Norman Mailer

by J. Michael Lennon

  “I was absolutely”: Ibid., 34.

  “There were only”: Ibid., 60.

  The Young Hitler I Knew: (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1954).

  Hitler’s Youth: Translated by Lawrence Wilson (London: Hutchinson, 1958).

  books on apiary science: Karl von Frisch, Bees: Their Vision, Chemical Senses, and Language (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1950); Maurice Maeterlinck, The Life of the Bee (NY: Dodd, Mead, 1919).

  American Tragedy: (NY: Random House, 1996).

  a four-hour miniseries: Produced by Lawrence Schiller and Lyn Raynor; directed by Schiller; broadcast on 11-15-00.

  “My old friend”: Blurb on jacket of American Tragedy.

  Simpson went to court: Jason Gay, “Norman Mailer to CBS: You Blew It!,” New York Observer, 11-27-00.

  “I have not told”: NM to Morton Yanow, 3-24-99.

  “The pleasure of writing”: Ibid.

  Conversations of Goethe with Johann Peter Ekermann: (San Francisco: North Point, 1984).

  a collection of these: NM abandoned this project when his publisher said the contents had no unifying theme.

  Love Letters: (NY: Plume, 1990).

  Zelda, Scott, & Ernest: Unpublished.

  A Moveable Feast: (NY: Scribner’s, 1964).

  Save Me the Waltz: (NY: Scribner’s, 1932).

  “Norris can be Zelda”: Michael Lee, “The Lost Generation Will Be Found in Provincetown,” Cape Cod Voice, 9-27-01, 43.

  “This should be”: Ibid., 43.

  “I’m safe from becoming”: Sue Harrison, “Norman & Norris Are Acting Up,” Provincetown Banner, 9-20-01.

  “damn interesting”: Debbie Forman, “Norman and Norris Seem Letter Perfect for Roles of Literary Legends Who Lived Large,” Cape Cod Times, 9-15-01.

  “I’m not much like”: Sue Harrison, “Norman & Norris Are Acting Up,” Provincetown Banner.

  “always made me feel”: Debbie Forman, “Norman and Norris Seem Letter Perfect,” Cape Cod Times.

  “makes you want to cry”: Lawrence Shainberg, “History Looking at Itself: On the Road with the Mailers and George Plimpton,” Norman Mailer’s Later Fictions: Ancient Evenings Through Castle in the Forest, ed. John Whalen-Bridge (Basingstoke, England: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010), 166.

  “sometimes nasty”: Ibid., 167.

  “Norris and I”: Ibid., 169.

  “Well, he finally”: Sean Abbott, “Norman Mailer on Literary Instincts and Ambitions,” At Random.

  third FBI agent: ABC News, February 20, 2001.

  “I am either insanely”: Schiller, Into the Mirror, xv.

  “possibly the worst intelligence”: Elaine Shannon, “More Questions about the FBI’s Hanssen Homework,” Time, 5-7-02.

  “No one can understand”: NM to Bonnie Hanssen, 4-5-02.

  “terribly affected”: NM and Dotson Rader, “The Devil’s Big Day,” Sunday Times Magazine (London), 9-08-02, 40.

  “That only happens”: Ann Treneman, “ ‘Ruin More Beautiful than the Building,’ ” Times (London), 9-13-01.

  “Being up in Provincetown”: NM and Dotson Rader, “The Devil’s Big Day,” Sunday Times Magazine (London), 40.

  “an architectural monstrosity”: Ibn Warraq, “The Assassination of President John F. Kennedy, 9/11 and the Apologists of Islamic Terrorism,” New English Review, March 2009.

  “cultural oppressors”: Ann Treneman, “Ruin More Beautiful than the Building,” Times (London).

  “We small Austrians”: Shainberg, 163–4.

  Why Are We at War?: (NY: Random House, 2003).

  “Presented with the cache”: SA, 309.

  The Spooky Art: (NY: Random House, 2003).

  Kuzma, who had advised Abbott: Robert F. Worth, “Jailhouse Author Helped by Mailer Is Found Dead,” NYT, 2-11-02.

  “Everybody hated him”: JML interview with William Majeski, 4-23-12.

  “But it’s not something”: Robert F. Worth, “Jailhouse Author Helped by Mailer Is Found Dead,” NYT.

  “That’s the third person”: Bill Hutchinson, “Killer-Author Hangs Himself in Upstate Jail,” New York Daily News, 2-11-02.

  “I am happy”: Robert F. Worth, “Jailhouse Author Helped by Mailer Is Found Dead,” NYT.

  “His life was tragic”: Ibid.

  “like they were from different”: TC, 366.

  Norris thought that Vidal: Ibid.

  “wild and wooly week”: Ibid., 368.

  Man and Superman: Shaw’s play was first staged in London in 1905, but it was not performed in its entirety until 1915.

  “Norman, when I walk”: TC, 368–69.

  “the reading flowed”: Carol Beggy, “Mailer and Vidal Reunite Harmoniously at a Provincetown Benefit Reading,” Boston Globe, 10-14-02.

  “almost as good”: Barbara Lane interview, Commonwealth, 4-15-03, 22. The interview accompanies Mailer’s speech to the Commonwealth Club, “Only in America.”

  his grave, his will his epitaph: NM wanted to be buried in Provincetown; had his will made; and gave Michael Lee two possible epitaphs: “He may have been a fool, but he did his best and that can’t be said of all fools”; and Gide’s line: “Please do not understand me too quickly.” Lee, “A Conversation with Norman Mailer.” His family decided on the following quote from DP for his gravestone: “There is that law of life, so cruel and so just, that one must grow or pay more for remaining the same.”

  “after we’d corrupted”: NM to Sal Cetrano, 4-22-02.

  The Castle in the Forest: Published by Random House, January 23, 2007.

  losing only a few months: Christopher Bollen, “Norman Mailer, Writer,” V magazine, 7.

  “pretty much left me”: TC, 172–73.

  “popping nitroglycerine”: TC, 373.

  “keenly perceptive”: Michiko Kakutani, “Quoting Himself on His Lofty Dream,” NYT, 1-22-03, EI, E9.

  “Writers aren’t taken seriously”: SA, 163.

  “for his alertness”: James Campbell, “Don’t Put Your Wife in a Novel,” NYTBR, 2-23-03, 8.

  “broke ground for every memoirist”: Ron Rosenbaum, “Mailer Was the Rage,” New York Observer, 2-10-03, 1, 8.

  “outrageous an egoist”: Alfred Kazin, “The Trouble He’s Seen,” NYTBR, 5-5-68; rpt., JML, ed., Critical Essays on Norman Mailer, 60–65.

  “At his most engaging”: Walter Goodman, “Mailer Plugs Himself Instead of His Book,” NYT, 1-24-92, C28.

  letter to the publisher: NM to Arthur Ochs Sulzberger Jr., 3-24-03.

  The Times acknowledged this error: NYT, Metropolitan Desk/Corrections, 4-9-03.

  “a posterior aperture”: Barbara Lane, interview with NM, Commonwealth 22.

  “I really didn’t have”: Christopher Bigsby, “Alarm Calls for American Dreamers,” Independent, 10.

  “economic gluttony”: NM, Speech at Commonwealth Club, “Only in America,” 15.

  “I know I’m going”: Christopher Bigsby, 10.

  “manic money-grab”: “Only in America,” 15–16.

  “envisioned the United States”: Ibid., 17.

  dangers of empire: Taki Theocoracopolos, Kara Hopkins, and Scott McConnell, “I Am Not for World Empire,” American Conservative, 12-2-02, 8–18.

  Dreaming War: (NY: Thunder’s Mouth Press/Nation Books, 2002).

  triumphant arrival: President Bush landed on the deck of the USS Abraham Lincoln (CVN 72) on 5-1-03.

  “The White Man Unburdened”: NYRB, 7-17-03, 4–6.

  “I’m still trying”: NM to Thomas de Zengotita, 8-4-03.

  Giving interviews: NM was interviewed on Bush and Iraq in June 2003 by Gabriel Contreras for Lateral, a Spanish literary magazine (not located); and on 11-15-02 by Mark Olshaker on the occasion of receiving the John P. McGovern Medal in Literature by the Cosmos Club Foundation in Washington, D.C.

  “a touch of the very edge”: Yvonne Shafer, “The Mailers and Long Day’s Journey into Night,” www.eoneill.com/reviews/journey_provincetown_shafer.htm.

  Cheap Diamonds: (NY: Random House, 2007).r />
  busy for three months: Dwayne Raymond, Mornings with Mailer (NY: Harper Perennial, 2010), 53.

  Modest Gifts: (NY: Random House, 2003).

  “Guy’s eighty now”: Philip Roth, Exit Ghost (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2007), 255.

  “Urination had become”: Nelson Aldrich Jr., George, Being George (NY: Random House, 2008), 374–75.

  “He was in dire need”: JML interview with Susan Mailer, 8-18-11.

  Norman Mailer Society: Ron Rosenbaum was the keynote speaker at the first society meeting in Brooklyn, 11-1-03, followed by a party at NM’s apartment.

  review of Beyond the Law: William Kennedy, “Mailer Is onto Something with His Second Film,” Albany Times-Union, 10-1-68, 20.

  “and he didn’t look like a bum”: JML interview with William Kennedy, 8-5-11.

  “Kennedy: I soon realized”: “Norman Mailer as Occasional Commentator”: MR (2007), 23–26.

  read from the Hitler novel: NM read on, 5-1-07.

  “Legs Diamond”: Legs (NY: Coward, McCann & Geoghegan, 1975) was the first volume of William Kennedy’s Albany series.

  biographies of Grigory: The first and most important is René Fülöp-Miller, Rasputin: The Holy Devil (NY: Viking, 1928); after Mailer finished CIF, he was also impressed with Brian Moynahan, Rasputin: The Saint Who Sinned (NY: Random House, 1997).

  “delicate Kennedyites”: Doris Kearns Goodwin, Lyndon Johnson and the American Dream: (NY: Harper & Row, 1976), 223.

  “I felt he respected”: JML interview with Doris Kearns and Richard Goodwin, 12-14-11.

  book about Lincoln: Goodwin, Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln (NY: Simon & Schuster, 2005).

  number of additional pieces: “Reflections on Courage, Morality and Sexual Pleasure,” Playboy, December 2004, 86–88, 98, 190–98; “Father to Son: What I’ve Learned About Rage,” New York, 8-9-04, 28–35; “Mailer vs. Mailer,” Stop Smiling, 4-15-05, 38–43, 91.

  Ron Howard, the film’s director: www.thoroughlyrussellcrowe.com.onthisdayin/dec/dec25.html.

  “Baer got spoiled”: “Story Notes for Cinderella Man,” www.amctv.com/movie-blog/2012/05/story-notes-trivia-cinderella-man.php.

  “he has a certain”: Jason Gay, “Norman Mailer Does Street Time,” New York Observer, 1-22-01.

  Tom Staley: Director of the Harry Ransom Center for a quarter of a century, Staley is also a Joyce scholar.

  “The sad truth”: NM to Anne Barry, 3-24-05.

  “I used to pride myself”: James Toback, “A Certain Grim Pleasure,” V Life, December/January 2005, 114.

  Douglas Brinkley: A history professor at Rice University, Brinkley (b. 1960) recently published Cronkite (NY: Harper, 2012).

  sale of Mailer’s papers: Douglas Brinkley, “Mailer’s Miscellany,” NYT, 4-25-05.

  long profile: Douglas Brinkley, “The Last Buccaneer,” Rolling Stone, 6-30-05, 84–95, 162, 166.

  “captured something hard”: Ibid., 90.

  “she’s a threefer”: Ibid., 94.

  “Asiatic” and “Oriental”: Esther Wu to Jann Wenner, 6-25-05; rpt., Lloyd Grove and Hudson Morgan, “Ethnic Group Is Stormin’ over Norman,” New York Daily News, 6-30-05.

  “an excellent example”: Ibid.

  “It’s our point of departure”: OG, 97–98.

  “the sight of Provincetown”: Graydon Carter, ed., Vanity Fair Proust Questionnaire, 131.

  married to Norris for thirty years: Actually they were married almost twenty-five, but both had taken to adding on the five years they lived together.

  read a piece in The Atlantic: Bernard-Henri Lévy, “In the Footsteps of Tocqueville,” Atlantic, November 2005; excerpted from American Vertigo: Travelling America in the Footsteps of Tocqueville (NY: Random House, 2006).

  several errors: See JML, “BHL,” Letters to the Editor, Atlantic, February 2006, 24.

  “Rarely are good novels”: www.nationalbook.org/nbaacceptspeech_nmailer06.html.

  David Ebershoff: NM’s editor for his last four books.

  “a little bit of uneasiness”: JML interview with David Ebershoff, 3-26-10.

  “incredibly digressive”: Ibid.

  “a little work”: Gina Centrello, “Remembering Norman Mailer,” MR (2008), 13–14.

  Khodynskoye Pole: See Stephen Borkowski, “A Tear Shed into a Cup of Sorrow,” MR (2011), 367–69.

  “We went to see him”: JML interview with David Ebershoff, 3-26-10.

  grandchildren: Valentina, Alejandro, and Antonia Colodro (Susan and Marco Colodro); Isabella Moschen (Danielle and Michael Moschen); Christina Marie Nastasi (Betsy and Frank Nastasi), Callan and Theodore Mailer (Stephen and Lindsay Marx); Natasha Lancaster (Kate and Guy Lancaster); Mattie James (Matthew and Salina Sais); Cyrus Force Mailer (Michael and Sasha Lazard); two more grandchildren, Jackson Kingsley Mailer (Matthew and Salina) and Nicholas Maxwell Mailer Wendling (Maggie and John Wendling) were born after NM died.

  grandniece: Eden River Alson (Peter Alson and Alice O’Neill).

  godchildren: Kittredge and Clay Fisher (Ivan and Diane Fisher); Sebastian and Julian Rosthal (Elke Rosthal).

  “the real spirit of Jesus”: BE, 81.

  “We must war against”: Ibid., 74–75.

  “A good novel”: Ibid., 68–69.

  “As a father”: “Relative Values: Norman Mailer and His Son John,” 11-19-06, www.timesonline.co.uk/printfriendly/0,,1-531-2458074-531,00.html.

  “Since the folks have passed”: JML interview with John Buffalo Mailer, 4-24-12.

  “Growing old without cracking”: NM to Ed McAlice, 6-22-06.

  “She has lost”: NM to Gillie Mailer, 6-15-06.

  Take Me to the River: (NY: Simon & Schuster, 2007).

  Michael had gotten married: To Sasha Lazard; Matthew to Salina Sais; Peter to Alice O’Neill; Stephen married Elizabeth Rainer in 2010.

  “The feet can go”: NM to Jim Blake, 6-22-06.

  “he got a million”: TC, 376.

  “essentially rationalistic”: Tom Junod, “The Last Man Standing,” Esquire, January 2007, 131.

  Stephan Morrow: He recounts his involvement with the play in “Norman Mailer: A Requiem,” MR (2008), 149–54.

  Maslin’s blows: “Putting Hitler on the Couch, and Finding Bees,” NYT, 1-19-07.

  “an utterly strange work”: Lee Siegel, “Maestro of the Human Ego,” NTYBR, 1-21-07.

  “Keeping the paradox”: J. M. Coetzee, “Portrait of the Monster as a Young Artist,” NYRB, 2-15-07.

  eleventh best seller: JML, “Norman Mailer’s Best Sellers,” MR (2008), 270–71.

  “We had the end section”: JML questions for Lois Wilson, 11-15-11, conducted by Erin Cressida Wilson.

  “People are going to think”: Raymond, Mornings with Mailer, 150.

  taking a day off: Ibid., 270–71.

  Raymond called Norris: Ibid., 272–74.

  “and you can tell him”: Ibid., 275.

  Mailer told Raymond: Ibid.

  “a perfect visit”: JML questions for Eileen Fredrickson, conducted by Peter Lennon, 10-15-11.

  Hadada Award: www.parisreview.org/audio/5767/presentation-of-the-2007-hadada-award-to-norman-mailer-e-l-doctorow.

  “He couldn’t walk”: TC, 386.

  “We shouldn’t let Dad”: Ibid.

  Peeling the Onion: (NY: Harcourt, 2007).

  “How many of us”: TC, 386.

  “I have held on to”: Timothy Garton Ash, “The Road from Danzig,” NYRB, 8-16-07.

  “I’m happy”: Ibid.

  God Is Not Great: (NY: Twelve, 2007).

  Andrew O’Hagan’s review: “Racing Against Reality,” NYRB, 6-28-07.

  Falling Man: (NY: Scribner’s, 2007).

  “ambition, risk, broad vision”: Don DeLillo to JML, 4-15-10.

  “James Jones is one”: NM to Ray Elliott, 8-3-07.

  “I was in denial”: JML interview with Matthew Mailer, 8-21-08.

  “You must really love me”: TC, 389.

  On God: (NY: Random House, 200
7).

  “Michael finally returned”: Peter Alson, “One More for the Road,” MR (2008), 26–27.

  “Mr. Mailer used his copious talents”: Michiko Kakutani, “A Novelist’s Nonfiction Captured the American Spirit,” NYT, 11-11-07.

  SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY

  Abbott, Jack Henry. In the Belly of the Beast: Letters from Prison. Introduction by Norman Mailer. NY: Random House, 1981.

  Abbott, Jack Henry, and Naomi Zack. My Return. Buffalo, NY: Prometheus, 1987.

  Adams, Henry. The Education of Henry Adams. NY: Modern Library, 1931.

  Adams, Laura. Norman Mailer: A Comprehensive Bibliography. Introduction by Robert F. Lucid. Metuchen, NJ: Scarecrow, 1974.

  ———, ed. Will the Real Norman Mailer Please Stand Up. Port Washington, NY: Kennikat, 1976.

  Aldrich, Nelson, Jr., ed. George, Being George. NY: Random House, 2008.

  Aldridge, John. After the Lost Generation. NY: McGraw Hill, 1951; rpt., Introduction by Norman Mailer. NY: Arbor House, 1985.

  ———. Time to Murder and Create: The Contemporary Novel in Crisis. NY: McKay, 1966.

  Alson, Peter. Take Me to the River. NY: Simon & Schuster, 2007.

  Aronson, Judith. Likenesses: With the Sitters Writing About One Another. Manchester, UK: Lintott, 2010.

  Bailey, Jennifer. Norman Mailer: Quick-Change Artist. London: Macmillan, 1979.

  Baldwin, James. Nobody Knows My Name: More Notes of a Native Son. NY: Dial, 1961.

  Beauvoir, Simone de. The Second Sex. Trans. H. M. Parshley. NY: Knopf, 1953.

  Begiebing, Robert. Acts of Regeneration: Allegory and Archetype in the Works of Norman Mailer. Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1980.

  ———. Toward a New Synthesis: John Fowles, John Gardner, Norman Mailer. Ann Arbor: UMI Research Press, 1989.

  Bloom, Harold, ed. Critical Views: Norman Mailer. Philadelphia: Chelsea House, 2003.

  Bowers, John. The Colony. NY: Dutton, 1971.

  Braudy, Leo. Norman Mailer: A Collection of Critical Essays. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1972.

  Brower, Brock. Other Loyalties: A Politics of Personality. NY: Atheneum, 1968.

  Buber, Martin. Tales of the Hasidim; The Early Masters; The Later Masters (Ten Rungs) Hasidic Sayings. Vols. 1–2. NY: Schocken, 1947–48.

  Buckley, William F., Jr. Rumbles Left and Right. NY: Putnam’s, 1963.

  Budge, E. Wallis. The Egyptian Book of the Dead. NY: Dover, 1967.