Norman Mailer
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“because no vice”: NM to Diana Trilling, 3-25-65.
EIGHT: THIRD PERSON PERSONAL: ARMIES AND AFTER
In addition to the sources identified below, the following were drawn on: “Fan’s Memoir”; JML’s “Mailer Log”; JML’s unpublished interviews with NM and BW. NM’s letters are located at the HRC.
offered to lend him money: MBM, 292.
“greeted the new champ”: Brock Brower, Other Loyalties, 115.
“Where’s that tough guy”: Donald Kaufmann, “Norman Mailer in ‘God’s Attic,’ ” MR (2008), 302.
“I can breathe here”: Tim Bradner, “Mailer on Alaska,” Alaska Living (Anchorage Daily News), 6-30-68, 3.
“The future of this state”: Donald Kaufmann, “Norman Mailer in ‘God’s Attic,’ ” MR, 305.
“All the messages”: Tim Bradner, “Mailer on Alaska,” Alaska Living, 3.
“For twenty long minutes”: Donald Kaufman, “Norman Mailer in ‘God’s Attic,’ ” MR, 310–11.
“Now what I’d like”: NM to Diana Trilling, 3-25-65.
“adored”: Diana Trilling to NM, 5-17-65.
“in what must be called”: Marcus, CNM, 77.
“Being around Norman”: JML interview with Peter Alson, 8-29-12.
teach-in at Berkeley: Louis Menashe, editor and compiler, wrote the notes accompanying speech excerpts (including NM’s) on two LPs, Berkeley Teach-In: Vietnam, Folkway Records, No. FD5765, 1966; NM’s speech was first published in Realist, June 1965; rpt., We Accuse, ed. James Petras (Berkeley: Diablo, 1965), and CAC, 67–82.
the largest audience: NM to EY, 6-3-65.
“buried unvoiced faith”: CAC, 71.
“shedding the blood”: Ibid., 79.
“bully with an Air Force”: Ibid., 81.
“close to insanity”: Ibid., 77–78.
“You, Lyndon Johnson”: Ibid., 82.
“a standing ovation”: NM to EY, 6-3-65.
Fig and Ecey: NM to FG, 3-31-65.
Al Wasserman: An Academy Award–winning documentary filmmaker, Wasserman (1921–2005) was also the founding producer of NBC’s White Paper programs, and from 1976 to 1986 was a producer for 60 Minutes on CBS. He directed a 1973 NBC documentary based on Theodore White’s book The Making of the President, 1972. See Christopher Lehmann-Haupt, “Al Wasserman Dies at 84,” NYT, 4-10-05.
Harvard’s Sanders Theatre: W. J. McCarthy, “2,000 Hear ‘Teachers-In’ Demand LBJ Resignation,” Boston Herald, 7-15-65; “President Assailed by Norman Mailer,” NYT, 7-16-65.
“Three cheers, lads”: “On Vietnam,” PR, Fall 1965, 620–56; NM’s contribution; rpt., CAC, 83–90.
intellectual precursor: Robert Freidman, “Clay, Mailer in ‘Draw,’ ” San Juan Sunday Star, 8-1-65.
interviewed several times: JML interview with Brock Brower, 3-17-11.
“We would each become”: NM to Brock Brower, 8-19-65.
“final confirmation”: “ ‘Life’ Goes to Norman Mailer,” National Review, 11-2-65.
“What the hell”: NM to Buckley, 10-18-65.
“his flair for arch”: Richard Witkin, quoted in Sewell Chan, “Remembering Buckley’s 1965 Run for Mayor,” NYT, 2-27-08.
“majestically unsuited”: “Norman Mailer on Lindsay and the City,” VV, 10-28-65; rpt., CAC, 63.
“was genuinely pissed off”: Richard Kluger to NM, 3-16-65.
“bawled the hell”: Kluger to NM, 6-22-65.
results of the poll: Book Week’s 9-26-65 issue, titled “American Fiction: The Postwar Years, 1945–65,” was devoted to the poll, including excerpts from the comments of forty-five of the respondents (excluding NM’s).
“Just think when Time”: NM to Kluger, 7-14-65.
new miscellany: NM to EY, 10-8-65.
“the ghosts of the Nazis”: CAC, 3–4.
“the minority within”: The final chapter of Poirier’s critical study of NM, Norman Mailer (NY: Viking, 1972), titled “The Minority Within,” is a brilliant examination of this formulation, which he defines as an element that “has somehow been repressed or stifled by conformity to system” (112).
“is quite unable”: Ibid., 114.
“two huge types”: CAC, 3.
“The Book of the First-Born”: Various drafts are at the HRC. NM sent Scott Meredith (9-6-74) a list of the separate fictional pieces that he was considering incorporating into AE, including “The Book of the First-Born.”
Tristram Shandy: The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman, published in several volumes from 1759 to 1769, is a masterpiece of comic digression.
“Good fucks make good babies”: POS, 191.
The Prisoner of Sex: First published in Harper’s in March 1971, this fifty-thousand-word essay was reprinted in book form by Little, Brown in 1971.
“the saga of the Mailer family”: Gregory Feeley, “Waiting for Mailer’s Big One,” Million, 40.
“a writer of the period”: John Whalen-Bridge, “The Karma of Words: Mailer Since Executioner’s Song,” Journal of Modern Literature 30, Fall 2006, 9.
“so many years”: NM to EY, 12-9-65.
Lucid, had organized: “American Calendar,” American Quarterly 18, Spring 1966, 118–20.
audience of approximately two thousand: James Yuenger, “What Norman Means,” Chicago Tribune Magazine, 2-6-66, 50, 52.
“Mailer, in a fine blue suit”: Richard G. Stern, “Report from the MLA,” NYRB, 2-17-66, 26.
“a phenomenon never before”: “Modes and Mutations: Quick Comments on the Modern American Novel,” Commentary, March 1966; rpt., as “The Argument Reinvigorated,” CAC, 96.
“like a weed”: Ibid., 99.
“clarify a nation’s vision”: Ibid., 98.
“of the deepest”: Ibid., 103.
“thundered applause”: Ibid., 28.
Poetry Center: Program, The Poetry Center, 1965–66.
traveling to Japan: NM to EY, 3-23-66.
“to explain”: Ibid.
“a 19th century novelist”: NM to David Madden, 3-24-66.
waterfront house: NM to Don Carpenter, 4-16-66.
wrote to Eldridge Cleaver: NM to Cleaver, 4-26-66.
“prophetic and penetrating”: Eldridge Cleaver, “Notes on a Native Son,” Ramparts, June 1966.
“so odd and horrible”: Preface to a paperback reprint of Why Are We in Vietnam? (NY: Berkley, 1977), v; rpt., as “Are We in Vietnam?” PAP, 9–12. NM also intended to draw on accounts of the 1959 murder and dismemberment of four women by a Provincetown man, Tony Costa, and did draw on descriptions of Costa’s marijuana cache in the Truro woods in TGD, as detailed in an unpublished paper by Christopher Busa, “Mailer’s Tough Guys: Novelist Invites His Characters to Dance,” delivered at the October 2012 Mailer Society conference.
“I was, as I say”: NM, preface, Why Are We in Vietnam?, viii.
“bonuses, gifts”: “Mr. Mailer Interviews Himself,” NYTBR, 9-17-66; rpt., CNM, 107.
“a mystique”: MBM, 296.
long letter from her: Trilling to NM, 5-6-66.
“an unhappy question”: NM to Trilling, 6-?-66.
“These McLuhans, these Pinchens [sic] and Jeremy Larners”: Marshall McLuhan (1911–1980), communication theory guru and author of Understanding Media (NY: McGraw-Hill, 1964); Thomas Pynchon (b. 1937), reclusive author of complex novels about, among other things, paranoia and technology. NM may have been responding to the buzz surrounding the publication of Pynchon’s postmodern novel The Crying of Lot 49 (Philadelphia: Lippincott, 1966); Jeremy Larner (b. 1937), novelist, teacher, and screenplay writer, published a novel about a college basketball star, Drive, He Said (NY: Delacorte, 1964).
“I carry my ideas”: NM to EY, 4-24-66.
“adventurers, rebels”: “Our Argument at Last Presented,” CAC, 307.
“Modern science may prove”: Ibid., 308.
Eliot Fremont-Smith: “A Nobel for Norman,” NYT, 8-22-66, 31.
A. Alvarez: “Dr Mailer, I Presume,” Observer, 10-15-67, 27.
anthology devoted to the Beats: Feldman and Gartenberg, eds., The Beat Generation and The Angry Young Men (NY: Citadel, 1958).
Leo Garen: A television and film writer and director of off-Broadway theater, Garen (1936–2006) met NM in Provincetown and later worked with him on MM.
“white with fury”: MBM, 295.
“When I was pregnant”: Ibid., 305.
Carol Stevens: Born in 1930, Stevens cannot recall the month in 1962 that she met NM.
Stevens was on a date: JML interview with Carol Stevens, 3-28-09.
“Norman never held her down”: MBM, 305.
“he doesn’t want to share”: Ibid., 296.
“We did it up here”: NM to Louis and Moos, 9-25-66.
“to running the (at times enormous)”: MBD, 272.
“Norman’s career”: William Wolf, “Mrs. Mailer Describes Life with Mailer,” Asbury Park Sunday Press, 3-19-67, 25.
“I began to feel”: MBD, 272.
“all the lard”: NM to MK, 8-3-66.
Theatre de Lys: NM to EY, 12-14-66.
“At least I’ll be done”: NM to Breit, 9-24-66.
review of Rush to Judgment: “The Great American Mystery,” Book Week, 8-28-66; rpt., EE, 269–83.
“had no intention”: EE, 272.
“literary commission”: Ibid., 282.
“The game is not over”: Ibid., 273.
social event of the year: Madeline Belkin (NM’s secretary) to Elizabeth Davies, 10-14-66.
Black and White Ball: Gerald Clarke, Capote: A Biography (NY: Simon & Schuster, 1988), 369–80; George Plimpton, Truman Capote: In Which Various Friends, Enemies, Acquaintances, and Detractors Recall His Turbulent Career (NY: Nan A. Talese/Doubleday, 1997), 247–78; Phillip Schopper interview for American Masters documentary on Lillian Hellman; www.flickr.com/photos/52207413@NO2/5472186684/.
“dirty gabardine raincoat”: George Plimpton, Truman Capote, 276.
“Everything felt anointed”: Ibid., 277.
“I was dissolute”: Ibid., 269.
paid him $20,000: NM to Deutsch, 12-1-66.
“ten stunning”: Introduction, The Deer Park: A Play (NY: Dial, 1967), 7–32.
“perhaps the dearest”: DPP, 11–12.
“a twin tower”: Richard Gilman, “Big Red Heart,” Newsweek, 2-13-67, 109.
shameless vice figure: Walter Kerr, “Evil: Plainly a Fun Thing,” NYT, 2-12-67, 1.
interviews to The Village Voice and the New York Post: Stephanie Harrington, “Norman Mailer’s ‘Deer Park’: Countdown Drama,” VV, 1-5-67, 1, 23; Jerry Tallmer, “Norman Mailer: Playwright,” New York Post Magazine, 2-11-67.
“A Statement of Aims”: VV, 1-5-67.
a long essay: “Mr. Mailer Passes Out the Cigars,” NYT, 1-22-67.
“I wanted the critics”: Dick Schaap, “Opening Night at the Theater,” New York Post, 2-2-67, 29.
“I think we’ve got”: Ibid.
ad in the Times: NYT, 4-26-67, 4D.
“host a Village”: Stephanie Harrington, “Mailer’s Street Scene: Renewal on Sunday,” VV, 5-4-67, 1, 21.
“his own drum”: Wilfrid Sheed, “Another Word from the Sponsor,” Life, 2-24-67, 8.
“the complicated story”: Michael Smith, “Theatre Journal,” VV, 2-9-67, 23.
“Mailer is a moralist”: Walter Kerr, “Evil: Plainly a Fun Thing,” NYT, 1.
“spout philosophy”: Wilfrid Sheed, “Another Word from the Sponsor,” Life, 8.
“I hold on”: NM to MK, 5-2-67.
lost $60,000: NM to JM, 5-3-67.
short stories: The Short Fiction of Norman Mailer (NY: Dell, 1967).
Why Are We in Vietnam?: (NY: Putnam’s, 1967).
The Bullfight: Subtitled A Photographic Narrative with Text by Norman Mailer (NY: CBS Legacy Books/Macmillan, 1967); NM’s essay first appeared in Playboy, October 1967, as “The Crazy One”; rpt., EE, 37–60; Lorca poem, The Poetry Bag, Winter 1967–68; rpt., EE, 236–42.
“reluctance”: NM to Felicia Geffen, 3-2-67.
antiwar speeches: “Mailer Says U.S. Dangerously Split,” Dallas Morning News, 3-29-67; Lee Coppola, “Mailer—Man of Fevered Words,” Buffalo Evening News, 4-1-67; “Mailer Speaks for City TNT,” Goucher Weekly, 4-14-67.
“We had absolutely fantastic”: “Norman Mailer,” Interview with Joseph Gelmis, CNM, 158.
“Norman suggested to Buzz”: MK, The Good, the Bad, and the Dolce Vita, 256.
“a gestalt of galoot”: Michael Chaiken, “The Master’s Mercurial Mistress: How Norman Mailer Courted Chaos 24 Frames per Second,” Film Comment, July/August 2007, 38.
“had the horror”: Gelmis, CNM, 164.
“almost unendurable”: Canby, CNM, 141.
“usual narcissistic fog”: NM to Harvey Breit, 6-13-63.
“sounds as if everybody”: Canby, CNM, 141.
“I just loved cutting”: Gelmis, CNM, 159.
“the worst movie”: “Celebrities Make Spectacles of Themselves,” New Yorker, 1-20-68.
“I thought I was going”: Canby, CNM, 141.
$450,000 advance: MBM, 301.
“Jewish experience”: Ibid., 302.
“was going to follow”: Ibid.
Mailer wrote back: NM to Bill Walker, 7-15-67.
“far too concerned”: NM to Don Carpenter, 7-14-67.
“fallen on dull, chilly days”: NM to MK, 5-2-67.
publishing a major new novel: The Confessions of Nat Turner (NY: Random House, 1967).
“putting out peace feelers”: NM to MK, 7-21-67.
Go to the Widow-Maker: (NY: Delacorte, 1967).
“paranoia, megalomania”: NM to MK, 4-7-67.
“an extraordinary idea”: NM to JM, 5-3-67.
mailed him his review: NM to JM, 9-9-67.
Playboy interview: rpt., in part, PAP, 32–45.
“metaphorical” and “elliptical”: NM to Nat Lehrman, 7-5-67.
Making It: (NY: Random House, 1967).
one of Mailer’s literary executors: NM to Rembar, 5-25-64.
a copy to Provincetown: Podhoretz, Ex-Friends, 215.
reviews of Why Are We in Vietnam?: John W. Aldridge, “From Vietnam to Obscenity,” Harper’s, February 1968, 91–97; Eugene Glenn, VV, 9-28-67, 6–7, 41; Eliot Fremont-Smith, “Norman Mailer’s Cherry Pie,” NYT, 9-8-67, 41M; Jack Kroll, “The Scrambler,” Newsweek, 9-18-67, 103–5; Denis Donoghue, “Sweepstakes,” NYRB, 9-28-67, 5–6; Granville Hicks, “Lark in the Race for Presidency,” Saturday Review, 9-16-67, 39–40; Christopher Nichols, “Psychedelic Freakout,” National Review, 10-31-67, 1216–17; “Hot Damn,” Time, 9-8-67, D12–13.
“Disc Jockey”: WVN, 24.
“genius brain”: Ibid., 27.
“The fact of the matter”: Ibid., 23.
“a taste of fish”: Ibid., 69.
“There were two eyes”: Ibid., 70–71.
“Write from experience”: Henry James, “The Art of Fiction” (1884); rpt., Henry James: Essays on Literature, American Writers, English Writers (NY: Library of America, 1984), 53.
“intensity of this process”: AON, 152–53.
The cast included: Evergreen Scorecard 2, no. 3, November/December 1968.
young woman named Lee Roscoe: JML interview with Lee Roscoe, Summer 2010.
“He’s not only convinced”: Roger Ebert, review of Beyond the Law, Chicago Sun-Times, 11-4-69.
“slightly manic”: Canby, “Norman Mailer Offers ‘Beyond the Law,’ ” NYT, 9-30-68.
“a real course in filmmaking”: MBD, 234.
“lugubrious conscience”: AON, 16–17.
“are not in focus”: Ibid., 19.
compared to Joyce: Christopher Lehmann-Haupt: “Norman Mailer as Joycean Punster and Manipulator of Language,” Commonweal, 12-8-67, 338–39.
outrageous theories: Richard Gilman, “Big Red Heart,” Newsweek, 109.
made his daughter Susan: AON, 13.
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br /> “endless blendings”: Ibid., 74–75.
“He had in fact learned”: Ibid., 13–14.
“leisurely twilight”: Ibid., 21.
“the exploratory personal”: Werner Berthoff, “Witness and Testament,” Aspects of Narrative, ed. J. Hillis Miller (NY: Columbia University Press, 1971), 189.
“as a piece of material”: Canby, CNM, 142.
architecture of ancient Egypt: AON, 178.
“the architecture of his personality”: Ibid., 26.
“serves willy-nilly”: Ibid., 66.
“half-heroic”: JML, “An Author’s Identity,” PAP, 153.
“Curious, when you’re with X”: Lowell, quoted in Macdonald’s review of The Armies of the Night in Esquire, May 1968; rpt., Macdonald, Discriminations, 210–16.
“finest journalist”: AON, 30–31.
“The eye is the first circle”: “Circles,” Ralph Waldo Emerson: Essays and Lectures (NY: Library of America, 1983), 403.
“sound-as-brickwork”: AON, 99.
“marked the move”: Sandy Vogelgesang, The Long Dark Night of the Soul: The American Intellectual Left and the Vietnam War (NY: Harper & Row, 1974), 134.
“Future historians”: Ibid., 131.
“for the war spoke”: AON, 108.
“to be able to enjoy”: Ibid., 91–92.
“as if finally”: Ibid., 129.
“It was as if the air”: Ibid., 147.
“feeling like the people’s”: Ibid., 225.
“had every promise”: Ibid., 98.
“No, in fact”: Donald Newlove, “Dinner at the Lowells’,” Esquire, September 1969, 178.
“I’ve been trying”: Lowell to NM, 3-13-68.
“a Quixote”: Ian Hamilton, “A Conversation with Robert Lowell,” The Review (London), 1971; rpt., American Poetry Review, September/October 1978, 26; Robert Lowell, Notebook, 1967–68 (NY: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1969).
“For Norman Mailer”: Ibid., 183.
“the form of the book”: Ian Hamilton, “A Conversation with Robert Lowell,” The Review, 26.
“Prince of Bourbon”: AON, 42.
“the expression on his face”: Ibid., 43.
“fatally vulgar”: Ibid., 54.
“a blending so dramatic”: Ibid., 50–51.
“What a good short story”: Matthew Grace and Steve Roday, “Mailer on Mailer: An Interview,” New Orleans Review 3, no. 3 (1973), 231.
“was an astronomical figure”: MBM, 321.