“Grandfather and Norman”: Ibid.
“As I was saying goodbye”: Anne Chisholm and Michael Davie, Lord Beaverbrook, 488–89.
“by a Black woman”: Jeanne Campbell, “Jeanne Campbell Interviews Her Former Husband,” London Evening Standard, 17.
“so arduous”: NM to EY, 5-1-63.
“Jews have a bad head”: Irma Kurtz, “Mailer: I’ve Always Been an Apostle of Freedom,” Nova (London), March 1969, 107.
“making separate starts”: NM to FG, 4-14-62.
“The novel sits”: Notes for “big novel” (HRC).
“Truth and Being; Nothing and Time”: Evergreen Review, September/October 1962; rpt., PP, 271–77.
“an odd, even exceptional”: NM to William Phillips, 1-22-62.
“archbishop of the New”: PP, 274.
“a rebellion of the cells”: Ibid., 272.
“the final executor”: Ibid., 273.
“expel the exquisite”: Ibid., 275.
“the state of Being”: Ibid., 276.
“Egypt is fertile”: Anthony Burgess, “Magical Droppings,” Observer, 6-5-83, 30.
“It is characteristic”: PP, 274.
“Some of the best”: Ibid.
“we could empty a room”: Rosemary Mahoney, “Powerful Attractions,” NYTM, 26.
immerse yourself: NM to Harry G., 4-14-62.
marvelous idea: Sonia Brownell to NM, 5-14-62.
“whirled round the nightspots”: Janet Aitken Kidd, The Beaverbrook Girl, 213.
Jeanne and her mother urged: Transcript of “Norman Mailer’s New Year Message,” 12-30-62, Canadian TV program with Nathan Cohen (HRC).
announcement of Kate’s birth: Margaret Drabble, Angus Wilson: A Biography (NY: St. Martin’s, 1996), 310.
Roman circus: “Future of Novel Discussed at Writers’ Conference,” Times (London), 8-25-62, 8; see also James Campbell, “Let’s Do It,” TLS, 8-17-12, 36.
“A nice touch”: “Authors’ Meeting Breaks Up with Song,” Times (London), 8-22-62, 6.
French delegation: Raymond Walters Jr., “In and Out of Books: Circus,” NYTBR, 9-16-62, 8.
“a bit of a public figure”: Transcript of “Norman Mailer’s New Year Message,” with Nathan Cohen (HRC).
“This man Mailer”: Magnus Magnusson, “Writers’ Conference Is Growing in Stature,” Scotsman, 8-24-62.
“was felt to be the pap”: Transcript, International Writers Conference, August 1962, part four.
“It is all of a piece”: EE, 262–63.
“leaned over”: Transcript of Mailer on Miller, 1975 television program, 21.
“The method”: Transcript, International Writers Conference, part five.
“he spoke to his friends”: Peter O. Whitmer with Bruce VanWyngarden, Aquarius Revisited (NY: Macmillan, 1987), 64.
“Edinburgh had very many”: Alastair McKay, “On the Town with Norman and Sam,” Scotsman, 12-8-01.
“He told me to let go”: “edinburgh book festival footnotes”; Sunday Herald, The.FindArticles.com. 30 Dec, 2010, http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qn4156/is_20010715/ai_n13961293/. See also James Campbell, “Let’s Do It,” TLS.
“the most important conservative”: NM to EY, 9-12-62.
“frighteningly bright”: NM to Sonia Brownell, 11-28-62.
“moved and excited”: Graham Greene to NM, 7-2-62.
Anne Barry: MBM, 262–63.
“He was a particularly”: “First Meeting with Norman, March, 1962,” Anne Barry files.
Barry-Mailer relationship: MLT, 346–49; MBM, 262–63.
“a very funny man”: MLT, 347.
“Mrs. Mark Twain”: MLT, 349.
“a stuck-up little”: NM to Don Carpenter, 10-5-64.
take care of Sadie: JML interview with Anne Barry, 5-9-12.
“freedom, his humor”: MBM, 263.
“The Real Meaning of the Right Wing in America”: The speeches of NM and Buckley were published in Playboy, January 1963, and the ensuing debate in February issue. NM reprinted his speech in PP, 161–74; Buckley reprinted his in Rumbles Left and Right (NY: Putnam’s, 1963), 71–84.
“Let communism come”: PP, 171.
“The airports look”: PP, 166.
Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring: Serialized in The New Yorker in June 1962, it was published by Houghton Mifflin on 9-27-62.
“I don’t care”: “Reading from Left to Right,” Playboy, April 1963, 8.
“Dread has been loose”: PP, 161.
“Metaphysics disappears”: Ibid., 167.
“in the openness of Being”: Heidegger, “The Quest for Being,” Walter Kaufmann, ed., Existentialism from Dostoyevsky to Sartre (NY: World, 1956), 272.
“a repetition of infantile”: PP, 151.
during his seventeen-day stay: NM to Don Carpenter, 1-13-61; CNM, 57–58.
“For believe me”: Nietzsche, “Live Dangerously,” Walter Kaufmann, ed., Existentialism from Dostoyevsky to Sartre, 127.
The Concept of Dread: First published in 1844; rpt., as Kierkegaard’s Concept of Dread, translated by Walter Lowrie (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1957).
“the saint and the psychopath”: EE, 210.
“in secret union”: Heidegger, “The Quest for Being,” Walter Kaufmann, ed., Existentialism from Dostoyevsky to Sartre, 253.
“put iron”: DFL introduction, EE, 204.
“a clever jabber”: Gay Talese, “Mailer Debates William Buckley; Chicago Political Bout a Draw,” NYT, 9-24-62, L31.
“a summer weight suit”: JML interview with Gay Talese, 10-19-10.
“The crowd was high partisan”: PP, 174.
Roger Donoghue, Mailer’s second: Pete Hamill, “Mailer vs. Buckley: Good Fight, No Decision,” New York Post, 9-24-62, 70.
“I was full”: PP, 227.
“Ten Thousand Words a Minute”: Esquire, February 1962, rpt., PP, 213–67.
“Paret got trapped”: PP, 244.
“Have any of you”: Ibid., 216–17.
“Heavy types, bouncers”: Ibid., 223.
“He had stopped”: Ibid., 228.
“plot-ridden, romantic,”: Ibid., 261.
widely reported: A. J. Liebling, New Yorker, 10-6-62; Red Smith, New York Herald Tribune, 9-27–62; Leonard Shecter, New York Post, 9-27-62; Stan Isaacs, Newsday, 9-27-62.
“some ghost of Don Quixote”: PP, 266.
“a mélange de genres”: NM to EY, 11-28-62.
“Go to Oxford, Mississippi”: NM telegram to Robert F. Kennedy, 9-28-62.
Carnegie Hall: See Millicent Brower, “The Novelist Comes to Carnegie Hall, VV, 5-30-63, 1, 6–7, 18.
Cosmopolitan interviewed him: Frederick Christian, “The Talent and the Torment,” August 1963.
“Jeanne and I”: NM to Adeline Naiman, 1-15-63.
“indications”: NM to MK, 6-13-63.
“Part of the absolute funk”: NM to Harvey Breit, 6-13-63.
“She’s got a will”: NM to Moos Mailer, 6-15-63.
“dare a bold stroke”: NM to André Deutsch, 10-15-63.
“to do my big book”: NM to FG, 11-9-63.
“Norman Mailer Versus Nine Writers”: Esquire, July 1963; rpt., CAC, 104–40; The Thin Red Line (NY: Scribner’s, 1962); Set This House on Fire (NY: Random House, 1960); Another Country (NY: Dial, 1962); Naked Lunch (NY: Grove Press, 1959); Catch-22 (NY: Simon & Schuster, 1962); Rabbit, Run (NY: Knopf, 1960); Letting Go (NY: Random House, 1963); Franny and Zooey (Boston: Little, Brown, 1961) and Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters and Seymour: An Introduction (Boston: Little, Brown, 1963); Henderson the Rain King (NY: Viking, 1959).
“Well, one might as well”: CAC, 126–27.
Sitting with Bentley: JML interview with Beverly Bentley, 5-26-11.
Hemingway’s birthday party in Málaga: A photo in A. E. Hotchner’s Papa Hemingway (NY: Random House, 1966) shows Beverly and Hemingway wearing fireman’s hats and holding drinks. See also Valerie Danby-Smith, Running with the Bulls: My Years with the Hemingways (Waterville, ME
: Thorndike, 2004), 81–86; Jennifer Hagar, “Beverly Bentley: A Life in the Theater of Our Times,” P’Town Women (1998), 41.
“I wanted a home”: MBM, 271.
relationship with jazz trumpeter Miles Davis: John Szwed, So What: The Life of Miles Davis (NY: Simon & Schuster, 2002), 145–49.
Associated Press Photo: “Stand-In,” New York Post, 4-7 (?)-63.
“seeing what the mood is”: NM to MK, 6-13-63.
“a man who takes”: New York Post, 6-?-63.
“My darling let us”: Jeanne Campbell to NM, 6-2-63.
tested for pregnancy: MBD, 195–96.
“lustful and proud”: AAD, 266–67.
“Cancer”: (HRC).
neurobiologists conclusively established: Maureen O’Neill Hooker, “Norman Mailer: From Orgone Accumulator to Cancer Protection for Schizophrenics,” MR (2010), 445–51.
beginning the new novel: See Robert F. Lucid, Introduction to Laura Adams, Norman Mailer: A Comprehensive Bibliography (Metuchen, NJ: Scarecrow, 1974), xiv–xv.
“I used the sense”: Brock Brower, Other Loyalties, 102.
Las Vegas and Harold Conrad: MLT, 377–78.
telegram from Arkansas: MBD, 194.
late night drive: MLT, 379.
San Francisco visit: MLT, 379–81.
narrow ledges: NM to Helene Caprari, introduction, Norman Mailer’s Letters on An American Dream, 1963–69, ed. JML (Shavertown, PA: Sligo, 2004), 12.
Rojack’s harrowing minutes: AAD, 256–60.
“an ex-Southern master-sergeant”: NM to FG, 9-10-63.
Scott Meredith: NM’s agent for almost forty years, Meredith (1923–1993) was a hard-driving dealmaker who popularized literary auctions and other innovations. He supplanted Cy Rembar as NM’s agent, although Rembar remained involved in NM’s affairs.
convinced Walter Minton: NM to Deutsch, 10-15-63.
sold the idea: MLT, 386–87.
“great interest in the suicidal nature”: MBM, 276.
“was much like Hollywood”: NM to Alan Earney, 10-15-63.
“a fantastic advance royalty”: NM to EY, 10-16-63.
“It seems”: NM to Adeline Naiman, 11-5-63.
“one hundred thousand finished words”: NM to FG, 10-15-64.
in early November: The Presidential Papers (NY: Putnam’s) was published on 11-8-63.
“The Last Night”: Esquire, December 1963; rpt., CAC, 380–97.
“The early installments”: “The Big Bite,” Esquire, December 1963, 26.
“has me more or less pissing”: NM to Don Carpenter, 1-15-64.
“one of the more Dostoevskian novels”: Nancy Weber, “Norman Mailer’s ‘American Dream’: Superman Returns,” Books (New York Post), March 1965, 14.
“I met Jack Kennedy”: “An American Dream: A New Novel Serialized Exclusively in Esquire by Norman Mailer Installment One: The Harbors of the Moon,” Esquire, January 1964, 77.
Rojack’s retelling of events: NM’s chronology problem is carefully examined in Hershel Parker’s “Mailer’s Revision of An American Dream,” Flawed Texts and Verbal Icons (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1984), 181–212. He argues strenuously that the assassination “wrecked” the novel’s time scheme, but few have even noticed the problem.
“The Kennedy thing”: NM to MK, 12-17-63.
“At any rate, I have no desire”: NM to EY, 12-15-63.
“an intellectual adventurer”: PP, 114.
accurate, if spiteful: NM to MK, 12-17-63.
open poem: “Open Poem to John Fitzgerald Kennedy,” VV, 11-23-61, 4.
“because his nature”: Nancy Weber, “Norman Mailer’s ‘American Dream’: Superman Returns,” Books (New York Post), 17.
“A holocaust of a love”: Jeanne Campbell, “Jeanne Campbell Interviews Her Former Husband,” London Evening Standard, 17.
“A remarkable girl”: Rosemary Mahoney, “Powerful Attractions,” NYTM, 26.
“I was crazy about her”: Frederick Christian, “The Talent and the Torment,” Cosmopolitan, 66; Campbell later married John Cram, and in 1968 had a second daughter, Cusi.
“playing ten-second chess”: NM to FG, 12-20-63.
“Years ago, Theodore Reik”: NM to Bourjaily, 1-16-64.
Theodore Reik: An American psychologist, Reik (1888–1969) was an early and brilliant acolyte of Freud.
tribute to Kennedy: “The Fate of the Union: Kennedy and After,” NYRB (12-26-63), 6.
Vincent Scully: “Mailer vs. Scully,” Architectural Forum, April 1964, 96–97.
“The Killer”: Evergreen Review, April/May 1964; rpt., CAC, 222–27.
“you are a magnetic”: Paul Gardner, “Mailer and Buckley Talk on ‘Open End,’ ” NYT, 2-3-64.
young heavyweight: NM to Don Carpenter, 3-24-64.
postpone an installment: Carol Polsgrove, It Wasn’t Pretty, Folks, but Didn’t We Have Fun? Esquire in the Sixties (NY: Norton, 1995), 112.
“Rojack is still considerably”: “Norman Mailer on An American Dream,” CNM, 102.
“a huge mass”: AAD, 19–20.
“high private pleasure”: AAD, 44.
“a pruning job”: Carol Polsgrove, It Wasn’t Pretty, but Didn’t We Have Fun? 112.
new problem: Ibid., 111–14.
“I’ve been down”: NM to Harvey Breit, 2-11-64.
ad in The New York Times: NYT, 4-22-64, L48.
“It’s the only great”: NM to MK, 2-17-64.
“banging away”: NM to Vahan Gregory, 3-16-64.
“feeling wrung out”: NM to Martin Peretz, 3-17-64.
“looks more like his mother”: NM to Louis and Moos Mailer, 4-17-64.
“not up to the first four”: NM to MK, 4-19-64.
“A good writer feels”: Fern Marja Eckman, “The New Moral Climate: The Writers and Poets,” New York Post, 6-26-64, 39.
“If psychic coincidences”: CAC, 173.
“The Executioner’s Song”: Fuck You: A Magazine of the Arts 7, September 1964, ed. Ed Sanders, one of the founders of the rock group the Fugs. NM later used the poem’s title for chapter 15 of FIG, and as the title of ES; rpt., CAC, 131–32.
“from imminent alcoholism”: Leeds, The Enduring Vision of Norman Mailer, 77.
“died and was in the antechamber”: AAD, 206–07.
“I’ll never write that well”: NM in Conversation with JML, 12-28-05.
“a canopy encrusted”: AAD, 234.
“a solicitor for the Devil”: Ibid., 236.
balcony of the thirty-eighth-floor: Margaret H. Bay of the real estate firm of Brown Harris Stevens confirmed information about the balcony of the thirty-eighth-floor apartment, which NM probably visited in the early 1960s.
“something like sane”: AAD, 270.
“What a murderous”: NM to MK, 6-2-64.
“usually fought a speech”: CAC, 30.
“looked like a handsome”: Ibid., 31.
“a pleasant urbane”: Ibid., 15.
“Talking in a soft”: Ibid., 23.
“smelled like formaldehyde”: Jeffrey Michelson and Sarah Stone, “Norman Mailer: The Interview,” Puritan Quarterly Journal Number 7 (1981), 32.
“giving off the barbaric”: CAC, 25.
“Acute disease is cure”: PP, 7.
“like millions of other whites”: CAC, 26.
“If we are ill”: PP, 104.
“One worried”: CAC, 26.
“In the Red Light: A History of the Republican Convention in 1964”: Esquire, November 1964; rpt., CAC, 6–45.
“until you can’t stand it”: NM to Kemp, 9-30-64.
“hard stick-’em-up”: NM to Deutsch, 9-14-64.
$70,000: George Frazier, “Literary Loot,” Boston Herald, 5-12-64.
“had a face”: CAC, 57–58.
“It is even not impossible”: CAC, 69.
“hard, greedy, exceptionally”: Ibid., 48–49.
“a city of the future”: NM to Tina Bourjaily, 12-23-64.
Vertical City: “Cities Higher
than Mountains,” NYTM, 1-31-65; rpt., CAC, 233–37.
“feel flat and dead”: NM to Don Carpenter, 1-27-65.
“He catches the beauty”: Edward de Grazia, Girls Lean Back Everywhere: The Law of Obscenity and the Assault on Genius (NY: Random House, 1992), 486.
“changed the literary history”: Ibid., 495.
“for the days of oppression”: Ibid.
“the golden islands”: Preface, Works and Days.
Gravel, was a friend: Mike Gravel to NM, 2-8-65; NM to Mike Gravel, 2-20-65.
Edmund Skellings: NM to Edmund Skellings, 2-18-65; NM to Donald Kaufmann, 4-20-65.
Alaska trip: Donald Kaufmann’s “Norman Mailer in ‘God’s Attic,’ ” MR (2008), 298–312, is the best account of NM’s visit, written by Skellings’s Alaska colleague.
National Book Award events: “PPA Press Conference,” 44.
“our rebels”: Thorpe Menn, “But Without the Golden Age, There Is No Waste Land,” Kansas City Star, 3-21-64, L39.
“the apocalyptic romanticism”: Nina A. Steers, “ ‘Successor’ to Faulkner: An Interview with Saul Bellow,” Show, September 1964, 37–38.
“But we moral nihilists”: Thorpe Menn, “But Without the Golden Age, There Is No Waste Land,” Kansas City Star, L39.
“hostess of the intellectual”: P. Albert Duhamel, “Book Awards Bespeak a Return to Relevancy,” Boston Herald, 3-14-65.
“flirting with Beverly”: MBM, 285.
“I didn’t want to hit”: Ibid.
“fairly drunk”: Ibid.
“was absolutely catatonic”: Ibid.
“a small round girl”: Ibid., 286.
“wearing an old trench coat”: Ibid., 287.
Phillips, sent the review: Phillips to NM, 3-25-65.
“An American Dream has received”: “A Small Public Notice by Norman Mailer,” PR, Spring 1965, 180–81.
the division of opinion: Hardwick: PR, Spring 1965; Hicks: Saturday Review, 3-20-65; Rahv: NYRB, 3-25-65; Shattuck: VV, 5-13-65; Hyman: New Leader, 3-15-65; Wolfe: Book Week, 3-14-65; Aldridge: Life, 3-19-65; Bersani: PR, Fall 1965; Rhodes: Kansas City Star, 3-14-65; Didion: National Review, 4-20-65; Pickrel: Harper’s, April 1965; Poirier: Commentary, June 1965; Chicago Tribune: Paul R. Jackson, 3-14-65; Time: 3-19-65; Newsweek: 3-15-65.
“Congratulations on a nearly”: Buckley to NM, 4-7-65.
“nicest”: NM to Buckley, 4-20-65.
“an extraordinary piece of crap”: NM to Diana Trilling, 6-8-65.
Norman Mailer Page 106
