1964.
26. A photo for an Esquire essay on his contemporaries, taken in the Gramercy Gym in New York, 1963.
27. A still from Mailer’s 1968 film, Beyond the Law, in which his friend Eddie Bonetti played an ax murderer, and Mailer an Irish-American police lieutenant.
28. Mailer speaking at a demonstration against the Vietnam War, Central Park, New York, March 1966.
29. Mailer campaigning for mayor of New York City on Wall Street in May 1969.
30. Joe Flaherty, Mailer’s campaign manager, discusses strategy with his candidate.
31. Germaine Greer and Mailer on a panel discussion about Women’s Liberation, Town Hall, New York City, April 1971.
32. Mailer and his sister, Barbara, with their parents at their 50th wedding anniversary celebration in 1972.
33. Mailer and Carol Stevens, his fifth wife, with their daughter, Maggie, 1973.
34. Eileen Fredrickson, who had a long affair with Mailer, beginning in 1979.
35. Gary Gilmore shortly before his execution by firing squad on January 17, 1977.
36. Norris Church Mailer, Mailer’s sixth wife, during her years as a fashion model in the mid-1970s.
37. Norris Mailer’s Polaroid photo of Jack Abbott, taken shortly after his 1981 release from prison.
38. Mailer as the architect and playboy Stanford White in Milos Forman’s 1981 film, Ragtime. Norris played his girlfriend in the scene where White is murdered.
39. Bernard “Buzz” Farbar and Mailer in the early 1980s.
40. Mailer’s close friend the writer and former drug dealer Richard Stratton.
41. Mailer on the set of the 1987 film he directed, Tough Guys Don’t Dance, based on his novel of the same name.
42. Mailer and Fidel Castro in Cuba, 1989.
43. Marina Oswald and Mailer in Dallas, June 1993.
44. The Mailer clan gathered for the 1993 wedding of Kate and Guy Lancaster in Vermont. Back row: Matthew Mailer, Michael Moschen (Danielle’s first husband), Danielle Mailer, Norris Church Mailer, Valentina Colodro (Susan Mailer’s eldest), Isabella Moschen, Antonia Colodro, Christina Nastasi and her mother, Betsy Mailer; front row: John Buffalo Mailer, Peter Alson, Norman Mailer, Susan Mailer, Barbara Mailer Wasserman, Maggie Mailer; sitting before his father, Michael Mailer.
45. Six Mailer siblings in the 1990s: Stephen, Kate, John Buffalo, Matthew, Michael and Danielle.
46. Jean Malaquais, approximately fifty years after meeting Mailer in Paris. Mailer called him his intellectual mentor.
47. Lawrence Schiller, Mailer’s collaborator on several books (including The Executioner’s Song) and film projects, in Washington, D.C., in 1994.
48. Muhammad Ali with Mailer and his Random House editor, Jason Epstein, at the 1998 publication party for The Time of Our Time.
49. Al and Barbara Wasserman in 1998.
50. William Styron in 1999 at a reunion of friends of James Jones. He and Mailer had reconciled after a long and bitter falling-out.
51. Mailer and Gore Vidal in Provincetown after their appearance in Don Juan in Hell, October 2002. Mailer’s sister, Barbara, is in background. Mailer and Vidal were also reconciling after years of enmity.
52. J. Michael Lennon and Robert F. Lucid at the 2005 Mailer Society conference in Provincetown.
53. The Mailer family at the Norman Mailer Center Gala, 2009: Norris, John Buffalo, Matthew, Betsy, Peter Alson, Michael, Maggie, Barbara, Stephen, Susan, Danielle and Kate.
© CHRISTINA PABST
J. MICHAEL LENNON, emeritus professor of English at Wilkes University, met Mailer in Illinois when he was on a college speaking tour for his book St. George and the Godfather (1972). Lennon suggested and then edited a collection of Mailer’s essays and interviews, Pieces and Pontifications. In 1986 he edited Critical Essays on Norman Mailer and began assisting Robert F. Lucid, Mailer’s authorized biographer and archivist, in organizing Mailer’s papers. Together they edited Mailer’s collection The Time of Our Time. In 1988, Lennon assembled thirty-four of Mailer’s interviews in Conversations with Norman Mailer. Lennon also helped found the Mailer Society, the James Jones Society, and edited (with James Giles) a collection of Jones’s war writings, The James Jones Reader.
Lennon and his wife, Donna, compiled Norman Mailer: Works and Days, a bio-bibliography, and in 2003 Lennon edited a collection of Mailer’s essays and insights on writing, The Spooky Art. When Lucid died in 2006, Mailer asked Lennon to take over writing his authorized biography. The summer before Mailer died, Lennon completed work on a series of interviews with Mailer about his theological ideas, On God: An Uncommon Conversation. Lennon is now editing Mailer’s correspondence for a forthcoming volume.
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NOTES
In addition to the Appreciations, I would like to reiterate my profound thanks to the Mailer Estate for permitting me to quote freely from Mailer’s published and unpublished work, the latter housed in the Mailer Archive of the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas–Austin. Permission to quote from these materials, especially Mailer’s letters, has allowed me to reveal his inner life as never before. Over the past seven years, the Mailer family and the staff of the Ransom Center have provided encouragement and cheerfully acceded to my every request for information or documents.
Norman Mailer Page 97