Exaggerated descriptions: NM to Lindner, 12-20-54; NM to the Bourjailys, 12-28-54.
costly legal effort: AFM, 232.
“The City of God”: Only a fragment exists in the HRC. NM’s setting was a Soviet concentration camp; he changed it to a German camp when he revived the idea in CIF.
“drove a spike”: AFM, 232–33.
“the best novel”: MBM, 157.
savoring his anger: NM to Lindner, 1-20-55.
“intricate music”: Hitchens, “Interview with Norman Mailer,” New Left Review, 127.
“I do not know”: AFM, 234.
“As was evident”: “Lipton’s Journal,” (HRC).
incontestable that two people: In addition to several reiterations of this idea in “Lipton’s Journal,” NM refers to it in a 1-20-55 letter to Lindner, saying that his disappointment about Putnam’s accepting DP “proves what a saint-psychopath I am at bottom.”
“And this is Tolstoi”: Phoenix II: Uncollected Writings of D. H. Lawrence, ed. Warren Roberts and Harry T. Moore (NY: Viking, 1970), 421.
“I never felt pushed”: AM, The Last Party, 187.
telephone numbers: Ibid., 190.
he slapped her: Ibid., 204.
“nagging voice”: Ibid., 188.
“Rocky Marciano”: Ibid.
“The White Negro”: The essay was reprinted in the first major anthology of Beat writers, The Beat Generation and the Angry Young Men, ed. Gene Feldman and Max Gartenberg (NY: Citadel Press, 1958); it was reprinted as a pamphlet in 1959 by Lawrence Ferlinghetti’s City Lights Press, where it went through many subsequent printings. NM reprinted it in AFM, 337–71, along with a point-counterpoint follow-up with Malaquais and Beat writer Ned Polsky, which first appeared in Dissent, Winter 1958. Since then, it has been reprinted many times in the United States and abroad as a pamphlet and in anthologies.
“Probably, we will never”: AFM, 338–39.
Lyle Stuart: NM explains the circumstances of Stuart circulating his ideas on “Southern rage” in his prefatory comments to WN, AFM, 331–36.
rotating his crops: SA, 106.
“You believe in that?”: Laura Adams, “Existential Aesthetics: An Interview with Norman Mailer,” PR 42 (1975); rpt., CNM, 218.
“terrified”: OFM, 468.
corrected galleys was April 15: NM to Kahnert, 3-7-55.
“He gave me a marvelous”: NM to Elsa Lanchester, 4-15-68.
“Hiroshige and Hokusai”: Utagawa Hiroshige (1797–1858) and Katsushika Hokusai (1760–1849) were acclaimed Japanese woodblock printmakers.
return of the galleys: NM to Laughton, 3-25-55.
“ripping up the silk”: AFM, 237.
“an implicit portrait”: Ibid., 238.
“Bombed and sapped”: Ibid., 243.
drove up to Provincetown: NM to the Kesslers, 8-24-55.
“lowered The Deer Park”: AFM, 245.
“think of Sex”: DP, 375.
“Truly Bob”: NM to Lindner, 8-25-55.
novel’s ending: AFM, 245.
Writing to Uncle Dave: NM to Kesslers, 8-24-55.
close to speaking: See NM’s comments on canine intelligence, OG, 140–41.
Laughton had lost interest: NM to MK, 8-25-55.
1955 financial statement: HRC.
30 percent share: Kevin McAuliffe, The Great American Newspaper: The Rise and Fall of the Village Voice (NY: Scribner’s, 1978), 13–14.
inventing the name: AFM, 277; McAuliffe, The Great American Newspaper, 13.
inscribed copies: AFM, 265–67.
Brando got a copy: NM to Brando, 8-25-55.
best wishes to Vidal: NM to MK, 8-25-55.
“I could not keep myself”: AFM, 265–66.
“was inevitably imitative”: DP, 353.
“If you want to come on”: AFM, 266.
urging of George Plimpton: See Plimpton’s account in his Shadow Box (NY: Putnam’s, 1977), 259–64, corroborated by Hemingway’s letter to Plimpton, 1-17-61, Ernest Hemingway: Selected Letters, 1917–1961, ed. Carlos Baker (NY: Scribner’s, 1981), 912.
“shitty reviews”: Hemingway to NM, 8-12-59 (HRC); see Hemingway’s full letter in MR (2010), 15–18.
“ended in fiasco”: AFM, 267.
“usual qualities of vitality”: Moravia to NM, 10-30-55.
MacGregor interview: Only NM’s copy of the typescript has been located; it probably appeared in the Post sometime in November 1955.
“with a couple of drinks”: AFM notes (HRC).
climbed to number six: DP reached number six on November 13 and spent a total of fifteen weeks on the list, falling off on 2-12-56.
“a very personal faith”: Lyle Stuart, “An Intimate Interview with Norman Mailer,” Exposé, December 1955; rpt., CNM, 24.
“Marxian anarchist”: Ibid., 22–23.
“a really great writer”: Ibid., 27–28.
positive reviews with negative: Such an ad ran in the NYTBR, 10-30-55.
“a thoroughly nasty book”: Orville Prescott, NYT, 10-14-55.
Malcolm Cowley: A friend of Lost Generation writers, Cowley (1898–1989), wrote an important memoir of his expatriate years in Paris, Exile’s Return (NY: Norton, 1934).
“the serious and reckless novel”: Cowley’s endorsement of NM’s novel is contained in a 9-23-55 letter to Paul S. Eriksson of Putnam’s. He also gave it a positive review in the New York Herald Tribune Book Review, 10-23-55.
$10,000 on advertising: John Tebbel, Between Covers: The Rise and Transformation of Book Publishing in America (NY: Oxford, 1987), 398.
half-page ad: NM reproduces it in AFM, 249.
“that I no longer gave a dog’s drop”: AFM, 249.
“Our generation”: Dan Wakefield, New York in the Fifties (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1992), 121.
“to feel the empty winds”: AFM, 277.
the third person: Mary Dearborn may have been the first to comment on NM’s use of the third person personal in his VV columns (MBD 113).
“Drawing upon hash”: Ibid., 278.
appeal to several publics: JML questions for Edwin Fancher, 10-8-10, conducted by John Buffalo Mailer. For accounts of the VV start-up, see McAuliffe, The Great American Newspaper, and J. Kirk Sale, “The Village Voice: You’ve Come a Long Way Baby, but You Got Stuck There,” Evergreen Review, December 1969, 25–27, 61–67; and Louis Menand, “It Took a Village,” New Yorker, 1-5-09, 36–45. Also valuable is The Village Voice Reader, ed. Daniel Wolf and Edwin Fancher (NY: Doubleday, 1962).
“radical and abrasive”: MBM, 167.
“what with épater le bourgeois”: NM to Chester Aaron, 3-23–56.
“I really had the notion”: Notes for AFM, HRC.
The first column: All quotes from and about “Quickly” and letters from readers are from AFM, 279–318.
Must You Conform?: (NY: Rinehart, 1956).
“The psychopath knows instinctively”: AFM, 346.
European and American existentialism: I draw heavily here on Robert Solotaroff’s comprehensive and penetrating examination of NM’s existentialism in his study, Down Mailer’s Way (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1975), 82–123.
“had a dialectical mind”: PP, 273.
“alienated beyond alienation”: AFM, 341.
“its enormous teleological sense”: AFM, 38.
“WHY DON’T YOU”: McAuliffe, The Great American Newspaper, 30, 34.
“For a socialist”: MBM, 170.
“should be very radical”: MBM, 166.
“I had mad ideas”: Sokolov, “Flying High with Mailer,” Newsweek, 12-9-68, 87.
“when I have to crack up”: NM to MK, 2-29-56.
trip to Europe: NM to Malaquais, 4-5-56.
orgasmic struggles: Originally titled “Sergius and Denise,” the composition of “The Time of Her Time” cannot be dated precisely, but it was conceived, if not written, shortly after he resigned from the VV.
“on the philosophy of the hipster”: NM to Irving Howe, 5-3-56.
Waiting for Godot: Premiered in Paris in January 1953; New York premiere, 4-19-56.
“So I doubt if I will like it”: AFM, 316.
“Baby, you fucked up”: Ibid., 319.
“finally putting together”: Ibid.
“A Public Notice”: VV, 5-9-56; rpt., AFM, 320–25.
“in the bends of marijuana”: OFM, 468.
“consciously or unconsciously”: AFM, 324.
“riding the electric rail”: From the first of NM’s six bimonthly columns discussing the Tales, “Responses and Reactions I,” Commentary, December 1962, 505.
“hulled”: Buber’s preface to 1991 edition, Tales of the Hasidim, xxi.
zaddikim: Description of Hasidic leaders from Buber’s preface and Chaim Potok’s foreword.
“The Fear of God”: Zusya’s Tale, “Responses and Reactions V,” Commentary, August 1963, 164.
“for a small intellectual raid”: Commentary, December 1962, 506.
“angry impotence”: AFM, 325.
“the whispers of a new time”: AFM, 324.
relaxed on the crossing: AM, The Last Party, 225.
“Jimmy had an absolutely”: James Campbell, Talking at the Gates: A Life of James Baldwin (NY: Viking, 1991), 140.
“Two lean cats”: James Baldwin, “The Black Boy Looks at the White Boy,” Nobody Knows My Name: More Notes of a Native Son (NY: Dial, 1961), 218.
“to be an American”: Ibid., 217.
“myth of the sexuality”: Ibid., 220–21.
“Norman—confident”: Ibid.
“wandered through Paris”: Ibid., 224.
“A Wandering in Prose”: PP, 309–10.
“still reeling”: AM, The Last Party, 228.
“Norman laughed”: Ibid., 229–30.
“never learned to disentangle”: Ibid., 235.
“How I wish”: Ibid.
offering to review: NM to Francis Brown, 8-16-56.
carbon of his letter: NM to Baldwin, 8-16-56.
“very sweet thing”: Baldwin to NM, 9-?-56.
“aware of a new and warm”: Baldwin, “The Black Boy Looks at the White Boy,” Nobody Knows My Name, 220.
“a partner”: Campbell, Talking at the Gates, 141.
“The house is old”: NM to JM, 11-22-56.
“hoodlums”: NM to JM, 10-13-56.
working up the nerve: NM to Baldwin, 10-17-56.
“Phone calls”: NM to JM, 10-13-56.
“in a perpetual stagefright”: MBD, 109.
Satan and his wife: NM to Chester Aaron, 3-23-56.
“inhuman city”: NM to JM, 10-13-56.
“writing a fucking column”: Jones to NM, 3-31-56.
“Dear Jim”: NM to Jones, summer 1956.
second, toned-down draft: Jones told NM this in his 3-31-56 letter.
note to Styron: NM to Styron, 11-8-56.
“boiling mad”: MLT, 236–37.
“because he permitted”: Gay Talese, A Writer’s Life (NY: Random House, 2006), 175.
“Anything that dealt openly”: Wakefield, New York in the Fifties, 147.
orgone box: NM’s plywood carpeted box, about the size of a small phone booth, was a fixture in all of his New York studios until a few years before his death. He junked it when he gave up his last studio in the DUMBO area of Brooklyn in the early 2000s.
“scream and snort”: NM to MK, 2-29-56.
polished wooden egg: MBM, 190.
curl up, and be rocked: AM, The Last Party, 261.
bongo board: MBM, 180.
“Norman was ready”: MBM, 181.
turned to handball: Bill Gallo, www.handballcity.com/boxersplay.htm.
“Hiya champ”: AM, The Last Party, 265.
“Norman sat up”: Ibid., 267.
“all-purpose expression”: Marie Brenner, “Mailer Goes Egyptian,” New York, 31.
“I started as a generous”: AFM, 22.
“You’re not a publisher”: MBM, 181.
“Violence and pain”: Ibid., 180.
one of the first novels about hipsters: Who Walks in Darkness (NY: New Directions, 1952).
“beginning to see himself”: NM to Dachine Rainier, 12-11-56.
“She looked splendid”: PAP, 28–29.
“in the elevator”: Ibid., 30–31. See also Mike Wallace Asks: Highlights from 46 Controversial Interviews (NY: Simon & Schuster, 1958), 26–27, and NM’s account of his Night Beat appearance in AFM, 406–10.
Leslie, according to Danielle: JML interview with Danielle Mailer, 8-3-11.
Mailer made a fuss: AM, The Last Party, 250–51.
“a fantastic experience”: NM to MK, 3-27-57.
“Norman always loomed”: Phyllis Silverman Ott-Toltz, with Barbara Bamberger Scott, Love Bade Me Welcome: The Life of Phyllis Ott (Lake Forest, CA: Behler, 2006), 39–40.
“what I thought would be a new life”: AM, The Last Party, 251.
“he smashes the living shit”: NM to MK, 3-27-57.
beginning of April: NM to Howe, 4-29-57.
“Each moment fills”: Joseph Wenke, Mailer’s America (Hanover, NH: University Press of New England, 1987), 81.
“too elliptic”: NM to Bourjaily, 2-25-58.
“rarely bothers to distinguish”: Morris Dickstein, Leopards in the Temple: The Transformation of American Fiction, 1945–70 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2002), 151.
“a changing reality”: AFM, 354.
“God is energy”: Ibid., 351.
“ready to go”: Ibid., 350.
“downright impenetrable”: Baldwin, Nobody Knows My Name, 229.
City Lights edition: Francis Ferlinghetti’s City Lights Press, which published Allen Ginsberg’s Howl in 1956, published the first printing (1,500 copies) of WN in the late spring of 1959. It carried no publication date, and is usually and erroneously dated 1957. At least five printings followed over the next dozen years.
rumored at the time to be Paul Newman: The photo was of photojournalist Harry Redl. See Sarah Bishop, “The Life and Death of the Celebrity Author in Maidstone,” MR (2012), 288–308.
“is an attempt to impose”: Alfred Kazin, Contemporaries (Boston: Little, Brown, 1962), 364.
“two strong eighteen-year-old hoodlums”: AFM, 347.
“If one wants a better world”: Ibid., 357.
“a momentous shift”: Dickstein, Leopards in the Temple, 151.
“a kindergarten”: AM, The Last Party, 254.
“swapping stories”: Ibid., 254.
“an air of smug”: Ibid., 238.
“were intense and stimulating”: James L. W. West III, William Styron: A Life (NY: Random House, 1998), 286–87.
“was originally king”: MLT, 243.
“going on and on”: AM, The Last Party, 259.
Howe was excited: MBM, 186–87.
Beats had their reservations: MLT, 258.
“acceptable”: MLT, 256.
“a good illustration of a swiftly”: Jones to NM, 3-18-58, in To Reach Eternity, 260.
“like coughing up blood”: West, William Styron, 288.
“fascinated by it nonetheless”: Ibid.
race-gender-power debates: See, for example, Andrew Hoberek, “Liberal Antiliberalism: Mailer, O’Connor, and the Gender Politics of Middle-Class Ressentiment”; and Frederick Whiting, “Stronger, Smarter and Less Queer: ‘The White Negro’ and Mailer’s Third Man,” both in Women’s Studies Quarterly 33, Fall/Winter 2005.
“a new way to think”: NM to MK, 8-8-57.
“emboldened”: MLT, 254.
“my writing about sex”: NM to Chandler Brossard, 5-18-57.
“one of the four or five”: NM to MK, 8-8-57.
“it’s better than Death”: NM to Bea, 8-8-57.
“so bold”: NM to JM, 8-8-57.
“dream cast”: NM to Monica McCall, 8-8-57.
product of O’Shaugnessy’s memory: The Deer Park: A Play (NY: Dial, 1967), 33.
“a rather incredible hell”: NM to MK, 10-23-57.
showing the play: Lo
uis Calta, “Mailer Finishes First Stage Work,” NYT, 12-5-57.
“the mysteries of murder”: AFM, 107.
“a bad play”: NM to JM, 12-30-57.
“side work”: NM to MK, 9-25-57.
“with a medium gruesome”: NM to JM, 12-30-57.
“this enormous novel”: Ibid.
Intimate Journals: Charles Baudelaire (1821–67) wrote most of the entries toward the end of his life. Christopher Isherwood translated it from the French (London: Blackamore, 1930).
“Now there’s a man”: NM to JM, 12-30-57.
“If I had twice”: Ibid.
Meyer Schapiro: A Columbia professor and renowned art historian, Schapiro (1904–96) was admired by NM for the breadth of his learning.
“An artist exists”: quoted in “The Invincibles,” TLS, 5-5-13, 20.
Actors Studio: MK, The Good, the Bad, and the Dolce Vita, 178; AM, The Last Party, 252–54.
Frank Corsaro, staged some readings: MLT, 249–52.
recast several of his novels: Dramatic and/or film versions of the following were attempted/completed by NM or others: NAD, BS, DP, AAD, WVN, ES, AE, TGD, as well as short stories “The Greatest Thing in the World” and “The Time of Her Time.”
“Norman’s anger”: AM, The Last Party, 262.
“I handled it”: Ibid., 269.
Believe it or not: Ibid., 272.
“The Know-Nothing Barbarians”: First published in Partisan Review, Spring 1959; rpt., Doings and Undoings (NY: Farrar, Straus, 1964), 143–58.
“sheer intellectual”: Norman Podhoretz, Ex-Friends (NY: Free Press, 1999), 186–89.
“suggest a major novelist”: “Norman Mailer: The Embattled Vision,” PR, Summer 1959; rpt., Doings and Undoings, 179.
“And how about you”: Diana Trilling, The Beginning of the Journey: The Marriage of Diana and Lionel Trilling (NY: Harcourt, Brace, 1993), 353.
highbrow, popular, and Beat: For a comprehensive, annotated record of NM’s periodical appearances and interviews, as well as a life chronology and secondary bibliography, see JML and Donna Pedro Lennon, Norman Mailer: Works and Days, preface by NM (Shavertown, PA: Sligo, 2000).
“conspicuous success”: Charles A. Fenton, “The Writers Who Came Out of the War,” Saturday Review, 8-3-57, 6.
Norman Mailer Page 103
