“I was afraid”: “A Letter from Provincetown,” New York Post Magazine, 7-3-60, 5.
“The only political writing”: MBM, 209.
“The Democrats fascinated him”: Ibid., 208.
“I know how”: Ibid., 209.
“the day I saw”: Ibid.
“I had an epiphany”: MLT, 305.
“prefabricated politics”: Transcript of Mailer’s America (French documentary, 1998), 9-29-09, Tape 4, 4.
“deliberate political intention”: Auchincloss and Lynch, CNM, 50.
“It was much better”: MBM, 209.
“Sweating like a goat”: PP, 84–85.
Accompanied by Gore Vidal: Vidal, Palimpsest, 374–78.
“altogether meaningful”: PP, 46–47.
“at that time in his life”: MBM, 210–11.
“After I saw the Kennedys”: PP, 87.
“When it came out”: MBM, 213.
“It made an enormous”: Ibid.
“set the tone”: Ibid.
“a vague memory”: MLT, 303.
“I never dreamed”: Jacqueline Kennedy to NM, 10-24-60.
“The Kennedy cortege”: PP, 37–38.
“Sergius O’Shaugnessy born rich”: PP, 44.
a great many Irish: Sean Abbott, “Mailer Goes to the Mountain,” At Random, Spring/Summer 1997, 50.
“Since the First World War”: PP, 38.
“The night Kennedy”: Ibid., 60–61.
“cool conclusion”: Ibid., 88–89.
“sober, the apotheosis”: Ibid., 59.
“I hate you”: NM to Capote, 8-11-60.
Harold L. “Doc” Humes: Harold L. Humes Wikipedia entry.
The Underground City: (NY: Random House, 1958).
Citizens’ Emergency Committee: MLT, 306–8.
Richard “Lord” Buckley: Lord Buckley Wikipedia entry.
“one of the few people”: NM, quoted in Doc (2008), an Independent Lens documentary about Humes, made by his daughter, Immy Humes.
made him fantasize: PP, 87.
“I wanted to be an advisor”: Transcript, (French documentary) Mailer’s America, 9-29-99, Tape 4, 5.
“some drinks and dinner”: Joseph Roddy, “The Latest Model Mailer,” Look, 5-27-69; rpt., CNM, 148.
“was grim-faced”: MBM, 219.
“this insane, cruel, rapacious”: NM, foreword, Seymour Krim, Views of a Nearsighted Cannoneer, 6.
“I think he even described”: MLT, 309.
instructed Rembar: NM to Rembar, 10-18-60.
“You print nice stuff”: NM, “A Farewell to His Honor,” Esquire, January 1961, 15.
flurry of letters: NM to Allen, 10-28-60; NM to Kempton, 10-26-60; NM to Krim, 10-26-60; NM to Edd, 10-28-60.
“it is necessary”: NM to Walter Kahnert, 10-28-60.
“Naked Lunch is a book”: NM to Ginsberg, 10-28-60.
“tragic”: NM to Arthur Schlesinger Jr., 10-28-60.
“Kennedy’s Wagnerian vision”: NM to John L. Saltonstall Jr., 10-28-60.
In undated letters: The letters to Brosnan, Cheever, Spender, and Eliot can be dated contextually to the beginning of November 1960.
Jim Brosnan: A major league pitcher from 1954 to 1963, Brosnan (b. 1929), wrote several baseball memoirs, the most important being The Long Season (NY: Harper’s, 1960).
John Cheever: One of the greatest American short story writers, Cheever (1912–82) also wrote several major novels, including The Wapshot Chronicle (1958), which won the National Book Award. “The Death of Justina” was collected in The Stories of John Cheever (NY: Knopf, 1978). NM did not meet him until 1963.
Stephen Spender: British poet, essayist, and editor, Spender (1909–95), was literary editor of Encounter from 1953 to 1966.
T. S. Eliot: NM never met Eliot (1888–1965), who was at the pinnacle of his international fame in the 1960s, but was familiar with his poetry.
“There’s a man”: NM to Jacqueline Kennedy, 11-3-60.
“a fair climax”: PP, 87–88.
“smashed the limits”: Ibid., 88.
Mailer called a meeting: “MINUTES OF MEETING WITH ‘DISSENT’ PEOPLE, 11/5/60, ON RUNNING MAILER FOR MAYOR ON A NEW PARTY IN NEW YORK.” The note taker of this five-page typed document is not identified (HRC).
“What’s the matter”: AM, The Last Party, 340–41.
“I thought I was unique”: Irma Kurtz, “Mailer: I’ve Always Been an Apostle of Freedom,” Nova Magazine (March 1969), 107.
arrested at Birdland: “Norman Mailer in Tiff,” NYT, 11-15-60.
“terribly philosophical”: Auchincloss and Lynch, CNM, 43.
occasional toke: Ibid., 47.
“I think he’s going to last”: Ibid., 49.
rough diary: “Sequence from Tuesday—2 days before Providence,” NM’s seventeen-page typed account based on handwritten notes taken during the period (HRC).
Noel Parmentel Jr.: Parmentel (b. 1927) was a clever satirist who wrote for both the left-wing Nation and the right-wing National Review. His books include Folk Songs for Conservatives, with Marshall J. Dodge III (NY: Unicorn, 1964). NM remained friendly with him through the 1960s.
reading at Brown: Richard Holbrooke (1941–2010), later President Obama’s special envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan, wrote “Mailer Directs Group Tour of Mailer World,” Brown Daily Herald, 11-18-60, 1, 4. Ellen Shaffer wrote a story on NM’s visit for the Brown Daily, and sent a copy to Norman Podhoretz, who passed it on to NM. Her published article has not been located.
“I thought I had God’s message”: “PPA Press Conference,” Publishers Weekly, 3-22-65, 44.
the party, stabbing, and Bellevue: The following were drawn on: PP, 63–64; TOT, 384–85; MG, 257–63; NM, “Sequence from Tuesday”; JML’s “Mailer Log”; JML interviews with NM, BW, MK, Jason Epstein, Robert Silvers, Susan Mailer, Danielle Mailer, Betsy Mailer, and Anna Lou Humes; AM, The Last Party, 348–63; MK, The Good, the Bad, and the Dolce Vita, 178–81; Podhoretz, Ex-Friends, 200–203; LNM, 135–44; MBM, 215–32, MLT, 310–35; Brock Brower, Other Loyalties, 110–13, 128–29; James Atlas, “Life with Mailer,” NYTM; Benjamin DeMott, “Docket No. 15883,” American Scholar 30, Spring 1961, 232–37; “Of Time and the Rebel,” Time, 12-5-60, 16–17; brief articles in NYT, New York Post, New York Herald Tribune, New York Daily News, AP, and UPI, and summaries of many of the newspaper stories in NM’s FBI file (HRC).
“he was truly”: MLT, 311–12.
“was in a strange zone”: MK, The Good, the Bad, and the Dolce Vita, 179.
“It was a spooky evening”: MBM, 221.
“To my eternal shame”: MLT, 314.
“I don’t know anything”: MBM., 221–22.
“There was a lot of bad”: Ibid., 222.
“It has been quite apparent”: “The Lyons Den,” New York Post, 11-23-60, 27.
“I wish you’d hit me”: Brock Brower, Other Loyalties, 110.
“Aja toro, aja”: AM, The Last Party, 349.
Evelyn Waugh: Mark Amory, the editor of The Letters of Evelyn Waugh (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1980), wrote to NM in August 1978 to check on the veracity of Waugh’s claim that NM had tried to cut his wife’s throat.
George Plimpton: Plimpton told Peter Manso that NM used a kitchen knife (MLT, 313).
alleged that scissors: Oliver Burkeman, in his profile of NM (Guardian, 2-5-02), stated that NM used scissors.
claimed Mailer had shot her: The anonymous writer of “Norman Conquest: Norman Mailer Takes on Picasso” (St. Paul Pioneer Press, 11-4-95) states that NM shot Adele.
“always a take-charge guy”: JML interview with Anna Lou Humes Aldrich, 12-17-10.
“zombielike” state: MLT, 315.
“He didn’t say anything”: “Of Time and the Rebel,” Time, 12-5-60, 16.
“He looked haggard”: AM, The Last Party, 356–57.
“That first unmanageable cell”: The poem appeared in DFL, no pagination; rpt., MG, 85.
“Christ, I thought”: MK, The Good, the Bad, and
the Dolce Vita, 179–80.
“The knife to a juvenile”: MBM, 224.
“In my opinion Norman Mailer”: “Norman Mailer Sent to Bellevue,” NYT, 11-23-60, 26.
“I refuse to answer”: Leeds Moberly, “Hold Norman Mailer in Stabbing of Wife,” New York Daily News, 11-23-60.
Kemp, a young man: Eat of Me, I Am the Savior (NY: Morrow, 1972). NM called it “a bold novel which takes many chances and succeeds.”
“So long/as/you/use/a/knife”: The poem appeared twice in DFL, but NM chose not to reprint it in MG. Many commentators assume that NM was writing about the stabbing of Adele, yet in PP (145), he states that “I wasn’t trying to reveal my private life in that poem. I was trying to crystallize a paradox.” In his January 1968 Playboy interview with Paul Carroll, he says, “I was really thinking about a long conversation I had with a man who stabbed his brother. . . . Once something crystallizes, you have to be ruthless about presenting it; it doesn’t matter who gets hurt, starting with yourself.”
“not psychotic”: “Norman Mailer Is Found Sane,” NYT, 12-10-60.
“My husband and I”: Benjamin DeMott, “Docket No. 15883,” American Scholar, 232.
“I really couldn’t say”: Normand Poirier, “Mailer: ‘I Don’t Worry About It,’ ” New York Post, 1-31-61.
“because he feared”: “Norman Mailer Admits Guilt in Stabbing of Wife,” NYT, 3-10-61, 56.
“I gamble on human beings”: “Judge Gives Mailer a Break,” New York Mirror, 5-11-61, 5.
Signed by eight writers: “Letters: Norman Mailer,” Time, 12-12-60.
“a fine thing to do”: Christopher Hitchens, “Interview with Norman Mailer,” New Left Review, 122–23.
“I walked into the room”: Marie Brenner, “Mailer Goes Egyptian,” New York, 32–33.
“the bosom”: AM, The Last Party, 372.
“a lousy wife”: Jones to Burroughs Mitchell, 12-19-60, in To Reach Eternity, 293.
“Letter written in psycho ward”: MLT, 329.
“My boy’s a genius”: not located.
“I saved his neck”: AM, The Last Party, 369–74.
“It affected me”: JML interview with Susan Mailer, 9-5-07.
“I was maybe four or five”: JML interview with Danielle Mailer, 8-20-08.
I let God down: JML in conversation with Betsy Mailer, 9-20-05.
I think there was: JML interview with Betsy Mailer, 11-29-11.
“comes from the fact”: Andrew O’Hagan and E. J. Camp, “The Martyrdom of Mailer,” Guardian Weekend, 8-30-97, 14.
“One got out of Bellevue”: PP, 64.
“Through the years”: TOT, 384–85.
“I lost any central”: Brock Brower, Other Loyalties, 111.
“a good deal”: Ibid., 111–12.
“A decade’s anger”: James Atlas, “Life with Mailer,” NYTM, 94.
“damaged in a lot”: JML interview with Danielle Mailer, 8-20-08.
“You know, my mother”: JML interview with Betsy Mailer, 11-29-11.
“I was trapped”: AM, The Last Party, 376.
“I want my book”: Anne Kingston, The Meaning of Wife: A Provocative Look at Women and Marriage in the Twenty-first Century (Toronto: HarperCollins, 2003), 180.
“reduced his drinking”: “Norman Mailer Goes Free in Knifing Case,” NYT, 11-14-61, 45.
“explosively”: Introduction, Deaths for the Ladies (and Other Disasters) (NY: New American Library, 1971), no pagination. The introduction did not appear in the first, hardcover edition of the collection (NY: Putnam’s, 1962), the source for all the poems in this chapter. NM reprinted the introduction in EE, 198–204.
few reviews: Time, 3-30-62, 84. Simon: Hudson Review, Autumn 1962; Swenson: Poetry, May 1963, 124–25; Lanham: VV, 7-5-62; Rodman: NYTBR, 7-8-62; Macdonald: Commentary, August 1962, 169–72.
an interlude: “Two Bucks—20 Dances,” Newsweek, 3-12-62, 104.
“way of digging myself”: Introduction, DFL.
Vidal’s apartment: Fred Kaplan, Gore Vidal: A Biography (NY: Doubleday, 1999), 548.
“The night I met him”: MBM, 237.
Jeanne Louise Campbell’s background: Alan Brinkley, The Publisher: Henry Luce and His American Century (NY: Knopf, 2010); Anne Chisholm and Michael Davie, Lord Beaverbrook: A Life (NY: Knopf, 1993); Janet Aitken Kidd, The Beaverbrook Girl (London: Collins, 1987); Rosemary Mahoney, “Powerful Attractions,” NYTM, 12-30-07, 26; Jeanne Campbell, “Jeanne Campbell Interviews Her Former Husband,” London Evening Standard, 10-19-70, 17.
“very attractive”: Kaplan, Gore Vidal, 549.
“some idea of possibly”: Ibid.
“I had never gone”: Ibid.
“the hate book”: Rosemary Mahoney, “Powerful Attractions,” NYTM, 26.
her reaction to her background: JML interview with Kate Mailer, 3-11-13.
“The Lady and I”: NM to MK, 5-17-61.
different magazines: “Gourmandise” and “Eternities,” New Yorker, 9-16-61, 11-11-61, respectively; five poems appeared in Atlantic, January 1962; PR turned down sixteen poems he submitted; several appeared in VV.
“Some of the best”: NM to Don Carpenter, 5-12-61.
“We had both been extremists”: Jeanne Campbell, “Jeanne Campbell Interviews Her Former Husband,” London Evening Standard, 17.
“one full heart-clot”: OFM, 3.
“Hemingway constituted”: Ibid., 4.
the father of modern: Barbara Probst Solomon, “A Conversation with Norman Mailer,” Horse-Trading and Ecstasy (NY: North Point, 1989), 145.
“I keep thinking of John Gardner’s”: SA, 120.
“doubly depressing”: Alfred G. Aronowitz and Peter Hamill, Ernest Hemingway: The Life and Death of a Man (NY: Lancer, 1961), 20.
“the most difficult death”: PP, 103. Except for the comparison with Saint Thomas (AON, 105), NM’s comments on Hemingway, including on his style, are taken from SA and CNM, both of which are indexed.
“damn depressing”: Alfred G. Aronowitz and Peter Hamill, Ernest Hemingway, 20.
“There is a no-man’s”: PP, 104–5.
“so articulate”: Leslie Fiedler, “An Almost Imaginary Interview: Hemingway in Ketchum,” PR (September 1962); rpt., A Fiedler Reader (NY: Stein & Day, 1977), 162.
“The Big Bite”: NM’s Esquire column ran from November 1962 through December 1963.
“The Metaphysics of the Belly”: First published in PP, 277–302; rpt., CAC, 262–305. Two other self-interviews, “The Political Economy of Time” and “The First Day’s Interview,” appeared in tandem with “The Metaphysics of the Belly” in CAC. The latter was first published in Paris Review, Summer/Fall 1961, NM’s first piece there, and was also reprinted in part in PP, 245–60.
“an introductory chapter”: Michael Mailer, “Mailer on Mailer,” Time Out, 10-11-95, 20–23.
Mailer: Postulate a modern: CAC, 269–71.
“the Beast”: AON, 21–22.
publication in England: AFM’s British publication date was 10-29-61.
accept the evisceration: The full text was restored in the 1968 Panther paperback edition.
“this draping of breasts”: NM to Deutsch, 5-6-61.
sipping Scotch: “Peter Underwood Meets Norman Mailer,” British Books, November 1961, 12–15.
“a combination of Brendan Behan”: W. J. Weatherby, “The Pursuit of Experience,” Manchester Guardian, 9-28-61, 14.
“hotch-potch”: W. G. Smith, “Young American Rebel: An Interview with Norman Mailer,” Books and Bookmen, November 1961, 28.
Richard Wollheim: A major figure in the study of philosophical aesthetics, Wollheim (1923–2003) coined the term “minimal art.” In his interview, “Living Like Heroes” (New Statesman, 9-29-61; rpt., CNM, 65–68), he draws out NM on violence as well as anyone ever has.
“can literally recreate himself”: Wollheim, CNM, 65.
“had killed 500,000”: Ibid., 66.
“There’s a psychic poverty”: Ibid., 68.
millennia
l promise: See Wenke’s Mailer’s America, 237–39 and passim for a thoughtful discussion of NM’s focus on this lapsed ideal.
“Mrs. Kidd’s Ball”: Evelyn Waugh to Ann Fleming, 9-23-61, in Mark Amory, ed., The Letters of Evelyn Waugh, 572.
“The horse did bite”: NM to Amory, 9-5-78.
“a detestation of all”: Transcript: “Colin MacInnes Interviewing Norman Mailer” (HRC).
Time reported: “Customs: Instant Fad,” Time, 10-20-61.
“a nice knife job”: NM to Don Carpenter, 10-23-61.
house in Bucks County: NM to MK, 11-11-61.
“I always suffer”: NM to Don Carpenter, 12-9-61.
“lucky”: NM to Grant, 12-9-61.
“I suppose I suffer”: NM to William Watson, 8-5-61.
“I wonder how it is”: http://bernews.com/2010/12/historical/photos/president/kennedy-in-bermuda/.
“I’ll be a bachelor”: NM to MK, 12-9-61.
book on Castro: NM to Emile Capouya, 11-7-61.
“old honey bun”: NM to Randolph Churchill, 1-2 (?)-62.
“are still together”: NM to MK, 1-8-62.
Felker contacted him: NM to A. C. Spectorsky, 8-10-62.
end his feud: PP, 92.
harsh critique: “The Devolution of Democracy,” Dissent, Winter 1962, 6–22.
Paul Goodman: In AON (33), NM noted his admiration for Growing Up Absurd (NY: Random House, 1969), and the generally positive influence of Goodman (1911–72) on college students.
“because his style”: “A COMMENT BY NORMAN MAILER” was written in early January 1962.
“delivered exactly to the jugular”: AON, 32.
as he said in the essay: “An Evening with Jackie Kennedy,” Esquire, July 1962; rpt., PP, 81–98, with a new title, “The Existential Heroine: An Evening with Jackie Kennedy, or, The Wild West of the East”—not “Wild Witch” as it has been mistakenly titled.
“One’s presence was not”: PP, 92.
“surprisingly thin”: Ibid., 86.
“attack on the flag”: Ibid., 81.
“And I could see”: George, Being George, ed. Nelson Aldrich Jr. (NY: Random House, 2008), 181–82.
asked Richard Goodwin: Podhoretz, Ex-Friends, 208.
“So, Norman”: MLT, 475.
“Because my father”: Jerry Tallmer, “At Home with Lady Jean [sic] Campbell,” New York Post Magazine, 4-8-72, 33.
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