Norman Mailer

by J. Michael Lennon

  “the promising talent”: Edmund Fuller, “The New Compassion in the American Novel,” American Scholar, Spring 1957, 162.

  “I value Mailer”: Dwight Macdonald, “The Bright Young Men of the Arts,” Esquire, September 1958, 39.

  “Lousy people”: NM to Chester Aaron, 2-11-58.

  “Styron’s Style”: HRC.

  “would laugh along”: CAC, 109–10.

  “Bill, I’ve been told”: NM to Styron, 3-12-58.

  “astonished”: West, William Styron, 294.

  “Bill was scared”: MBM, 192.

  “warped and perverted”: West, William Styron, 294.

  “profoundly upsetting”: LNM, 116.

  “probably bragged”: AM, The Last Party, 261.

  The Pistol: NY: Scribner’s 1958.

  “contains a perfect”: NM to Jones, 2-25-58.

  “emotional sword-twirling”: Jones to NM, 3-18-58, in To Reach Eternity, 260.

  “Norman: Your letter was: Styron to NM, 3-17-58, in Selected Letters, 250.

  “Parasites”: NM to Jones, 3-20-58.

  “I just got back”: NM to Styron, 3-27-58.

  “beautifully written and intellectually alive”: NM to Baldwin, 3-20-58.

  “Writing ties me into knots”: NM to MK, 3-20-58.

  fragment about Faye being raped: HRC.

  “on the edge”: NM to Philip Rahv, 2-27-58.

  “need to be shocked”: Rahv to NM, 3-4-58.

  “damn-the-torpedoes”: NM to Rahv, 3-20-58.

  Rahv selected “Way Out”: “Advertisements for Myself on the Way Out,” PR, Fall 1958; rpt., AFM, 512–32.

  “awkward,” “muddled,” “cloying”: See, respectively, Jennifer Bailey, Norman Mailer: Quick-Change Artist (London: Macmillan, 1979), 69; Wenke, Mailer’s America, 230; Solotaroff, Down Mailer’s Way, 87.

  “my name eludes me”: AFM, 512.

  “ghost, geist, demiurge”: Ibid., 520.

  “yes, God is like me”: Ibid., 532.

  “climactic party”: Ibid., 515.

  “in the history of our republic”: Ibid., 530.

  “Brave murder”: Ibid., 526.

  “between the stirrup and the ground”: Ibid., 532.

  University of Chicago: Morton D. Zabel invited NM to Chicago, 2-11-58.

  Richard G. Stern: Novelist and longtime professor at University of Chicago, Stern (1928–2013) corresponded with NM over the next decade and wrote about him in his collection, One Person and Another: On Writers and Writing (Dallas: Baskerville, 1993).

  “enjoyed the sheer”: NM to MK, 6-18-58.

  “series of questions”: NM to Zabel, 2-11-58.

  thanked Stern: NM to Stern, 6-6-58.

  Paul Carroll: A Chicago poet and teacher, Carroll (1927–96) was the editor of the Beat magazine Big Table, where NM would publish an excerpt from AFM.

  “the only big city”: NM to George Lea, 10-29-58.

  “rushing into a confession”: AFM, 376.

  “Hip, Hell, and the Navigator”: It first appeared in Western Review 23, Winter 1958; rpt., AFM, 376–86.

  “a pitch of excited engagement”: AFM, 378.

  “anti-expressionism”: Ibid., 379.

  “a fantastic assertion”: Ibid., 380.

  “Stern: This is really something”: Ibid., 381.

  “consciously makes decisions”: Ibid., 386.

  “has an enormous teleological sense”: See NM’s oblique answer to a question about the fallibility of the unconscious, JML, “Writers and Boxers, PAP, 158–59.

  “Partisan is the most important”: NM to FM, 7-9-58.

  “much discussed”: NM to EY, 6-18-58.

  On the Road: (NY: Viking, 1957). The novel spent five weeks on the bestseller list; sales of later printings have been huge.

  major publications, and Life: The Luce publications ran several negative articles on the Beats; the most disapproving was by Paul O’Neil, “The Only Rebellion Around: But the Shabby Beats Bungle the Job in Arguing, Sulking and Bad Poetry,” 11-30-59. See also John Clellon Holmes, “The Philosophy of the Beat Generation,” Esquire, February 1958; and Jack Kerouac, “Origins of the Beat Generation,” Playboy, June 1959. Ann Charters is the leading scholar of the movement. She wrote Kerouac: A Biography (San Francisco: Straight Arrow, 1973), and edited the most important anthology, The Portable Beat Reader (NY: Viking Penguin, 1992), which has an extensive bibliography. Bill Morgan is to Ginsberg what Charters is to Kerouac; see his I Celebrate Myself: The Somewhat Private Life of Allen Ginsberg (NY: Viking, 2006).

  “the most venturesome intellect”: John Clellon Holmes, Passionate Opinions: The Cultural Essays (Fayetteville: University of Arkansas Press, 1988), 86–87.

  Notes from the Underground: Dostoyevsky’s 1864 novel of anger and irrationality is ultimately a celebration of free will and is often called the first existential novel.

  associate member of The Family: As noted by Bruce Cook in The Beat Generation (NY: Scribner’s, 1971), 17. His study contains important interviews with NM and the major Beat figures.

  dismissal of the Beats: Standing shoulder to shoulder with Podhoretz’s “The Know-Nothing Bohemians” is Diana Trilling’s “The Other Night at Columbia,” Claremont Essays, 153–73.

  “solitary Bartlebies”: Charters, ed. Portable Beat Reader, xviii.

  “ecstatic flux”: AFM, 466.

  “Beat still has no center”: “Ten Words from the Dean,” Wagner Literary Magazine, Spring 1959, 26–27.

  “All that green”: The Diaries of Dawn Powell, 1931–1965 (South Royalton, VT: Steerforth, 1995), 387.

  film version of Naked: Produced by Paul Gregory for RKO, directed by Raoul Walsh, and distributed by Warner Brothers, the film was shot in Panama. It premiered in New York on 8-6-58. Raymond Massey played General Cummings and Cliff Robertson was Lieutenant Hearn. It cost $1 million to make and earned a profit, although the reviews were middling to poor.

  “the disembowelling naked greed”: Untitled eleven-page response to the film (HRC).

  “the worst movie”: “Norman Mailer,” interview with Joseph Gelmis, The Film Director as Superstar (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1970), rpt., CNM, 172.

  “Nor could the novelist”: NM, Marilyn: A Biography (NY: Grosset & Dunlap, 1973), 19–20.

  “The bastard”: AM, The Last Party, 246.

  “might make good company”: Miller, Timebends, 532–33.

  “too impressed by power”: W. J. Weatherby, Squaring Off, Mailer vs. Baldwin (NY: Mason/Charter, 1977), 125.

  “terrible tragedy”: Bragg, CNM, 203.

  Ginsberg-Mailer-Kerouac meeting: MLT, 256–62.

  “more than I would have thought”: AFM, 466.

  “In Buddhist terms”: MLT, 257.

  tikkun olam: I owe this insight to Mashey Bernstein.

  “a sense of brotherhood”: MLT, 260.

  “the most intelligent”: Ibid.

  Mailer saw Kerouac: AM, The Last Party, 286.

  “influence the history”: Stuart, CNM, 20.

  “the artist should be”: Selected Letters: Gustave Flaubert, ed. Geoffrey Wall (NY: Penguin, 1998), 217.

  “much better when people”: Ross, CNM, 13.

  “a little desperate”: NM to George Lea, 10-29-58.

  “shit work”: Ibid.

  “detested”: NM to William Phillips, 11-15-58.

  a provisional plan: NM to Walter Minton, 12-9-58.

  “to jiggle his Self”: AFM, 17–18.

  “five or ten years”: NM to EY, 1-7-59.

  “my half-vanished techniques”: NM to MK, 1-8-59.

  “important theological document”: NM to Stern, 2-18-59.

  “intensely curious”: PAP, 37.

  “in a dry little voice”: Ibid.

  “When it comes to personality”: NM, “The Capote Perplex,” Rolling Stone, 7-19-73, 8.

  “a hint bewildered”: PAP, 39.

  “Oh, man, did Truman”: Ibid., 40.

  “young-old face”: Ibid., 41.

&nb
sp; “Nothing like it”: NM, “The Capote Perplex,” 8.

  “entirely new”: Janet Winn, “Capote, Mailer and Miss Parker,” New Republic, 2-9-59, 27–28.

  “None of these people”: Ibid., 27.

  “two-thirds for Jack’s virtues”: PAP, 38.

  “demolished Mr. Mailer’s”: Janet Winn, “Capote, Mailer and Miss Parker,” 28.

  “out of the way”: NM to George Lea, 2-19-59.

  “to make the scene”: Ibid.

  “a thoroughgoing autobiography”: AFM, 10.

  “the only writer of my generation”: AFM drafts (HRC).

  “assassin to myself”: NM to Richard G. Stern, 3-31-59.

  “Evaluation: Quick and Expensive Comments on the Talent in the Room”: AFM, 463–73.

  “know about the intense”: Doug Ford, “How Yeats Did It,” NYRB, 4-3-08.

  “The confession is over”: AFM, 336.

  “at its worst it was a travelogue”: Ibid., 466–67.

  “Of all the writers”: Ibid., 467.

  “is everyone’s favorite”: Ibid.

  “the first figure”: Ibid., 465–66.

  “Truman Capote I do not know well”: Ibid., 465.

  “is essentially a hateful”: Ibid., 471.

  “The early work of Mary McCarthy”: Ibid., 472.

  “I happened to grow up”: Zoë Heller, “Yes, I Misbehaved Sometimes,” Daily Telegraph, 3-3-03, 19.

  bitterly intoned: See Francine Prose, “Scent of a Woman’s Ink: Are Women Writers Really Inferior,” Harper’s, June 1998, 61–70; Joanna Scott, “Male Writers vs. Female Writers: Beyond the Preconceptions,” www.salon.com/media/1998/07/03media.html; Dasee Starr, “Norman Mailer,” www.daseestarr.blogstop.com/2010/01/look-up-words-you-don’t-know.html.

  “ridden with faults”: AFM, 463–64.

  “the prettiest novel”: Ibid., 464–65.

  “sense of moral nuance”: Ibid., 471–72.

  “more arresting”: Ibid., 472.

  200,000 words: NM to EY, 4-25-59.

  “The Mind of an Outlaw” appeared in Esquire: Harold Hayes accepted all of NM’s conditions for publication in the November 1959 issue. The two most important were that no changes could be made to the text, and his name and the title would appear above any other that appeared on the cover—“top billing,” as Cy Rembar put it in a letter (7-1-59) to Hayes. From the start, NM’s relations with Esquire editors were contentious and legalistic.

  “Buddies”: VV, 9-16-59; rpt., AFM, 412–21.

  “Quick and Expensive”: Big Table 3, Autumn/Winter 1959; rpt., AFM, 463–73.

  two scenes: “Scenes from ‘The Deer Park,’ ” PR, Fall 1959; rpt., AFM, 442–60.

  “overground”: Hilary Mills’s interview with Harold Hayes, 1982 (HRC).

  “an indifferent caretaker”: AFM, 477.

  “I remember I received”: Andrew O’Hagan, “Norman Mailer: The Art of Fiction,” Paris Review Interviews III (NY: Picador, 2008), 432–33. The actual inscription reads: “To my most feared friend, to my most beloved enemy. Jim.”

  letters to thirteen literary critics: The letter to Macdonald is dated 5-5-59; the rest are dated 5-11-59.

  supportive reviews: F. W. Dupee, “The American Norman Mailer,” Commentary, February 1960; Leslie Fiedler, “Antic Mailer—Portrait of a Middle-Aged Artist,” New Leader, 6-25-60; Irving Howe, “A Quest for Peril,” PR, Winter 1960; Alfred Kazin, “How Good Is Norman Mailer?,” Reporter, 11-26-59.

  “the avenger”: AFM, 488.

  “proud, aggressive”: Ibid., 494.

  “Sergius is the hipster”: Andrew Gordon, An American Dreamer: A Psychoanalytic Study of the Fiction of Norman Mailer (Rutherford, NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1980), 113–28.

  “You dirty little Jew”: AFM, 502.

  “whole life is a lie”: Ibid.

  “literary seriousness”: Alfred Kazin to NM, 5-21-59.

  “the single most unattractive”: NM to Kazin, 5-26-59.

  “a fantastically courageous book”: Diana Trilling to NM, 9-2-59.

  “is a bit obsessed with Hemingway”: NM to Diana Trilling, 9-23-59.

  “A man is nothing”: NM to Lois Wilson, 5-4-59.

  wrote to a New York hotel: NM to Hotel Taft, 5-29-59.

  “once in a while I think”: NM to Wilson, 6-26-59.

  “was very much a Mailer”: NM to Dave Kessler, 10-5-59.

  “Dear Lady (with the light)”: NM to Lois Wilson, 11-6-59.

  notably strong reviews: See earlier list of supportive reviews and Harry T. Moore, “The Targets Are Square,” NYTBR, 11-1-58; Kenneth Tynan, untitled review of AFM, VV, 11-18-59; “The Crack-Up,” Time, 11-2-59.

  The insight Mailer remembered: In 1964, NM quoted Kazin’s “very funny” remark, and said the tendency he noted came from trying to compensate for “a certain flatness” in his style (Marcus, CNM, 89).

  “was forged”: Preface, Advertisements for Myself (NY: Berkley, 1976), v–vii.

  “a fun evening”: MK, The Good, the Bad, and the Dolce Vita, 143.

  “in a kind of drunken”: Baldwin, “The Black Boy Looks at the White Boy,” Nobody Knows My Name, 234.

  “a surrogate for Norman”: MBM, 201.

  “Styron wrote the prettiest”: MK, The Good, the Bad, and the Dolce Vita, 144.

  “started twitching”: MBM, 201.

  “kept a copy”: Ibid.

  “First Mailer came out”: Ibid., 202.

  “Well, if this was going”: Baldwin, “The Black Boy Looks at the White Boy,” 236.

  “I think I–probably”: MBM, 203.

  “because it dramatizes”: John Aldridge to NM, 11-15-59.

  “the particular lucidity”: NM to John Aldridge, 12-1-59.

  persistent detractors: See Aldridge’s essay “William Styron and the Derivative Imagination,” Time to Murder and Create: The Contemporary Novel in Crisis (NY: McKay, 1966), 30–51.

  “You call him”: Plimpton, Shadow Box, 260.

  “We’re pretending”: Ibid., 263.

  “both scared and excited”: Ibid., 264.

  “because I’ve been talking”: NM to Lucid, 12-29-59.

  writing blurbs: NM wrote approximately 150 blurbs over the course of his life. See Matthew Hinton, “Advertisements for Others: The Blurbs of Norman Mailer,” MR (2010), 452–61.

  “entirely possible”: Alfred Kazin, “The Jew as Modern American Writer,” Introduction, The Commentary Reader, ed. Norman Podhoretz (NY: Atheneum, 1966), xxiv.

  SEVEN: A FELONIOUS ASSAULT AND AN AMERICAN DREAM

  In addition to sources noted below, the following were drawn on: “Fan’s Memoir”; JML’s “Mailer Log”; JML’s unpublished interviews with NM and BW. NM’s letters are located at the HRC.

  “Superman Comes to the Supermarket”: Esquire, November 1960; rpt., PP, 25–57. Esquire publisher Arnold Gingrich changed the last word of the essay’s title to “Supermart,” angering Mailer. The original was restored when it was reprinted in PP.

  Gore Vidal’s review: “The Norman Mailer Syndrome,” Nation, 1-2-60; rpt., Vidal, United States: Essays, 1952–1992, 31–40.

  “honorable”: Ibid., 40.

  “Great Golfer”: Ibid., 31.

  “a Bolingbroke”: Ibid., 39.

  “create not arguments”: Ibid., 38.

  “a born cocktail-party”: Ibid., 34.

  “a swelling, throbbing”: Ibid., 36.

  “the American president”: Ibid., 39.

  “His drive seems”: Ibid., 35.

  “very dangerous”: Ibid., 34.

  some mild rejoinders: NM, “The Shiny Enemies,” letter to the editor, Nation, 1-30-60, 2.

  “I think he was having”: AM, The Last Party, 282.

  garnet crucifix: Ibid., 285.

  “since I came on”: Ibid., 293.

  “steadily digging the grave”: Ibid., 294.

  “Norman glared at me”: Ibid.

  “lead in the direction”: NM to Yamanishi, 3-13-60.

  full-pa
ge advertisement: “What is Really Happening in Cuba?,” NYT, 4-6-60, L33.

  “the first and greatest”: PP, 67–68.

  met in Cuba: NM and NCM visited Cuba in 1989 and had a private meeting with Castro.

  “An Open Letter to Fidel Castro”: Mailer added a letter to Kennedy, and changed the title to “An Open Letter to JFK and Fidel Castro” when it was published in the VV, 4-27-61; rpt., PP, 63–79.

  “Back in December”: PP, 67.

  “I met him once”: Notes for AON (HRC).

  “very astute”: MBM, 207.

  “exploding all ever”: Ibid., 20.

  “I had read his pronouncement”: Ibid., 208.

  senators, were actively challenging: See early chapters of Robert Caro’s Lyndon Johnson: The Passage of Power (NY: Knopf, 2012).

  “a well-to-do”: Oriana Fallaci, The Egoists: Sixteen Surprising Interviews (Chicago: Regnery, 1968), 1–18.

  “characteristic quality”: PP, 48.

  essay on Picasso: “An Eye on Picasso,” Provincetown Annual, August 1960; rpt., AFM, 461–62, and Beat Coast East: An Anthology of Rebellion, ed. Stanley Fisher (NY: Excelsior, 1960).

  Seymour Krim: An important essayist and editor, Krim (1922–1989) is often linked with the beat movement. NM wrote the foreword to his first collection, Views of a Nearsighted Cannoneer (NY: Excelsior, 1961).

  summers of the early 1960s: AM, The Last Party, 307–20; MLT, 290–99; Tim McCarthy, “Mailer Gets Moral,” Life in Provincetown, 8-14-03, 10; Joseph P. Kahn, “Our Town,” Boston Globe Magazine.

  “wild, absolutely wild”: Tim McCarthy, “Mailer Gets Moral,” Life in Provincetown.

  “At least ten times”: Joseph Kahn, “Our Town,” Boston Globe Magazine.

  Roger Donoghue: Douglas Martin, “Roger Donoghue, 75, Boxer and Brando’s ‘Waterfront’ Trainer, Dies,” NYT, 8-25-06, C10.

  “I sometimes thought”: AM, The Last Party, 314.

  “I’ve always loved the Irish”: Vincent Canby, “When Irish Eyes Are Smiling, It’s Norman Mailer,” NYT, 10-27-68; rpt., CNM, 139–44.

  “a drinker with writing problems”: Gerry Coughlan and Martin Hughes, Irish Language and Culture (Australia: Lonely Planet, 2007), 116.

  “blessed”: AON, 47.

  arriving at the apartment with Behan: JML interview with Susan Mailer, 9-5-07.

  “taxi, taxi”: Dwight Macdonald wrote the best account: “Massachusetts vs. Mailer,” Discriminations: Essays & Afterthoughts, introduction by NM (Cambridge, MA: Da Capo, 1985), 194–209.