Norman Mailer

by J. Michael Lennon

  “a Texas regiment”: Johnston, ed., We Ain’t No Heroes, 4.

  “So, the infantry replacements”: Ibid., 254.

  he had a typing assignment: NM to Bea, 4-25-45. His other option was to become part of a reconnaissance platoon attached to Headquarters Company, which is where he ended up three months later.

  Julian W. Cunningham: NM to Bea, 2-14-45. NM used Cunningham, in part, as a model for General Cummings in NAD. Both were strong disciplinarians and zealous about improving bivouac areas. See Johnston, ed., We Ain’t No Heroes, 233, and NAD, 106.

  interpreting aerial photographs: NM to Bea, 3-11-45. NM was also hospitalized with jaundice for several days while assigned to Headquarters. NM to Bea, 2-16-45.

  “galling at times”: NM to Bea, 3-18-45. NM repeated this sentiment in a 3-29-45 letter to Bea, saying, “when I’m not with you . . . I often wonder if I’m really worth anything much at all.”

  building a shower: NM to Bea, 3-25-45.

  “Variety, darling”: Ibid.

  “It had a little bit”: NM to Bea, 2-24-45.

  used in Chapter 7: See NAD, 211.

  Benton’s anthology: NM to Bea, 4-11-45.

  Strachey’s Eminent Victorians: NM to Bea, 4-20-45.

  “an unguent for the psyche”: NM to Bea, 2-1-45.

  “any better than he should be”: Up at the Villa (NY: Random House, 2000), 29.

  “perpetual oscillation”: NM to Bea, 2-1-45.

  an elaborate clock: DP, 99. In 2000, NM said that his view of life was founded on Maugham’s line. “I think you should be a little better than you ought to be. That’s what manhood’s all about.” See Alastair McKay, “Still Stormin’,” Scotsman, 7-22-00, 2.

  “there’s a wonderful quality”: NM to FM, 2-19-45.

  The unit had 192 casualties: Glenn T. Johnston, “Interview with Norman Mailer” (8-25-04), University of North Texas Oral History Collection, No. 1560, 39. In 1965, NM said that he had “the feeling you’re going to be killed—I became emotionally convinced of it, and didn’t care much anymore what happened.” Brock Brower, Other Loyalties, 109.

  Combat Infantryman’s Badge: NM’s army records (HRC). NM was given a new badge for Christmas 2004. Notoriously difficult to buy a gift for, he liked the gift and recalled how proud he had been to wear it.

  “been in a little combat”: NM to Bea, 4-11-45.

  “You must make him realize”: NM to Bea, 4-20-45.

  mythic eight-day patrol: Johnston, “Interview with Norman Mailer,” University of North Texas, 21.

  “birth allegory”: NM to Bea, 4-18-45.

  “quixotic”: NM to Bea, 4-25-45.

  “A part of me”: Marcus, CNM, 83.

  “none of us had the slightest”: AFM, 390.

  “Good, I don’t see none either”: Melvyn Bragg, “Norman Mailer Talks to Melvyn Bragg,” Listener, 12-20-73, CNM, 197.

  “fifteen miles older”: AFM, 389.

  the Hukbalahap or Huks: NM to Bea, 5-18-45.

  “The gun had a detestable odor”: AFM, 143.

  “crack Japanese marines”: Johnston, “Interview with Norman Mailer,” University of North Texas, 33.

  “The most intense ecstasy”: NM to Bea, 5-14-45.

  “No other writer on war”: Eric Homberger, The Second World War in Fiction, ed. Holger Klein, John Flower, and Eric Homberger (London: Macmillan, 1984), 177.

  “What the hell did Horton mean”: Johnston interview, 25.

  “black halo, black stockings”: NM to Bea, 5-10-45.

  “I gave up writing”: Levitas, CNM, 8. BW recalled that during the war when her brother and Bea were writing, she felt that Bea had the best chance to write a bestseller. NM told Amussen that Bea’s novel about the Waves “wasn’t bad” (MBM, 94), but apparently Amussen’s response was too negative for her to revise it.

  “a very intense Somerset Maugham”: NM to Bea, 5-17-45.

  “Remember that awful priest”: Jeffrey Michelson and Sarah Stone, “Ethics and Pornography,” PAP, 108.

  Seaver was turning down: Seaver to Kaslow, 6-22-45.

  He told Bea that this novel: NM to Bea, 5-20-45.

  Francis Irby Gwaltney: NM first mentions Fig in a letter to Bea, 6-9-45.

  “You can’t talk that way”: Johnston interview, 31.

  “a brave soldier”: Brock Brower, Other Loyalties, 109.

  He sent Bea a few comments: NM to Bea, 7-25-45.

  “soft-spoken, sly”: NM to Bea, 10-3-45.

  “If there is a God”: NM to Bea, 10-5-45.

  But he began with real soldiers: “I think the thing that gave The Naked and the Dead its sense of absolute realism . . . is that the characters were good. . . . I had lived among these soldiers for two years and I knew a lot about them.” Academy of Achievement, “Interview: Norman Mailer.”

  “I studied engineering”: Marcus, CNM, 84.

  He is the novel’s titular hero: Lieutenant Hearn, a default liberal, is often named as the protagonist of NAD because he opposes both General Cummings and Sergeant Croft, but NM told Bea (10-20-45) that his “ridge novel” would not focus on a particular character. NM did not consciously select Croft as the protagonist of NAD, but he is undoubtedly the most realized character in the novel, with the possible exception of Cummings.

  Mailer was in garrison: NM to Bea, 7-16-45.

  GI Bill: NM to Bea, 7-21-45.

  graduate courses at Harvard: NM to FM, IBM, 2-26-45.

  Tateyama Naval Airdrome: Johnston, ed., We Ain’t No Heroes, 267–71.

  “We would have been massacred”: Takaaki Mizuno, “Flag-Waving U.S. Shows Signs of Totalitarianism,” Asahi Shimbun, 9-14-06.

  “pathological”: NM to Bea, 8-8-45.

  “The White Negro”: NM’s essay on urban hipsters, blacks, jazz, and marijuana was first published in Dissent 4, Summer 1957, and reprinted in AFM, 337–58.

  “starved, grinning, irritatingly polite”: NM to Bea, 9-1-45.

  “milestones”: Ibid.

  “many summers that had gone by”: NM to Bea, 8-16-45.

  His ship was with the assembled fleet: NM, Bill Garbo, and J. C. Lay, Johnston, ed., We Ain’t No Heroes, 266–68.

  “The commentator said”: NM to FM, IBM, Dave and Anne Kessler, 9-4-45.

  Tateyama was on the lip: Johnston, ed., We Ain’t No Heroes, 269–70.

  Mailer volunteered to be a cook: NM to Bea, 10-1-45.

  “Chorus: The Chow Line”: NAD, 86–87.

  The mess sergeant liked him: NM to Bea, 10-1-45.

  Eric Ambler’s spy novels: NM to Bea, several letters, June through December 1945.

  “Their goodness had no radiation”: NM to Bea, 10-20-45.

  “reminds us that life”: SA, 23.

  “the language of knee”: NM to Bea, 10-21-45.

  Cooking for 160 men: NM’s 1951 short story “The Language of Men” follows NM’s experiences more closely than anything else he wrote in fiction. It was his first piece in Esquire, April 1953; rpt., AFM, 122–32.

  Mailer was suspicious: NM to Bea, 11-8-45.

  “I feel very strong”: NM to Bea, 10-21-45.

  promoted to sergeant: NM to FM, 2-4-46.

  “a peon in a fascist organization”: NM to FM, IBM, 11-14-45. However corrupt and inefficient the army seemed to NM, it kept offering him new experiences. In late November 1945, he was asked to teach an American history course to ten GIs. He began the course, but an officer soon took it over, as he told Bea, 11-23-45.

  “vision sergeant”: NM to Bea, 12-22-45.

  “He died happy”: NM to Bea, 11-22-45.

  “He was efficient and strong”: NAD, 156.

  Mailer’s buddies had discovered: NM’s 1951 short story “The Paper House” examines the relations of GIs and geishas; rpt., AFM, 109–22.

  “the time-honored American purchase”: NM to Bea, 11-25-45. NM later wrote her a second letter (seven pages, undated), analyzing his feelings in great detail; he said doing so made him “feel at ease with myself and purged.” Around the
same time, NM concluded that masturbation was wrong and stopped, permanently, as he later explained to JML.

  kind of portable typewriter: NM to FM, IBM, 12-16-45.

  asked Bea to separate out: NM to Bea, 3-3-46.

  North Conway: NM to Bea, 11-12-45. At the end of January, NM, his captain, and a Japanese mess boy climbed a mountain about fifteen miles inland from Onahama. NM to Bea, 1-27-46.

  Provincetown in the summer: NM to Bea, 1-11-46.

  “a great humanist”: NM to Bea, 12-8-45.

  names of 161 soldiers: NM to Bea, 1-12-46.

  thirty to forty soldiers: NM to FM, IBM, 1-14-46.

  fourteen enlisted men as significant characters: NM to Bea, undated fragment, February or March 1946.

  “insights into the weakly Evil”: NM to Bea, undated fragment, January or February 1946.

  “I don’t know if its Harvard”: NM to Bea, 1-25-46.

  “He also enjoyed writing “Sgt.”: NM to Bea, 4-4-46.

  “chickenshit son-of-a-bitch”: NM to Bea, 4-4-46. NM gave his parents a slightly sanitized version in a 4-7-46 letter.

  “was when the keel”: Brock Brower, Other Loyalties, 109.

  His immediate response: NM to Bea, 4-9-46.

  “Whose ass did you kiss”: JML interview with Clifford Maskovsky, 2-5-10.

  worst experience of his life: JML, “A Conversation with Norman Mailer,” New England Review, Summer 1999, 138–48.

  “the third lousiest guy”: Levitas, CNM, 3. See Christopher Hitchens, “Interview with Norman Mailer,” New Left Review, 119, where NM says that in a squad of twelve he was “third or fourth from the bottom, I was mediocre at best.”

  “You know really my only decent function”: NM to Bea, 7-11-45. The “and/or” is prescient, as for many years of his life NM could not decide which activity was paramount.

  “Through most of the Great Wet Boot”: AFM, 29.

  “It was the only book”: Bob Minzesheimer, “To Mailer, a Good Soldier Puts Words on Paper,” USA Today.

  “the Norman legend”: NM to Bea, 2-7-46.

  asked if she could see Transit: Adeline Naiman to NM, 1-24-46.

  badly flawed work: NM summed up his feelings about A Transit to Narcissus in 1955 when he called it “a romantic, morbid, twisted, and heavily tortured work.” “Mailer, Norman,” Twentieth Century Authors, First Supplement, ed. Stanley J. Kunitz (NY: H. W. Wilson, 1955), 628.

  if no changes were requested: NM to Bea, 2-7-46.

  “who wasn’t dashingly articulate”: JML interview with Adeline Naiman, 8-21-07.

  Crow’s Nest Cottages: Christopher Busa, “An Interview with Norman Mailer, Provincetown Arts, 26. See also Robert F. Lucid’s detailed account, “Crow’s Nest Cottages, North Truro, 1946,” Provincetown Arts (1999), 32–33.

  Mailer was writing an ensemble novel: NM told JML in 1981, “In a lot of those reviews of the time, I remember, I kept exclaiming in amazement, ‘This work has no hero.’ And I don’t see why a work has to have a hero. You know if you can write a book without a hero, well, all to the good.”

  “love of planning & chess”: NAD notes, HRC.

  “The truth is, Robert”: NAD, 182.

  Mailer makes Cummings a homosexual: AFM, 223.

  “Time Machine” flashbacks: In his 8-29-55 letter to Mr. Broich, NM said, “There is no doubt at all that the Time Machines in The Naked and the Dead were influenced directly by the poetic biographies in U.S.A.”

  “bi-functional”: NM to Bea, late September 1946.

  “One was the product”: SA, 237.

  “show something of the turn”: Marcus, CNM, 81.

  “is going to be the greatest novel”: A. Lubell [Naiman], “Trade Editorial Report, Little, Brown & Company: The Naked and the Dead, 9-18-46” (HRC). Naiman sent a copy sub rosa to NM, and his father carried it around in his wallet for the rest of his life, as she later explained in “How I Discovered Norman Mailer” (HRC).

  “the author’s marvelous sense”: Untitled assessment, HRC. Naiman recalled that she may have predicted a sale of only 3,700 in JML interview, 8-21-07.

  “a piece of realism”: NM to Naiman, 9-25-46.

  “a mystic kick”: Harvey Breit, “Talk with Norman Mailer,” NYT, 6-3-51; rpt., CNM, 15.

  “it is certain to be prosecuted”: Bernard DeVoto critique, HRC.

  “DeVoto’s criticism is essentially sound”: NM to Naiman, late October 1946. NM was just as certain of his potential in a 10-24-46 letter to BW about the Little, Brown imbroglio: “As far as I’m concerned Barbara I’m going to be the greatest writer of this decade, and while Little, Brown may not share my enthusiasm, they’re damn fools.”

  “We you coming-to-get”: The forty typescript pages NM refers to begin with one of the most memorable exertions in the novel, the platoon muscling 37mm guns over a muddy jungle trail, which leads up to the attack at the river (NAD, 121–55).

  Cummings’s demonic underling: The definitive examination of Melville’s influence on NAD is Bernard Horn, “Ahab and Ishmael at War: The Presence of Moby-Dick in The Naked and the Dead,” American Quarterly 34, Fall 1982, 379–95.

  “I hate everything”: NAD, 164.

  “hard, isolate, stoic”: Robert Ehrlich, Norman Mailer: The Radical as Hipster (Metuchen, NJ: Scarecrow, 1978), 26. Lawrence’s line is from Studies in Classic American Literature (NY: Thomas Seltzer, 1923), 92.

  “the most secret admiration”: Paul Krassner, “An Impolite Interview,” PP, 136.

  “Killing and being killed”: Alfred Kazin, Bright Book of Life: American Storytellers from Hemingway to Mailer (Boston: Little, Brown, 1973), 77.

  “crude unformed vision”: NAD, 156.

  “a limit to his hunger”: Ibid., 701.

  “missed some tantalizing revelation”: Ibid., 709.

  This locus provides: My comments on the confined setting of the novel are based on those of Peter G. Jones, War and the Novelist (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1976), 88–89.

  “General Cummings articulates”: Levitas, CNM, 4.

  “Iron Curtain” speech: Given at Westminster College, Fulton, Missouri, 3-5-46. The sole member of President Truman’s cabinet who did not favor a strong response to Russian expansionism was Secretary of Commerce Henry Wallace. His stance appealed to NM, who later worked in his 1948 presidential campaign.

  “people in our government”: Levitas, CNM, 4.

  Norman Rosten: Ten years older than NM, Rosten was the first writer NM knew who lived by his pen. Their paths crossed often in Brooklyn, where Rosten served as poet laureate from 1979 to his death in 1995. In their correspondence, Rosten always addressed Mailer as “Norm I”; he was “Norm II.”

  “We would talk”: Christopher Bigsby, “Alarm Calls for American Dreamers,” Independent, 2-9-02, 10. In his autobiography, Miller says that the first time he met NM he had just seen Miller’s play, All My Sons, and told Miller that he could write a play like that. “It was so obtusely flat an assertion that I began to laugh, but he was completely serious. . . . Mailer struck me as someone who seemed to want to make converts rather than friends, so our impulses, essentially similar, could hardly mesh.” Timebends: A Life (NY: Grove, 1987), 139.

  “If you give me a contract”: Frederick Christian, “The Talent and the Torment,” Cosmopolitan, 66.

  “damn fool if you don’t”: MBM, 92. See also MLT, 104–5.

  profanity conference: MBM, 92, MLT, 104–5.

  “the irreducible minimum”: Levitas, CNM, 8.

  “fug”: MLT, 105–6, MBM, 93. NM was never able to beat back the rumors about why and when he first used “fug.” Some of the blame can be laid at the feet of Tallulah Bankhead or, more likely, her press agent. She was quoted as saying that shortly after Naked was published, she met him and said, “Are you the young man who doesn’t know how to spell fuck?” Bankhead admitted later that the incident was apocryphal (Tallulah, Darling by Denis Brian [NY: Macmillan, 1980], 17), but the story never died. NM told Newsweek (12-23-68, 7), “I had
decided to use the word fug before the book was even begun.” In the same magazine thirty years later (6-28-99, 49), he was still trying: “I started with ‘fug.’ . . . What bothered me was that people said, ‘Oh, Mailer was using f—and the publisher said he had to use fug so he gave in.’ It never happened that way.” When NM finally did meet Bankhead, many years later, Brian reports, they just nodded and smiled. Confusion about the word’s origin has been complicated by the comments of several people. Theodore Amussen, Mailer’s first Rinehart editor, told Hilary Mills that NM had invented fug after the novel was accepted by Rinehart (Mills, 93), and Mailer’s cousin and lawyer, Cy Rembar, told Peter Manso that he himself had come up with the term during a meeting with NM, a statement that NM refuted (MLT, 105–06). Both Amussen and Rembar are in error. The drafts of the manuscript at the HRC confirm NM’s statement that he used the word from the beginning, as does his mention of “fug” in a letter to Angus Cameron of Little, Brown in October 1946, when he had only written 184 pages. NM later told Edward de Grazia that fug was chosen because “there wasn’t any way in the world you could use ‘fuck,’ you just couldn’t get near it” (Girls Lean Back Everywhere: The Law of Obscenity and the Assault on Genius [NY: Random House, 1995], 520). Despite NM’s repeated denials of the Bank-head story, Jesse Sheidlower perpetuated the canard in The F Word (NY: Random House, 1995), and compounded it by attributing the misspelling story to Dorothy Parker, while passing over entirely Mailer’s denials. Although Mailer corrected Sheidlower in print (see Brad Weiner’s “Dys-functionally Literate,” San Francisco Bay Guardian, December 1995, 3), the 2009 reprint of The F Word repeats the story, and says Mailer was “required by his publishers to use the euphemism” fug.

  placate Rinehart’s mother: MBM, 93.

  “A saturnine Irishman”: JML, “Literary Ambitions,” PAP, 165.

  Mailer hired him: MLT, 107.

  “sometimes cruel in his criticism”: MLT, 107.

  “Oh, for the good old days”: NM to Devlin, 11-19-53.

  “the Shah of Brat-mah-phur”: NM to Basil Mailer, 11-17-54.

  “a bonus”: Marcus, CNM, 80.

  the “crawfish” scene: Ginny Dougary, “The Norman Conquests,” Sunday Independent, 6-26-00, 6L.

  “would have been considered”: Marcus, CNM, 80.