Norman Mailer

by J. Michael Lennon

  “not writing the book myself”: Marcus, CNM, 82.

  “brazen, touchy, touching”: Philip H. Bufithis, Norman Mailer (NY: Ungar, 1978), 37.

  hard to miss: MLT, 156.

  “quinine tongue”: BS, 249.

  “Malaquais’s philosophy in Devlin’s body”: MLT, 158.

  “the biggest whang”: BS, 62.

  “would have been a precursor to Women’s Liberation”: Jeffrey Michelson and Sarah Stone, “Ethics and Pornography,” PAP, 123.

  “Here I was”: MBM, 123.

  “was a very strong woman”: Michelson, PAP, 123.

  “she was perfectly prepared”: “I never started drinking until it [Naked] came out.” Frederick Christian, “The Talent and the Torment,” Cosmopolitan, 67.

  “Norman was making”: Brock Brower, Other Loyalties, 126.

  “He listened inside himself”: The Last Tycoon: An Unfinished Novel (NY: Scribner’s, 1941), 95.

  “How could I know”: AM, The Last Party: Scenes from My Life with Norman Mailer (NY: Barricade, 1997), 61.

  “A thriller, a western”: NM to George Landy, 10-29-50.

  “It knocked me down”: Unpublished interview with JML, 10-14-83, excerpted in JML and George Plimpton, “Glimpses: James Jones, 1921–1977,” Paris Review, Summer 1987, 205–36. NM told Barry H. Leeds in 1987, “I always thought that Eternity was a bigger book.” Barry H. Leeds, “A Conversation with Norman Mailer,” The Enduring Vision of Norman Mailer (Bainbridge Island, WA: Pleasure Boat Studio, 2002); rpt., CNM, 374.

  “It’s a big fist”: NM to Burroughs Mitchell, 12-21-50.

  “It always gave me a boost”: AFM, 463.

  “So in a certain sense”: JML and George Plimpton, “Glimpses: James Jones,” Paris Review, 213.

  “incredible explosion”: AM, The Last Party, 68.

  “What I gave”: Ibid., 71.

  “The Meaning of Western Defense”: “Originally titled “The Defence of the Compass,” it appeared in The Western Defences, ed. Sir John George Smythe (London: Wingate, 1951); rpt., AFM, 204–13.

  “the third-rate Eighteenth Brumaire”: NM to Dwight Macdonald, 2-20-51.

  “Western Defense has the ultimate”: AFM, 204.

  “the particular equipment”: NM to Warren Allen Smith, 2-20-51.

  “We had a good marriage”: NM to Dave and Anne Kessler, 4-19-51.

  “liking you immensely”: NM to Lois Wilson, spring 1951.

  “small-beer Nineteen Eighty-Four”: “Last of the Leftists,” Time, 5-28-51, 110.

  “a monolithic, flawless badness”: Anthony West, “East Meets West, Author Meets Allegory,” New Yorker, 6-9-51, 108; Irving Howe, “Some Political Novels,” Nation, 6-16-51, 568–69; Harvey Swados, “Fiction Parade,” New Republic, 6-18-51; 20–21.

  “the most interesting American”: V. S. Pritchett, Bookman, January 1952.

  “a party of two”: Hitchens, “Interview with Norman Mailer,” New Left Review, 119.

  “It’s a political tract”: MBM, 126.

  “But I rather suspect”: NM to JM, 7-20-51.

  consider other occupations: NM thought about becoming a psychoanalyst, going into business or working with his hands (AFM 108–9).

  “an underlying anger”: AM, The Last Party, 85.

  Palm Springs: MK, The Good, the Bad, and the Dolce Vita, 92.

  “Later, he told me”: AM, The Last Party, 88, 93.

  loft party description: MBM, 132–34; MLT, 171–75; AFM, 237; NM to FG, 9-?-1951; AM, The Last Party, 107–9.

  “a mingling of personalities”: AM, The Last Party, 108.

  Provincetown Art Association panel: Provincetown Advocate, 8-16-51, 10.

  “was the nearest thing to Jehovah”: O’Hagan, Paris Review Interviews III, 429.

  Humboldt’s Gift: (NY: Viking, 1975). Macdonald was Bellow’s model for the ineffectual intellectual, Orlando Higgins; Humboldt is based loosely on the poet Delmore Schwartz.

  “the sight of paunchy, aging bodies”: AM, The Last Party, 130.

  “grim apartment”: AFM, 154.

  Vance Bourjaily: Another multitalented World War II veteran, Bourjaily (1922–2010) was friendly with many of NM’s crowd in the 1950s. He wrote a number of novels, including Brill Among the Ruins (1970), which was nominated for a National Book Award.

  After the Lost Generation: (NY: McGraw-Hill, 1951; rpt., NY: Arbor House, 1985).

  “The reviews were depressing”: NM to Bourjaily, 9-5-51.

  “In those days”: NM to Andrew Spear, Christopher Joyal, April 1999.

  film of From Here to Eternity: MBM, 132.

  “the worst writing”: AFM, 107.

  turned out three stories: Collected in AFM.

  “I move ahead”: AFM, 108.

  “The Notebook”: The Berkley Book of Writing, 3, ed. William Phillips and Philip Rahv (NY: Berkley, 1956); rpt., AFM, 150–53.

  “You were just watching”: AM, The Last Party, 110.

  an untitled journal: Unpaginated, approximately twenty pages (HRC).

  Ross had promised: NM to Dave Kessler, 1-7-52.

  “journeyman”: Introduction, The Short Fiction of Norman Mailer (NY: Dell, 1967), 9. He adds that he does not “have the gift to write great stories, or perhaps even very good ones.”

  “an intense need to play Pygmalion”: AM, The Last Party, 102–3.

  “Ah, to live indignant”: Emile Zola, quoted in Philo M. Buck, The World’s Great Age: The Story of a Century’s Search for a Philosophy of Life (NY: Macmillan, 1936).

  FIVE: THE DEER PARK

  In addition to the sources identified below, the following were drawn on: “Fan’s Memoir”; NM’s untitled 1952 journal; JML’s “Mailer Log”; JML’s unpublished interviews with NM and BW. NM’s letters are located in the HRC.

  “dreams or conceives”: AFM, 154.

  “exercises in imagination-isometrics”: Robert F. Lucid, introduction, Norman Mailer: The Man and His Work, ed. Lucid (Boston: Little, Brown, 1971).

  “a small frustrated man”: AFM, 154.

  With encouragement: AFM, 156.

  “The Man Who Studied Yoga”: First published in a collection with the work of others, New Short Novels, 2 (NY: Ballantine, 1956), the story was reprinted in AFM, 157–85.

  “I would introduce myself”: AFM, 157.

  “lies foundered”: AFM, 183, 185.

  epigraph to Mailer’s pleasure novel: The quotation, which concerns “the evil of this dreadful place” of “depravity, debauchery and all the vices,” is taken from Mouffle D’Angerville’s Vie Privée De Louis XV (London: Leyton, 1781). NM first learned of the king’s brothel in an unnamed book about the Marquis de Sade, as he told Walter Kahnert in a letter, 11-20-53.

  Mailer wrote to congratulate: NM to Bea, 4-22-52.

  “agony”: NM to FG, 4-22-52.

  “quiet, witty, sad”: NM to Adeline Naiman, late May 1952.

  “Our Country and Our Culture”: PR, May/June 1952, rpt., AFM, 187–90.

  “I think I ought to declare”: Ibid., 187, 188, 190.

  work within the Democratic Party: Twenty-five Years of Dissent: An American Tradition, ed. Irving Howe (NY: Methuen, 1979), xiv–xv.

  published three pieces: “The Meaning of Western Defense,” Spring 1954; “In Re: Sidney Hook,” Summer 1954; “David Riesman Reconsidered,” Autumn 1954.

  “We did a prodigious amount”: Styron, foreword, To Reach Eternity: The Letters of James Jones, ed. George Hendrick (NY: Random House, 1989), viii–x.

  “At the last bar”: MK, The Good, the Bad, and the Dolce Vita, 89–90.

  “joyously announcing”: Ibid., 89.

  “Moving about”: Styron, foreword, To Reach Eternity, x.

  “I seem unable”: NM to Bea, 6-18-52.

  “seriously fagged”: Ibid.

  “The Paper House”: New World Writing: Second Mentor Collection (NY: New American Library, November 1952); rpt., AFM, 109–22.

  “The Language of Men”: Esquire, April 1953; rpt., AFM, 122–
32.

  “The Dead Gook”: Discovery, 1 (NY: Pocket Books, 1952); rpt., AFM, 132–49.

  “inoffensively general”: Discovery editorial statement, JML files.

  “I’ve been meaning”: NM to Styron, 2-23-53.

  Styron wrote back: Styron to NM, 3-4-53, Selected Letters of William Styron, ed. Rose Styron, with R. Blakeslee Gilpin (NY: Random House, 2012), 170–71.

  The Old Man and the Sea: Life, 9-1-52, and in book form from Scribner’s, 9-8-52.

  “but I just can’t bear his prose”: NM to Lillian Ross, 9-2-52.

  “make his personality enrich”: AFM, 21.

  “one of the few writers”: AFM, 265.

  41 First Avenue: AM, The Last Party, 100–101; MLT, 167–68; NM to Bea, 10-7-52; NM to Natalie? 11-18-52.

  “I don’t think Norman”: AM, The Last Party, 101.

  “overall scheme is so grandiose”: NM to Graham Watson, 9-2-52.

  entertaining Susan: NM to Bea, Steve, 11-17-52.

  some large reservations: NM to Bea, Steve, 12-13-52.

  “So I wrote the report”: MBM, 145-46.

  seventy-six-year-old grandmother: MBM, 146, 153.

  “You have hardly acted”: NM to John W. Aldridge, 1-12-53.

  “reasonable doubt”: The story of the Civil Service Commission allegation and NM’s response is told by his cousin, Charles Rembar, The Law of the Land: The Evolution of Our Legal System (NY: Simon & Schuster, 1980), 370–75.

  flurry of letters: NM to Walter Kahnert, 1-12-53; FG, 1-15-53, 2-12-53, 4-15-53; NM to Dave and Anne Kessler, 2-5-53; NM to Bea, 3-7-53, 4-24-53, 5-22-53; NM to Lindner, 4-15-53; NM to EY, 4-15-53, 5-22-53; NM to Styron, 4-24-52; NM to Tobias Schneebaum, 5-22-53.

  “precisely the courage”: NM to Bea, 2-5-53.

  “top to bottom”: NM to FG, 2-12-53.

  “some sort of evil genius”: Marcus, CNM, 92.

  “common pimp”: “Manners and Morals: A Boy Who Likes Girls,” Time, 8-25-52.

  “steeped in filth”: Thomas P. Ronan, “Ban at Jelke Trial Upheld by Jurist,” NYT, 2-18-53.

  “evil genius”: Marcus, CNM, 92. According to Mia Feroleto, NM may have gotten the name Marion Faye from her mother, Marion Fay, with whom he socialized in the early 1950s. Feroleto said that her mother’s mother had some of the same life experiences as Faye’s mother, Dorothea O’Faye, who was modeled after MK’s friend Lois Andrews.

  “I’ve been rushing”: NM to Styron, 4-24-53.

  “boudoir Pygmalion”: DP, 12.

  “fundamental poverty of imagination”: NM to Styron, 7-24-53.

  “The most powerful leverage”: AFM, 238.

  copy, word for word: JML and George Plimpton, “Glimpses: James Jones,” Paris Review, 215.

  Some Came Running: (NY: Scribner’s, 1958). Jones was forced to abridge the novel for the 1959 New American Library paperback edition because the technology of the day did not allow for such a huge novel.

  “Lowney Handy and Jones”: NM to Styron, 7-24-53.

  “the beautiful, raven-haired woman”: John Bowers, The Colony (NY: Dutton, 1971), 190, 187.

  in “as little as possible”: AM, The Last Party, 143.

  “the music ripped”: Ibid., 147. See also NM’s comments on the New Orleans trip in Mark Binelli, “Norman Mailer,” Rolling Stone, 5-3-07, 69.

  “deep down”: NM to Dan Wolf, 7-28-53.

  “as boffing huts”: NM to Styron, 7-24-53.

  “what with the income tax”: NM to Cy Rembar, 8-22-53.

  “My experience”: NM to Vance Bourjaily, 9-26-53.

  Susan remembers sitting: JML interview with Susan Mailer, 9-5-07.

  “I’m sick of writing it”: NM to Irving Howe, 10-20-53.

  “Ladders to Heaven”: New World Writing, 4 (1953); rpt., as “Novelists and Critics of the 1940s,” Homage to Daniel Shays: Collected Essays (NY: Random House, 1972).

  “We don’t even get mentioned”: NM to Styron, 10-23-53.

  “that talentless, self-promoting”: Styron to NM, 11-15-53, Selected Letters, 195.

  “I’ve got you”: Gore Vidal, Palimpsest: A Memoir (NY: Viking, 1995), 238.

  “gornisht”: JML interview with Millicent Brower, 5-14-09.

  Don Juan in Hell: In the 2-15-93 reading at Carnegie Hall, Susan Sontag played Doña Ana, NM was the Commodore, and Gay Talese was Don Juan.

  “fifty pages in the middle”: NM to Charles Devlin, 11-19-53.

  “half third draft”: NM to Chester Aaron, 11-19-53.

  probably marry: NM to Adeline Naiman, 11-19-53.

  “I go off dreaming”: NM to Devlin, 11-19-53.

  “Norman found that if you”: MBM, 134. Descriptions of White Horse gatherings are from MBM, 134–38.

  “I was so pleased”: MBM, 137.

  sharp critique: Robert Lindner, Prescription to Rebellion (NY: Rinehart, 1952), 67–74.

  “become axiomatic”: Ibid., 73.

  “A way has to be found”: Ibid., 144.

  “The alternative to adjustment”: Ibid., 218.

  “surely right”: Charles Rycroft, Wilhelm Reich (NY: Viking, 1972), 27.

  never gone into analysis: Hitchens, “Interview with Norman Mailer,” New Left Review, 119.

  “The Psychodynamics of Gambling”: Robert Lindner, “The Psychodynamics of Gambling,” Annals of the American Academy of Political Science and Social Science 269 (May 1950).

  “While I read your monograph”: NM to Lindner, 4-15-53.

  “renowned toreros de salon”: NM to Lew Allen, 11-20-53.

  “always dependent”: NM to Nat Halper, 10-20-53.

  only four or five weeks away: NM to Jonathan Cape, 1-6-54.

  “evil principle”: NM repeats Lindner’s words in NM to Lindner, 1-19-54.

  “The experience was just fantastic”: NM to Chester Aaron, 2-1-54.

  “I didn’t exactly nag”: AM, The Last Party, 175.

  “after all, I was”: Ibid., 179.

  “Well, Mrs. Mailer”: Ibid., 180.

  “happy because I was Mrs. Norman Mailer”: Ibid., 183.

  The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial: The play ran from 1-20-54 to 1-22-55.

  “an extraordinary story of the Marines”: NM to Devlin, 2-23-54.

  “by dint of pushing”: NM to Chester Aaron, 4-30-54.

  “they” liked it: NM to FG, 4-29-54.

  “Life with Jonesie”: NM to Allen, 4-30-54.

  “John Phillips”: pen name of novelist John P. Marquand, Jr. (1923–1995).

  “Something in the sex”: NM to Devlin, 5-26-54.

  “a lousy liver”: NM to FG, 5-28-54.

  “the shits”: AFM, 19.

  “fancy indiscretions”: Lois Wilson to NM, 5-19-54.

  “as the years go by”: NM to Lois Wilson, 5-29-54.

  “I took the descriptive edge”: NM to Lindner, 6-12-54.

  “Tentatively, she reached”: AFM, 260.

  “Things at Rinehart”: NM to Lindner, 7-16-54.

  “a bright spot”: NM to Lindner, 7-18-54.

  “an uneasy feeling”: NM to Bill and Rose Styron, 7-16-54.

  “honest and brilliant”: Styron to NM, 7-19-54, Selected Letters, 202–5.

  “truly appreciated”: NM to Styron, 8-18-54.

  write a preface: NM repeats Lindner’s offer in his 12-15-54 letter.

  review in The Village Voice: Published 11-9-55.

  “Because I loved him”: AM, The Last Party, 134.

  In August, reports appeared: Thomas M. Pryor, “Gregory Acquires ‘Naked and Dead,’ ” NYT, 8-20-54; Irene Thirer, “ ‘Naked and Dead’ Movie Scheduled,” New York Post, 8-20-54.

  private printing of The Deer Park: NM to MK, 11-30-54; NM to Lindner, 12-15-54.

  “by the cartload”: NM to BW, 8-23-54.

  I found it impressive: NM to Styron, 10-7-54.

  “My pride was that”: AFM, 221.

  “maggots like [Walter] Winchell”: NM to Mr. Lambert, 9-7-54. Winchell (1897–1972), a New York gossip columnist, was a right-wing syndicated
columnist for the New York Daily Mirror; Mortimer (1904–63) was a muckraking columnist for the New-York Mirror and coauthor with Jack Lait of U.S.A. Confidential (1952), and similar books about prostitution and gambling.

  “the way to me”: AFM, 221.

  “The Homosexual Villain”: The essay appeared in One, January 1955; rpt., AFM, 222–27.

  “I had been acting”: AFM, 225.

  “unpleasant, ridiculous, or sinister”: Ibid., 223.

  “I had no conscious”: Ibid., 226.

  “So when I was first with Norman”: JML interview with Dotson Rader, 3-25-10.

  “under control”: Amussen to NM, 10-7-54.

  wrote to Styron: NM to Styron, 10-7-54.

  $110,000: NM to MK, 11-16-54.

  three or four more books: NM to MK, 10-10-54.

  SIX: GENERAL MARIJUANA AND THE NAVIGATOR

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

  “Calculation never made”: John Henry Cardinal Newman, An Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine, 1845.

  “He wished to live”: NM to Bourjailys, 11-29-54.

  “a certain spirituality”: NM to Gregory, 11-1-54.

  cited continental writers: NM to Mr. Cole, 11-16-54; NM to William Phillips, 11-16-54.

  “it meant something”: NM to Louis Mailer, 11-17-54.

  Rinehart halted production: AFM, 229.

  “The Mind of an Outlaw”: Esquire, November 1959; rpt., AFM, 228–67, as “The Last Draft of the Deer Park.”

  “the most accurate account”: MLT, 216.

  “cliques, fashions, vogues”: AFM, 233.

  Hiram Haydn: AFM, 230.

  “gray and dreary”: Hiram Haydn, Words & Faces (NY: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1974), 263.

  “a pretty bad book”: Jones to NM, 3-31-56, To Reach Eternity, 243.

  “I took out sentence after sentence”: NM to Lindner, 12-20-54.

  “eager”: Unpublished Alfred Knopf memoir (HRC).

  “hard cash”: NM to Knopf, 10-8-55.

  “no reason to care”: Alfred Knopf to NM, 10-?-55.

  “just sit staring”: AM, The Last Party, 214.

  “as a stage-struck mother”: AFM, 232.

  “The Crack-Up”: Esquire, February, 1936; rpt., The Crack-Up, ed. Edmund Wilson (NY: New Directions, 1945). Time was perhaps the first to make the connection between the two essays, titling its review of AFM (11-2-59) “The Crack-Up,” and attacking NM’s “fascination with Hip—that freemasonry of the beard and the weird.”