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The Mailer Review/Volume 5, 2011/Making Masculinity and Unmaking Jewishness: Norman Mailer’s Voice in Wild 90 and Beyond the Law

2025-04-14T17:57:39Z

ADavis: fixed minor formatting errors (hyphenation, spacing, italics)

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{{Byline |last=Cohen |first=Sarah Jo |abstract=A discussion of Mailer’s career, interrelating Mailer’s ethnicity with his corpus of work, with special attention to his cinematic work. |url=http://prmlr.us/mr05coh }}

{{dc|dc=N|orman Mailer’s sizable FBI file begins with his voice.}} The 165 pages of Mailer’s 171-page file available to the public cover fifteen years of observation and surveillance, and includes materials ranging from endless notes tracking Mailer’s passport applications and international travel, to FBI agents’ reviews of Miami and the Siege of Chicago (with meticulous notes about each mention of the FBI), and even a letter from a high school teacher asking J. Edgar Hoover for permission to teach ''The Naked and the Dead.''{{efn|In a letter dated March 18, 1964, also included in Mailer’s file, Hoover wrote back telling the teacher that this request was beyond his area of jurisdiction because the FBI “neither makes evaluations nor draws conclusions as to the character of integrity of any organization, publication, or individual,” and because Hoover has made it a habit “not to comment on any material not prepared by the FBI.”}} The file begins, however, with a clipping from ''The Washington Post'', a June 6,1962, George Sokolsky column called “These Days,” that moved J. Edgar Hoover to leave a note for his staff reading, “Let me have memo on Mailer.”{{sfn|United States Federal Bureau of Investigation|1962–1975}} Sokolsky’s article responds to an ''Esquire'' piece Mailer wrote about then first lady Jackie Kennedy that describes Mrs. Kennedy’s voice as “a quiet parody of the sort of voice one hears on the radio late at night, dropped softly into the ear by girls who sell soft mattresses, depilatories, or creams to brighten the skin.”{{sfn|Sokolsky|1962|}} Sokolsky takes offense at Mailer’s mockery of Mrs. Kennedy and scrutiny of her voice, responding, “[A] person’s voice is what it is. I never heard Norman Mailer’s voice but whatever the Lord gave him, baritone or tenor, soprano or bass, it is what it is, and he can thank the good Lord that he does not suffer from cerebral palsy or some such thing.”{{sfn|Sokolsky|1962|}} Mailer’s voice, however, much like his persona, is not at all God-given and never “is what it is.” Rather, Mailer’s{{pg|183|184}}

voice is a deliberate construction pieced together from bits of others’ voices in order to mask the adenoidal voice of his childhood.

Mailer reflects briefly upon his voice in his chronicle of the October 1967 March on the Pentagon, ''The Armies of the Night: History as a Novel, the Novel as History'', written in the third person with himself as its main character. Part IV of ''Armies'' begins with an apology from Mailer for bringing the story of the March on the Pentagon to a climax and then launching into a diversion about his relationship to film and the cameras following him through the melee of the march. Mailer writes of his relationship to film: “he had on screen in this first documentary a fatal taint, a last remaining speck of the one personality he found absolutely insupportable—the nice Jewish boy from Brooklyn. Something in his adenoids gave it away—he had the softness of a man early accustomed to mother-love.”{{sfn|Mailer|1968|pg=152}} For Mailer, the paradoxical experience of seeing his voice undermines the masculinities he works to materialize in his career as a writer and public intellectual, which he goes on to enumerate: “warrior, presumptive general, ex-political candidate, embattled aging enfant terrible of the literary world, wise father of six children, radical intellectual, existential philosopher, hard-working author, champion of obscenity, husband of four battling sweet wives, amiable bar drinker, and much exaggerated street fighter, party giver, hostess insulter.” As a result of feeling outed on film as a “nice Jewish boy,” “accustomed to mother love,” our presumptive general and champion of obscenity vows to “[stay] away from further documentaries of himself.”{{sfn|Mailer|1968|pg=152}}

The problem of Mailer’s voice is intimately connected with both sexuality and masculinity. The adenoids, after all, are located in the nose, a stereotypical marker of Jewish otherness and degeneracy. We do not need Sander Gilman to tell us, although he does in the chapter of ''The Jew’s Body'' entitled “The Jewish Nose,” that the Jewish nose is the locus of redirected anxiety about the Jewish penis—both are body parts that develop and take shape at puberty—the latter of which is a threat to national purity through its potential to increase the Jewish population. The adenoidal voice signals a kind of impotence for Mailer, revealing him as accustomed to mother love, and functions as “the acoustic mirror in which the male subject hears all the repudiated elements of his infantile babble.”{{sfn|Silverman|1988|pg=81}} The infantile babble here, the mother tongue of the mother’s voice, is Yiddish.{{efn|Mary V. Dearborn writes that Mailer picked up Yiddish at home from his parents, “enough so that many years later, in Germany, he was able to ask for directions in this language and be understood.”{{sfn|Dearborn|1999|}}}} Kaja Silverman writes that the voice of the mother resonates in the male subject and that “the male subject frequently ‘refines’ his ‘own’ voice by projecting onto the{{pg|184|185}}

mother’s voice all that is unassimilable to the paternal position.”{{sfn|Silverman|1988|pg=81}} Mailer is a case study in this relationship to the maternal voice; when Mailer first sees himself on film, he hears the adenoidal, Jewish, maternal voice within himself. Because the paternal position Mailer strives to create is distinctly not Jewish, or at least one that allies itself with Jewishness without performing it, the mother’s voice becomes unassimilable (or in his words, “unsupportable”) to his identity. Thus, while Mailer asserts that he will “[stay] away from further documentaries of himself,” he returns to film as both actor and director in order to refine his voice by expunging its maternal layers.

Norman Mailer’s film career, often dismissed as vulgar and/or irrelevant, was short but intense; he directed four films, two of which were released in 1968, ''Wild'' and ''Beyond the Law'', one in 1970, ''Maidstone'', and, after a long break, ''Tough Guys Don’t Dance'' was released in 1987.{{efn|Mailer was also featured in several documentaries during these years, including Dick Fontaine’s ''Will the Real Norman Mailer Please Stand Up?'' (1968) and ''Norman Mailer vs. Fun City U.S.A.'' (1970); the former is a filmic companion to ''Armies'', documenting Mailer’s actions during the March on the Pentagon, and the latter produces a record of Mailer’s 1969 New York City mayoral campaign. Mailer was also documented in Chris Hegedus and D.A. Pennebaker’s ''Town Bloody Hall'', a film of the 1971 debate between Mailer and Germaine Greer about women’s liberation at Town Hall in New York City.}} Mailer’s first three films were largely influenced by John Cassavetes, although Mailer predictably argues that his mastery of what he calls “existential acting” makes him a much better filmmaker than Cassavetes.{{sfn|Mailer|2006|}} In his essay, “Some Dirt in the Talk,” Mailer defines existential acting by addressing each of the terms that comprise the phrase. He notes that existentialism and acting exist at two opposite “poles,” writing, ''“If existentialism is ultimately concerned with the attractions of the unknown, acting is one of the surviving rituals of invocation, repetition, and ceremony—of propitiation to the gods.”''{{sfn|Mailer|1972|pg=104}}{{efn| It is quite possible that Mailer is thinking in part of Kenneth Anger here, the word “invocation” invoking Anger’s ''Invocation of My Demon Brother'' (1969), as well as the ritual and ceremony of highly-stylized films like ''Kustom Kar Kommandos'' (1965) and ''Scorpio Rising'' (1964). Incidentally, in the Boulenger interview, a copy of Anger’s book Hollywood ''Babylon'' can be see on the bookshelf over Mailer’s shoulder, almost like a cartoon devil egging him on.}} His theory of existential acting, then, strives to collapse these two poles, freeing acting from repetition and ceremony, and liberating his actors (and himself) from the propitiation of the gods. Existential acting, he argues, works because in our daily lives we always pretend, lie, and act, and works by more effectively representing the chaos and “complexity of our century” than mainstream Hollywood cinema.{{sfn|Mailer|1972|pg=90,108}} Unsurprisingly, from the man who gave us the genre-bending history as novel/novel as history, the true life novel, and the novel biography,{{efn|''The Armies of the Night'', ''The Executioner’s Song'', and ''Marilyn'', respectively.}} existential acting collapses the cinema and the outside world, documentary and fiction, acting and existentialism, and masculinity and performance, the last of which Mailer explicitly connects, writing: “There is hardly a guy alive who is not an actor to the hilt—for the simplest of reasons. He cannot be tough all the time...[s]o he acts to fill the gaps.”{{sfn|Mailer|1972|pg=90-1}} Thus, armed with the theory and methodology of existential acting, Mailer returns to the cinema as a filmmaker for the same reason he considers turning away from it after his{{pg|185|186}}

experience in the above passage: at the same time the camera exposes one’s frailties and the identities one attempts to disguise; it bolsters the masquerade of masculinity by imprinting its performance in celluloid. The same voice that undermines Mailer’s masculinity becomes his primary means of constructing it.

In his first documentary Mailer sees “something in his adenoids” in a moment of slippage that renders the aural a visual prop. The experience of seeing his voice disrupts Mailer’s viewing experience by first troubling the traditional assumption that film is a visual medium and then forcing Mailer to confront himself as both image and sound. Mladen Dolar provides a means of understanding the revolutionary and revelatory potential of sound, in the form of the voice, in relation to both identity and film, as he writes:

<blockquote>[T]he visible world presents relative stability, permanence, distinctiveness, and a location at a distance, the audible presents fluidity, passing, a certain inchoate, amorphous character and a lack of distance. The voice is elusive, always changing, becoming, elapsing, with unclear contours, as opposed to the relative permanence, solidity, durability of the seen.{{sfn|Dolar|2006|pg=79}}</blockquote>

Here the visible is associated with stability, permanence, and distinctiveness—terms that are crucial to our understanding of cinema, but that mirror the ways we come to understand ourselves as selves. In film, the visible is assumed to guarantee presence, an assumption that stems from, among other things, the historical and philosophical privileging of the visual as a primary quality, and the problem of the voiceovers and voice-offs of sound film—which are often disembodied, absent, and coming from beyond the grave or before birth. Because the visual has historically been the privileged epistemological order through which we understand both film and identity, by focusing on sound, which is dynamic and playful, we can begin to dismantle both identity and film.{{efn|At this point in time, there is, of course, a well-established tradition of discussing sound and the voice on film—Pascal Bonitzer’s “The Silences of the Voice” (1975), Christian Metz’s “Aural Objects” (1980), Mary Anne Doane’s “The Voice in the Cinema” (1982), Michel Chion’s ''The Voice
in Cinema'' (1982), and Silverman’s ''Acoustic Mirror'' (1988), just to name a few. It seems important for our purposes, however, to rehash the stakes of this discussion, especially in relation to deconstructing/reconstructing/constructing Mailer’s masculinity.}} As Mailer sees his voice, witnessing his insides (in the form of his adenoids) undermining his outsides, the visual and audible come together, undoing the binary oppositions between seeing and hearing, insides and outsides.

Dolar contrasts the visible to the audible, arguing that the latter is associated with a lack of distance, a lack of distance perhaps best embodied by the uterine envelope created by the mother’s voice. This lack of distance with{{pg|186|187}}

regard to the sound of the voice stems from the fact that the voice is simultaneously sent and delivered, thus folding back on itself and troubling the boundaries between self and other. This lack of distance is also precisely what Mailer experiences when he sees himself in his first documentary, at once spoken and heard. While Christian Metz dismisses seeing oneself on screen as an impossibility,{{efn|In ''Imaginary Signifier'', Metz writes that “there is one thing and one thing only that is never reflected in [the screen]: the spectator’s own body.”{{sfn|Metz|1982|p=61}}}} feminist film theory calls attention to the discomfort that comes from not being granted the distance that the visible demands. In “Film and the Masquerade,” Mary Anne Doane argues that the female spectator goes largely untheorized because the historical “imbrication of the cinematic image and the representation of the woman” leaves her too close to the image.{{sfn|Doane|1981|pg=76}} Doane theorizes that in order to achieve the distance necessary to watch and appreciate film, female spectators assume a metaphorical feminine mask, which “in flaunting femininity, holds it at a distance.”{{sfn|Doane|1981|pg=81}} Doane then briefly considers why men do not have to masquerade as more masculine spectators, writing, “The very fact that we can speak of a woman ‘using’ her sex or ‘using’ her body for particular gains is highly significant—it is not that a man cannot use his body in this way but that he doesn’t have to.”{{sfn|Doane|1981|pg=82}}

But using his body for particular gains is precisely what Mailer does, as exemplified in Diane Arbus’s photograph of Mailer. If, as Mailer quipped, “Giving a camera to Diane Arbus is like giving a hand grenade to a baby,” this hand grenade caught an image that exemplifies how Mailer flaunts his masculinity by holding it at a distance.{{sfn|Hagberg|2008|pg=211}} In this photograph, we see Mailer is in his standard three-piece suit, sprawled out in a writerly looking high-backed chair. His right hand looks as though clasping an invisible cigarette, or pen, or as if gesturing to emphasize a point. His forehead is wrinkled in thought, and his blue eyes glow even in black and white. While his clothing, his chair, his furrowed brow, and his mouth, slightly agape in apparent mid-sentence, add up to an image we would expect of a great writer, his posture suggests otherwise; immediately, our attention is drawn to Mailer’s crotch. Thus, this image reveals both Mailer’s efforts to underscore his masculinity, placing his crotch front and center, and the vulnerability of this masculinity—in this moment, we wouldn’t need a grenade to cause Mailer a great deal of pain; a swift kick would suffice. The simultaneous power and vulnerability of Mailer’s crotch underscores his efforts to use the visibility of his body to counteract the invisibility of his voice, and his{{pg|187|188}}

hidden adenoids. We see Mailer engaged in a manly masquerade, as his proximity to the image allows him to manipulate it.

So male spectators need to masquerade as well—especially male spectators who find themselves closer to the image than they would like. The Jewish male is one such figure, as a result of a history of anti-Semitic visual representations of Jews in both scientific and popular media. Sander Gilman argues that such visual representations are internalized by contemporary Jewish-American writers, registering most prominently in repeated anxiety about sounding too Jewish.{{sfn|Gilman|1991|pg=10-37}} Mailer’s anxiety about his adenoids is decisively Jewish, both because the adenoids are located in the nose and because they give the Jewish voice its stereotypical nasal quality. Mailer’s attempt to work through this anxiety in his films is twofold. First, he gets on the other side of the camera in order to see rather than be seen, and when he is seen (as actor), it is under his own direction. Second, Mailer employs his voice in order to intervene, destabilize, and distance himself from the power of the image.

''Wild 90'', as it repeatedly calls attention to issues of seeing and visibility, provides the best examples of Mailer’s effort to seize control of his visual representation in order to produce a record of his masculinity. Mailer accomplishes this task not only by “writing,”{{efn|The word “writing” is in quotes in this sentence because while Mailer is given credit for writing the film, for example on the ''Internet Movie Database'', existential acting relies on improvisation and thus has no script, per se.}} editing, and directing the film, but also, by playing a boxer in league with mafiosi, who have the police under their control. In this film the Maf Boys, three men who spend the film holed up in a Brooklyn warehouse, watch over the New York Police Department, a position emphasized by their location many stories above the city street. The NYPD, however, asserts that the Maf Boys would not have lived past thirteen had the Irish and Jewish cops not been watching out for them—so a network of interlaced looks, and interlaced ethnicities, emerges. But perhaps the most striking look is Mailer’s own. As a character known as “the Prince,” Mailer is perpetually at the mirror, greasing up his hair and combing out its kinky curls. This position is crucial to Mailer’s management of his visual representation: from the mirror, much as in his position as director, Mailer can see both himself and the actors behind him; he can also control his image, making sure his mane and signature sneer are exactly as he wants them to appear. The metaphorical significance of Mailer’s mirror scenes almost goes without saying—at these times we are treated to moments of silence rare in his film (or writing, or political) career in which Mailer uses the visuality of film to construct and maintain the visibility of identity, to reg-{{pg|188|189}}

ister his transformation here from nice Jewish boy to badass boxer. Despite this love affair with his image, Mailer shatters the filmic mirror when, at the conclusion of ''Wild 90'', the Prince demands to speak to the audience, breaking the fourth wall, and informing the audience that the CIA{{efn|Mailer had a strong distaste for the CIA, an organization that he saw as the paragon of both surveillance culture and WASP culture. Mailer’s 1300-plus-page novel ''Harlot’s Ghost'' provides an extended though indirect glimpse into his dislike for the CIA and is almost agonizing to read because its narrator, Harry Hubbard, is a boring, WASPy, CIA agent. It’s also worth noting that Hubbard refers to the one Jewish agent in the CIA, Reed Arnold Rosen, as “adenoidal” (61).}} is watching all of us. He then goes on to tell us, in his garbled, drunken voice that his favorite author is Norman Mailer—presumably, because he is both his creator and a substantial part of his self.

Mailer’s appearance, particularly in the mirror scenes of ''Wild 90'', is crucial to his efforts to make masculinity and unmake Jewishness, two concepts at odds because of the internalization of a long history of popular representations and stereotypes of the weak Jew. While Mailer combats this weakness in part through his tough guy exterior—carefully cultivated through hard-drinking, hard-talking, and hard-fighting in an effort to make himself out as a latter-day Hemingway—Mailer’s voice registers this construction as well. In the notes taken during my first screenings of ''Beyond the Law'' and ''Wild 90'', I repeatedly try to describe the voice of the characters he portrays. In my notes on ''Beyond the Law'', I wrote that the poor sound quality of the film combines with Mailer’s voice to create the effect of almost incomprehensible yelling from Lt. Francis Xavier Pope for an hour and twenty-four minutes. My notes on Mailer’s gangster voice as the Prince of ''Wild 90'' remark that his accent makes him sound like a cross between Marlon Brando and Fred Flintstone with marbles in his mouth. In my second viewing, I crossed out this assessment and wrote that he sounded more like Bert Lahr’s Cowardly Lion from the ''Wizard of Oz''. I am not alone in trying to describe Mailer’s voice. Michael Mewshaw describes Mailer’s voice as “the Irish brogue of a whiskey priest” coming from the body of a man who “looked about as threatening as a teddy bear”{{sfn|Mewshaw|2002|pg=14}}, and Jane O’Reilly notes that “words rumble and bubble and jump out, in a variety of accents: New York, faintly southern, all g’s dropped (as in ‘Ah’m talkin’) when he is particularly shy.”{{sfn|O'Reilly|1974|p=198}} {{efn|Salman Rushdie describes Bert Lahr’s lion voice is strikingly similar words, “all elongated vowel sounds (''Put ’emuuuuuuuup''),” and the Cowardly Lion’s personality as one that sounds a lot like Mailer’s: “transparent bravado and huge, operatic, tail-tugging, blubbing terror.”{{sfn|Rushdie|1992|}}}} More recently, in an article about the New York Mailer retrospective, A.O. Scott describes Mailer’s voice as a “rapid, forceful stream of half-baked nostrums and brilliant ''aperçus'' delivered in that inimitable accent, an audible palimpsest of Mr. Mailer’s Brooklyn childhood, his Ivy League education and his World War II combat service in an Army unit composed mainly of Texans and Southerners.”

All of this is to say that the voices of Mailer’s characters (including the character “Norman Mailer,” who becomes a formal entity in ''The Armies of''{{pg|189|190}}

''the Night'', but who was roaming the streets of America and Europe at least since the publication of ''The Naked and the Dead'') are a response to the anxiety of sounding too Jewish. The adenoidal voice Mailer hears in his first documentary, the unsure voice of the Brooklyn Jew, transforms into a cacophony of accents—Southern, Irish, Italian, Brooklyn—which together make Mailer’s voice the voice of immigrant America. Paul Breines writes that discursive constructions of Jewish weakness arise from and refer to the rootlessness of the Diaspora.{{sfn|Brienes|1990|p=195}} For Brienes, tough Jewishness is a performance on the part of secular Jews that is largely associated with Zionism, and its creation first of tough Jewish pioneers, and then, after Israel’s victory in the Six Day War, of tough Israeli soldiers.{{sfn|Brienes|1990|p=195}} Mailer, however, described his relationship to Judaism in this way: “I am a Jew out of loyalty to the underdog. I would never say I was not a Jew, but I took no strength from the fact.”{{sfn|Dearborn|1999|pg=14}} With this in mind, Mailer’s voice is a tough Jewish voice, but one that revises Breines’ toughness by drawing strength from a composite of immigrant voices, rooted, if at all, in American soil rather than Israeli. Mailer brings these immigrant voices together to construct a hybrid masculinity that is not only part white Negro and part tough Jew, but that is also comprised of Italian-American, Irish-American, Southern, and Texan parts, among others. Thus, Mailer simultaneously makes and unmakes Jewish masculinity by borrowing from other masculinities in the process of making himself into a palimpsest.

Mailer’s essay, “The White Negro,” is the site most often returned to in order to discuss his contribution to the theories of tough Jewish discourse and of masculinity.{{efn|See Levine and Damon. Damon pithily writes that “The White Negro” “claims to be about how the white man envies the Black man’s sexuality and thus tries to emulate his style, but [its] subtext is about how the Jewish man envies and wants to emulate the gentile man’s sexuality, but can’t say so.”{{sfn|Mailer|1959|p=337-358}}}} This essay, which argues that the hipster’s existential, psychopathic masculinity is particularly well-suited for the Cold War political climate, is infamous not only because it espouses Reichian connections between sex and violence, but also because it argues that “the Negro,” who “relinquish[es] the pleasures of the mind for the more obligatory pleasures of the body,” provides a model for how to live violently and sexually.{{sfn|Mailer|1959|pg=341}} Both because of and despite its racist enlistment of African-American men, Mailer’s essay celebrates and identifies with black masculinity as a means of embracing otherness without admitting Jewishness. With its repeated references to the figure of “the psychopath,” who “murders—if he has the courage,” however, Mailer’s essay is also about criminality, which is a crucial source of his on-screen tough Jewish persona.{{sfn|Mailer|1959|pg=347}} While this persona borrows its style and hipness from African Americans, it{{pg|190|191}}

almost literally ventriloquizes through the voices of Irish Americans and Italian Americans, particularly those of Hollywood cops and crooks.

Forging a criminal enterprise, and/or performing criminal masculinity, is a traditional means of assimilation for immigrant populations in America, which for the second wave of European immigrants begins with the Irish in the 1850s and is then passed on to Italian and Jewish immigrants two generations later.{{efn|A classic example appears in Sergio Leone’s Jewish gangster film, ''Once Upon a Time in America''—which stars the perpetually ethnicity-crossing Robert De Niro and for which Mailer flew to Rome 1976 in to work on the screenplay.{{sfn|Mewshaw|2002}} For a recent example, see Stern’s ''The Frozen Rabbi'', a comic whirlwind tour through the history of American Jewry that follows one family from the Russian Pale to Memphis, Tennessee, with a stop in New York, where one family member, Ruby “Kid” Karp, becomes a notorious gangster.}} While criminality provided immigrant gangsters with increased notoriety and power, immigrant groups who became police officers saw a similar rise in status—and much like criminals, in part because it was hoped that they could infiltrate the criminal scenes of their brethren, it was the Irish who were cops first, followed by Italians and Jews.{{sfn|Fried|1993|pg=xv}} While this history suggests discrete ethnic groups who cross paths but not cultures, cinematic representations of the outlaw capitalism of mobsters often star Jewish immigrants in the role of Italian immigrants and thus demonstrate ethnic crossings similar to those in Mailer’s films. The results register in the voice; in ''Little Caesar''{{sfn|Elmer|1931}} Edward G. Robinson, né Emanuel Goldenberg, stars as the adenoidal Cesar Enrico Bandello, and in ''Scarface'',{{sfn|Hawks|1932}} Paul Muni, né Meshilem Meier Weisenfreund, stars as Antonio Camonte whose Italian accent has a near Yiddish lilt.

In a 1965 letter to William F. Buckley, a man whose mid-century faux British accent made his voice almost as strange and remarkable as Mailer’s[[efn|Buckley is also both WASPy and a former CIA agent. See William F. Buckley, Jr., “Who Did What?”}} Mailer hands the crown of “most hated man in American life” over to Buckley. The letter responds to Buckley’s recent speech before the Holy Name Society, an annual gathering of Catholic police officers, in which Buckley criticized the news media for overemphasizing police brutality during the recent civil rights marches in Selma, Alabama.{{sfn|Tanenhouse|2005|}} When the ''Herald Tribune'' and civil rights activists caught wind of these remarks, and the rumors that the assembled police officers laughed and applauded upon hearing them, a media frenzy ensued which elicited a letter from Mailer, weighing in on Buckley’s speech by clarifying his own relationship to the boys in blue:

<blockquote>I’m not the cop-hater I’m reputed to be, and in fact police fascinate me. But this is because I think their natures are very complex, not simple at all, and what I would object to ...is that you made a one-for-one correspondence between the need to maintain law and order and the nature of the men who would main-{{pg|191|192}}

tain it. The policeman has I think an extraordinarily tortured psyche. He is perhaps more tortured than the criminal.{{sfn|Mailer|2008|p=8}}</blockquote>

Perhaps as a result of their tortured psyches, Mailer repeatedly turns to cops and crooks as the focus of and source of conflict in his oeuvre. For Mailer, cops are men in power who are repeatedly outwitted by clever, hypermasculine, criminals: think Stephen Rojack and Gary Gilmore, the respective heroes of ''An American Dream'' and ''The Executioner’s Song'', who commit numerous crimes in single volumes, and the Norman Mailer of ''The Armies of the Night'', arrested by U.S. Marshalls for crossing a police line at the Pentagon. There is also the Norman Mailer who stabbed his second wife, and the one who nearly lost an eye after fighting a group of hoodlums who insinuated that his dog was a “faggot.”{{sfn|Hitchens|2007|}} Mailer, as his art and life suggest, sees the tension between cops and criminals as one that is inside of everyone. In a discussion of ''Beyond the Law'' in an interview with Gilles Boulenger, Mailer reveals that the film “had a notion at the core of it that worked— which is that everybody has a cop or a criminal in them” and that, “when you put people together—one playing a cop and one playing a crook—you get the dynamism that comes from the fact that every cop in real life has a potential criminal in him and every criminal in real life, or almost every criminal in real life, has a potential cop within their soul.”{{sfn|Mailer|2006|}}

Mailer sees the conflict between cops and crooks as one that inhabits the film set as well. In “A Course on Film-Making,” he describes cameramen and union grips, who “usually dress like cops off duty and are built like cops (with the same heavy meat in the shoulders, same bellies oiled in beer), which is not surprising for they are also in surveillance upon a criminal activity: people are forging emotions under bright lights… [l]ike cops they see through every fake move and hardly care.”{{sfn|Mailer|1972|p=133}} Here the crew, who are equated with cops, are set up in opposition to the actors whom they put under surveillance and, more indirectly, to the director, who for Mailer is always an outlaw resisting the tyranny of the image, striving to disrupt the conventions of polite cinema through a refusal to use a script, and insisting upon including as much verbal and auditory obscenity as humanly possible. Thus, even when Mailer plays a cop in ''Beyond the Law'', this portrayal becomes an effort similar to that of the director whose film tramples upon respectability. Mailer’s Lieutenant Pope inhabits the body of the cop in order{{pg|192|193}}

to mock him and to illustrate a psyche more tortured than that of the criminal.

In ''Beyond the Law'', as Mailer takes on the role of a cop, anxieties about Jewishness, being seen, and the voice come together. ''Beyond the Law'' tells the story of one night in a police precinct in which a number of criminals are interrogated, ranging from a motorcycle gang, to a man who murdered his wife with an axe, to the members of a sadomasochistic whipping club. The film takes us back and forth between the precinct, where we see the cops in action, and a bar, where we see the cops off-duty, having drinks. Toward the film’s conclusion, these spaces intersect as Lieutenant Pope brings one of the women from the whipping club, a stunning Syrian woman named Lee Ray Rogers, to the bar. Rogers’ tripartite name, cobbled together from pieces of Lee Harvey Oswald and James Earl Ray,{{efn|The name also refers to Republican luminary and soon to be Nixon Administration Secretary of State William P. Rogers, who would go on to negotiate an Arab-Israeli peace treaty in 1973”}} suggests that she too will be an assassin of sorts, or at least that she will bring the little death of orgasm to Lieutenant Pope. Just before Rogers arrives, Pope (Mailer’s Irish-American cop, whose rank and name suggest that he is only slightly less than the Bishop of Rome) and Mickey Berk (Mickey Knox’s Jewish-American cop, feminized through a last name that is cockney rhyming slang for cunt),{{efn|See also entry for “Berk” on ''London Slang.com: “Rhyming Slang'', short for ‘Berkshire Hunt’, meaning ‘cunt’. Most people go around calling people ‘berks’ for years not realizing that it is slang for one of the strongest swear words in the English language.”}} have a heart to heart in the men’s room in which Pope remarks, “I used to have no respect for the Jewish cops until the Israelis showed the Arabs where to go. And then I said to myself, maybe Berk has more than even I thought.” Pope then mutters under his breath for a couple of minutes, and quietly says to himself, “The Irish never won a war."

Once Rogers arrives, Pope asks the other officers to leave them alone. An intimate conversation follows, during which the two imagine an S & M scene and Pope refers to his penis as “the avenger.” A difficult to obtain “blue” version of the film exists in which we presumably see Pope’s avenger in action. For our purposes, however, it is even more striking to see him ''voicing'' his potency and sexuality, while Mailer’s voice revealed him as soft in his first documentary, Pope tells us here that he is hard. Pope expresses the ethnic crossing that facilitates his hardness in this conversation as well, as he tells Rogers, “You bring out the Italian in me.” Ultimately, Pope’s blonde wife arrives at the bar, cramping his style, and commands him to end this conversation. Thus the film concludes with Pope at the nexus of several ethnicities: pitted against an Arab dominatrix and an emasculating ''shiksa'', the Irish Pope arms himself with an Italian libido, and metaphorically whips out his{{pg|193|194}}

avenger in the name of both the Jews, who showed the Arabs where to go, and the Irish who never won a war.

In “A Course in Filmmaking,” Mailer argues that after the advent of sound, film started to mimic theater, and that the work of film should be to get away from this mimicry in order to accomplish things that can only be accomplished on film. As films that are uniquely filmic, Mailer gives the example of ''The Maltese Falcon'', but also of the Marx Brothers’ films, in which the brothers “stampeded over every line of a script and tore off in enough directions to leave concepts fluttering like ticker tape on the mysterious nature of the movie art.”{{sfn|Mailer|1972|p=129}} The Marx brothers are important ancestors in Mailer’s filmic genealogy, in part because they too are Jews who remix ethnicity on film, as Chico becomes Italian and Zeppo becomes the brothers’ WASPy foil. And like Mailer’s films, much of the chaos and anarchy that unfurls in the Marx Brothers’ films stems from sound, in the form of elaborate musical numbers, Groucho’s wordplay, Chico’s Italian accent and piano playing, Harpo’s horn-honking, and even his silence. For both the Marx Brothers and Mailer, the work of cinema is to unravel itself, to make and unmake a universe in the same space, to challenge conventions. Where the Marx brothers wreak havoc, for example, upon the university in ''Horse feathers'', and upon dictatorship in ''Duck Soup'', Mailer wreaks havoc upon language and good taste as he attempts to create the film with the most “repetitive pervasive obscenity of any film ever made” with ''Wild, 90'' and upon both his own voice and the human eardrum with the perpetual yelling of Lt. Pope in ''Beyond the Law''. Mailer even tells us, “''Wild 90'' seems close to nothing so much as the Marx Brothers doing improvisations on ''Little Caesar'' with the addition of a free run of obscenity equal to ''Naked Lunch'' or ''Why Are We in Vietnam?''”{{sfn|Mailer|1972|p=90}} It is as though Mailer sees ''Wild 90'' as an almost unimaginable supplement to the Marx Brothers’ oeuvre—a vision of what their tough Jewish contribution to cinema would look like had they ever assumed the roles of mafiosi.

In Mailer’s universe, the borders between Mailer and his characters are always fragile. He tells us in the Boulenger interview that in the making of ''Beyond the Law'' he would torture the actors playing the crooks, who were all friends of his, by interrogating them about things they had done in their real lives.{{efn|The best example of this existential interrogation occurs as Mailer’s Lieutenant Pope interrogates Peter Rosoff, whom Mailer asserts was a closeted homosexual, accusing him of soliciting sex in a subway men’s room.{{sfn|Mailer|2006|p=25}}}} In his writing and his introductory remarks included on the French DVDs of his films, Mailer repeatedly tells us that the goal of existential acting is to create a fictional documentary.{{sfn|Mailer|2006|}} Here is an ex-{{pg|195|196}}

ample, taken from his discussion of the successes and failures of ''cinéma vérité'' in “A Course on Filmmaking”: “It was as if there was a law that a person could not be himself in front of a camera unless he pretended to be someone other than himself. By that logic, ''cinéma vérité'' would work if it photographed a performer in the midst of his performance.”{{sfn|Mailer|1972|p=147}} Mailer’s films elaborate upon his ideas about existential filmmaking: it is only in the act of performing as a character (Lieutenant Pope) that the actor reveals himself (Norman Mailer). Pope/Mailer’s sarcastic comment about not respecting the Jews until they showed the Arabs their military might is a line almost directly out of Breines’ ''Tough Jews'', or vice versa, Pope/Mailer’s comment is part of the discourse surrounding the 1968 war that inspired ''Tough Jews''. Either way, with this line, Mailer introduces himself into the lineage of tough Jews but with his own spin. When Pope tells us that Lee Ray Rogers brings out the Italian in him, he speaks for Mailer as well. Because Jewish masculinity for Mailer is always borrowed from and channeled through other ethnic masculinities, Pope’s words are as good as Mailer’s saying that Rogers brings out the Jew in him, and Mailer’s (via Pope’s) tough Jew is always already fighting, whether he is pushing Arabs out of Palestine or fighting to defend his dog’s honor. Thus, much as Mailer helped to unmake cinema as he made it, Mailer makes Jewishness as he unmakes it— masculinity unravels as the film does the same, moving from real to reel.

== Notes ==
{{notelist}}

==Citations==
{{Reflist}}

===Works Cited===
{{Refbegin|indent=1|20em}}
* {{cite book |last=Brienes |first=Paul |date=1990 |title=''Tough Jews: Political Fantasies and the Moral Dilemma of American Jewry.'' |url= |location=New York |publisher=Basic Books |pages= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite magazine |last=Buckley |first=William F. |date=2005 |title= Who Did What? |url= |magazine=''National Review'' |pages= |access-date= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite journal |last=Damom |first=Maria |title=Triangulated Desire and Tactical Silences in the Beat Hipscape: Bob Kaufman and Others. |url= |journal=College Literature |volume=27.1 |issue= |date=Winter 2000 |pages=139-157 |access-date= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Dearborn |first=Mary V. |date=1999 |title=''Mailer: A Biography'' |url= |location=New York |publisher=Houghton Mifflin |pages= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Doane |first=Mary Ann |date=1981 |title=Film and the Masquerade: Theorizing the Female Spectator. |url= |location=''Screen 23'' |publisher= |pages=74-87 |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Dolar |first=Mladen |date=2006 |title=''A Voice and Nothing More'' |url= |location=Cambridge |publisher= MIT P |pages= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite news |last=Fontaine |first=Dir. Dick |date=1968 |title=''Will the Real Norman Mailer Please Stand Up? '' |url= |work= |location= |access-date= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Fried |first=Albert |date=1993 |title=''The Rise and Fall of the Jewish Gangster in America'' |url= |location=New York |publisher=Columbia UP |pages= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite magazine |last=Gilman |first=Sander |date=1991 |title=The Jewish Voice: Chicken Soup or the Penalties of Sounding too Jewish. |url= |magazine= |pages= |access-date= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Hagberg |first=Gary |date=2008 |title=''Art and Ethical Criticism.'' |url= |location=Malden, MA |publisher=Wiley-Blackwell |pages= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite magazine |last=Hitchens |first=Christopher |date=2007 |title=Remembering the Pint-Size Jewish Fireplug. |url= |magazine=''Slate'' |pages= |access-date= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite journal |last=Levine |first=Andrea |title=The Jewish White Negro: Norman Mailer’s Racialized Bodies. |url= |journal=''MELUS'' |volume=28.2 |issue= |date= |pages=59-81 |access-date= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite news |last=Elmer |first=Clifton |date=1931 |title=''Little Caesar.'' |url= |work= |location= |access-date= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Mailer |first=Norman |date=1968 |title='' The Armies of the Night: History as a Novel, the Novel as History'' |url= |location=New York |publisher= New American Library |pages= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite news |last=Mailer |first=Norman |date=1968 |title=''Beyond the Law'' |url= |work= |location=Supreme Mix Productions |access-date= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite journal |last=Mailer |first=Norman |title=A Course in Film-Making. |url= |journal=''Existential Errands'' |volume= |issue= |date=1972 |pages=123-168 |access-date= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Mailer |first=Norman |date=1991 |title=''Harlot’s Ghost.'' |url= |location= |publisher=Random House, |pages= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite magazine |last=Mailer |first=Norman |date=2008 |title=In the Ring: Grappling with the Twentieth Century. |url= |magazine=''The New Yorker.'' |pages= |access-date= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite news |last=Mailer |first=Norman |date=2006 |title=Interview by Gilles Boulenger. |url= |work= |location=Cinémalta |access-date= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite journal |last=Mailer |first=Norman |title=.Some Dirt in the Talk. |url= |journal=''Existential Errands.'' |volume= |issue= |date=1972 |pages=89-123 |access-date= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite magazine |last=Mailer |first=Norman |date=1959 |title=The White Negro: Superficial Reflections on the Hipster. |url= |magazine=''Advertisements for Myself'' |pages=337-358 |access-date= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite news |last=Mailer |first=Norman |date= |title=''Wild 90'' |url= |work= |location=Supreme Mix Productions |access-date= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Metz |first=Christian |date=1982 |title=''Imaginary Signifier: Psychoanalysis and the Cinema'' |url= |location=Bloomington |publisher=Indiana UP |pages= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite journal |last=Mewshaw |first=Michael |title=Vidal and Mailer |url= |journal=''South Central Review'' |volume=4-14 |issue= |date=2002 |pages= |access-date= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite news |last=Fontaine |first=Dir. Dick |date=1970 |title=''Norman Mailer vs. Fun City U.S.A.'' |url= |work= |location= |access-date= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite magazine |last=O'Reilly |first=Jane |date=1974 |title=Diary of a Mailer Trailer. |url= |magazine=''Will the Real Norman Mailer Please Stand Up?'' |pages=195-215 |access-date= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Rushdie |first=Salman |date=1992 |title='' The Wizard of Oz'' |url= |location=London |publisher=BFI |pages= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite AV media| last = Hawks| first = Howard| title = Scarface| date = 1932| type = Film| ref = harv}}
* {{cite magazine |last=Scott |first=A.O. |date=2007 |title=Norman Mailer Unbound and On Film: Revisiting His Bigger-Than-Life-Selves. |url= |magazine=''The New York Times'' |pages= |access-date= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Silverman |first=Kaja |date=1988 |title=''The Acoustic Mirror: The Female Voice in Psychoanalysis and the Cinema.'' |url= |location=Bloomington |publisher=Indiana UP |pages= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite magazine |last=Sokolsky |first=George E. |date=1962 |title=These Days: The First Lady. |url= |magazine=''The Washington Post'' |pages= |access-date= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Stern |first=Steve |date=2010 |title=''The Frozen Rabbi'' |url= |location=Chapel Hill |publisher=Algonquin P |pages= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite magazine |last=Stevens |first=Joe |date=2008 |title=The FBI’s-Year Campaign to Ferret Out Norman Mailer. |url= |magazine=''The Washington Post'' |pages= |access-date= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite magazine |last=Tanenhouse |first=Sam |date=2005 |title=TheBuckley Effect |url= |magazine=''New York Times'' |pages= |access-date= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite news |last=Pennebaker |first= Dir D.A |date= |title=''Town Bloody Hall.'' |url= |work= |location=Pennebaker Hegedus Films |access-date= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite report |author=United States Federal Bureau of Investigation |date=1962–1975 |title=Memo to Staff |work=File on Norman Kingsley Mailer |publisher=Federal Bureau of Investigation |ref=harv }}
{{Refend}}

{{Review}}
{{DEFAULTSORT:MAKING MASCULINITY AND UNMAKING JEWISHNESS: NORMAN MAILER’S VOICE IN
''WILD 90'' AND ''BEYOND THE LAW''}}
[[Category:Articles (MR)]]

The Mailer Review/Volume 5, 2011/Tributes to Norris Church Mailer/Norris: A Memory

2025-04-12T19:00:07Z

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{{dc|dc=N|ORRIS CHURCH MAILER. NORRIS.}} Her name to all of us in the Wilkes Creative Writing Program. At Wilkes, she was a star in her own right. In fact, I never heard anyone call her Mrs. Mailer. During her campus visits, faculty, students and even our University President stood in line to welcome her and touch her hand. She was grace, charm, humor, and love. Sadly, we all learned these things firsthand in the last years of her life, making us wish we had known her earlier.

Like many of us connected to the Norman Mailer Society, I first met Norris when she and Norman graciously hosted us in their Brooklyn, NY apartment and, for the next several years, wowed us in their Provincetown home (now the Norman Mailer Center and Writers Colony). Norris, sitting near the fireplace on a soft cushioned chair, greeted guests surrounded by her artwork and walls of photographs that captured her public and private life with Norman. Norman holding court at the far end of the great room, settled on
the fan-shaped chair that still sits near the harbor window in their former home.

When Mike Lennon and I began developing the Wilkes University graduate creative writing programs, we asked Norman to be the first advisory board member. Anticipating our grand program opening in January, 2005, we held a writers conference on campus as a pre-launch celebration. Norman came to campus and spoke to a sold-out audience about his life and a writer’s life in general. Norris was too ill to attend.

Norman not only donated his speaking fee back to Wilkes, but also issued a challenge to the University. He requested that this gift be used to create a writing scholarship in honor of Norris. The first Norris Church Mailer scholarship, awarded to “a student of need and with talent,” was given in June, 2005 to Marlon James, one of the first alums and program superstars.{{pg|37|38}}At the next six June residencies, we awarded six other scholarships in her name at our June closing banquet. Norris personally pressed those checks into the recipients’ hands at all but one residency.

When she announced her plans to write her memoir, ''A Ticket to the Circus'', I not only invited her to campus as a scholarship donor, but also as a writer in her own right. In five consecutive June/January residencies, she held our faculty and students spellbound as she read from the gathering pages of the draft and eventually from the newly released book. As she read to us, as writers we recognized she was baring her writerly soul and sharing in generous ways far beyond the norm. Most writers enter such public venues choosing to read their tried and true material, either the chestnuts that brought them early fame or the raw pages of a newly released novel seeking such fame. She made it clear early on that she was “testing those pages” with us. It was in those years that she became Norris to the entire program, who experienced firsthand her humor, vulnerability, sadness, and hope through her words.

At each of those residencies, I had dinner-length conversations with Norris as we celebrated the residency’s end. By that time, Norman was too ill to attend.

At one dinner, a very drunk recipient of the “Norris” award did something publicly that mortified the entire program who sat, watching Norris hand him his scholarship envelope. Upon returning to the head table, an alarmed Beverly Hiscox, a Wilkes University Board member, demanded, “Norris, are you OK?”

Norris immediately responded, “Oh, we joke around all the time.” Meanwhile, she had never met this person until that moment. She immediately squeezed my hand under the table and whispered, “Please, let’s never tell Norman. He and I love Wilkes. I don’t want to upset him.”

Feeling responsible for this special guest and her ill treatment on our campus, I pulled aside the assistant director and second Norris scholarship recipient, James Warner, and asked him if we could do something for her. Jim suggested we upgrade the Town Car to a stretch limo for her return ride to Brooklyn. He made the call and the next morning a white limo pulled up in front of her hotel and waited for her.

At 9:00, she called me, “Bonnie, there’s no Town Car outside. Is there someone I should call?”

“Norris,” I responded, “Is there a white stretch out front?”{{pg|38|39}}“Yes,” she said. “Must be someone’s wedding.”

“Go to the driver,” I said. “Ask if his name is Scott.” I heard her shoes hitting the cement and her query.

“Bonnie,” she said. “He says he’s my driver. This is really for me? He says there’s coffee and breakfast in the back. There’s flowers!”

“Yes, Norris,” I answered. “It’s all yours.”

Upon her arrival back in Brooklyn, she called me. “Thank you again,” she said. “Even Norman never sent a stretch for me. I hold you and Wilkes in no way responsible for that incident last night.” Again, she was gracious to a
fault.

In 2010, at our last June residency with her, we once again sent that white stretch. Norman had passed and she told me she was struggling health-wise. At our ending banquet, we always present a gift to our featured speakers and guests. From plaques to gift certificates, to jewelry (in Norris’s case only), we presented our keynote and special guests with hopefully specially selected gifts. At her last residency, 2010, I gave Norris a Boscov’s gift certificate. This discount department store had become her favorite Wilkes-Barre shopping center. She loved to fill the trunk of the car we sent for her with bags from Boscov’s and some nearby consignment shops.

She grabbed my hand as soon as we returned to the head table. “I don’t know when I can use this,” she said. “I might not be back. . . .”

I was stunned. Then I called over my two office assistants for the week—Elsa Higby and Samantha Bedford. Each summer, I hired outside staff for the week to replace the graduate assistants who performed such office duties during the online terms. In the residency weeks, the G.A.s needed to be students.

Elsa, wife of a long-time faculty member, Phil Brady, and someone with her own impressive organizational resume, and Sam, my daughter, who had worked for two years as the Wilkes University athletic department’s office assistant, were the June staff. When I told them about the Boscov’s certificate dilemma for Norris, they immediately offered to go shopping with her the next morning.

I returned to the head table and whispered to Norris, “I talked with Sam and Elsa and they will take you to Boscov’s before you go back to NYC.”

“But what about the limo?” she asked.

“The service will pick up Sam and Elsa at 8:45. You at 9:00. The driver{{pg|39|40}}will wait, however long you wish, outside Boscov’s while you spend that certificate.”

Samantha and Elsa told me the next day that Norris spent the entire amount on jewelry the three found piled in bins at the store’s closeout counter. The manager brought more out to them as they spent two hours sorting. Norris intended to use the stones, charms, and jewels to make her own necklaces, earrings, and bracelets. Sam and Elsa also convinced Norris that she needed to return to a nearby consignment shop that also had high end clothing and jewelry for sale for huge discounts.

“I felt like a living Barbie doll,” she laughed when she called me later that day from NYC. “The girls picked out jewels and clothes and made me try everything. It was great! They spent two hours dressing me up.”

In 2010, I saw her three last times. In August, I taught playwriting at the Mailer Center. Norris was in town to participate in several events—familial vacation, her own book reading at the Fine Arts Center, and several Mailer Colony Board meetings. Despite being ill and in pain, Norris missed no events that week, including a public reading by the playwriting student/scholars I had mentored at the Colony.

She asked if I would have a one-on-one dinner with her. “We need girl time,” she said. “And I want to show you some of my jewelry.”

I picked her up at her rented condo and we went to Mews and sat at the table she and Norman used to share. We spent the next four hours talking like old girlfriends. We shared motherly worries about our children, our hopes and dreams for them, some boyfriend stories, and more childhood memories.

At the book party for Kaylie Jones in NYC two years earlier, Norris asked me about my hometown. I told her that western PA and my family farm were much like her rural Arkansas that she depicts in her novel and memoir. Soon, we were giggling and appalling two of her “NYC friends” who eventually walked away as Norris and I talked about outhouses, butchering chickens and cows, and skinning minks and muskrats, or gutting freshly caught fish. I guess it was the reaction of those listening to us that we found
so funny. Likely, we felt comfortable, for once, talking about our pasts, because we both had experienced the “imposter complex,” that gnawing feeling that someone would discover our impoverished childhoods and take us out of the NYC scene she lived or the academic life I had found. I don’t know; I only know we would immediately laugh whenever one of us said, “out-{{pg|40|41}}house.” A silly inside joke. She told me Norman loved for her to tell those stories at fancy dinner parties and see similar discomfort from dinner guests while Norman grinned.

On that warm August month in P-town over dessert she never ate, I asked her about her jewelry. She proudly showed me her necklace and earrings that she wore and two sets she carried in her purse.

I asked her if I could commission her to make a set for Samantha for Christmas. We both cried when she told me she didn’t expect to see Christmas and explained why to me. As she did so, there was not a tinge of regret nor a morsel of self-pity in her voice about her situation. Instead, there was only worry and concern for the people she would leave behind. Motherhood and wifedom were not duties to Norris; they were a mantle she wore proudly wrapped around her shoulders, a “gift” that comforted her and nurtured her
in the decades with Norman and the entire brood, a cloak that warmed her even in “bad times.” However, she likely would have said those days were far outweighed by the good times in all ways.

Finally, she looked at me and smiled, “Here, take these,” she said and handed me her earrings. “I’ve worn them three times. You wear them three times and give them to beautiful Sam. Tell her that she has both of us on her whenever she wears them. We will be there with her. Always.”

We left arm-in-arm and strolled back to the car. She pulled me into a shop. “They said they’d sell my jewelry. I love their clothes!” After talking to the manager a bit, Norris handed me a dark green jacket. “This looks like you,” she said.

She also saw the look on my face when I turned over the price tag. Well out of my price range. In typical Norris fashion, she took the jacket, smiled at me, and said, “You know there’s a better store down the street. They will have things that are . . . more your color.” We both laughed.

Then she asked if we could “drag Commercial Street,” and we did. “Dragging” was a play on words for cruising the street after dinner with Norman AND seeing the gay scene in P-town, she explained. She told me funny Norman stories of their drives down the street; she pointed out other places they had lived, eaten, and visited. Told me stories not in her memoir and others that were. Near midnight we sat in my car outside her condo. Just sat looking at a star-filled sky.

She asked me again about Samantha. Was the boy she was seeing the one? I said I believed so. Earlier, she had told me that John Buffalo was between{{pg|41|42}}relationships at the moment. “Promise me, that if Sam’s fella doesn’t work out, you’ll introduce her to John Buffalo,” she said. She hugged me and went inside.

I saw Norris several more times in NYC after that night, but it is that late August evening that I remember when I think of her. A special dinner with someone who epitomized grace and courage in all that she did and faced. Someone who made me feel that I should never complain. About anything. Just accomplish something as well as I possibly could. Someone I was lucky enough to know as a friend and came to miss far too late. Norris.

{{Review}}
{{DEFAULTSORT:Norris:A Memory}}
[[Category:Tributes (MR)]]

The Mailer Review/Volume 5, 2011/Tributes to Norris Church Mailer/Norris to Me

2025-04-12T06:56:40Z

ADavis: started page and added body of article

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{{dc|dc=I|FIRST MET NORRIS CHURCH MAILER AT THE ACTORS STUDIO}} with Norman. I found her strikingly beautiful in a way that I thought it inappropriate to show. I was just a kid trying to be an actor then, trying to get into the Studio, as stress-provoking an ordeal as any new actor can put himself or herself through. I felt that because I liked and admired Norman. He was so important to the life of the place and he was such an impish, mischievous wise man, I felt that I had to keep a kind of formality—the effect must have seemed shy—toward his wife. I am not normally a shy person. A shy actor wouldn’t get very far, so when I did say hello to Norris from time to time it might have seemed uncharacteristic.

I don’t exactly know when it started but several times after I met her I realized that she had a certain expression when we would say hello. She seemed to be saying with her eyes in a shy pained way: “I know you. I know what it is to feel ill at ease in the world.” I didn’t think much about it at the time, but after several years of this minimal yet, I felt, intimate kind of contact one day, she asked if she could direct me in a play Norman had written called, “The Notebook.”

It’s about a writer, like Norman, who is escorting a young lady home from a date. They start to have a fight and the writer thinks out loud to the audience what a great scene this would make. He starts to write the fight in his mind, and he craves to write the fight down in the notebook in his pocket. This, of course, makes her even more incensed. She slams the door in his face. The play is a little gem, a little passive-aggressive masterpiece. I loved it. It suited me. I had wondered for a time how Norris knew to cast me. I had thought she hardly knew me.

{{Review}}
{{DEFAULTSORT:Norris to Me}}
[[Category:Tributes (MR)]]

The Mailer Review/Volume 5, 2011/Last of the Late Romantics

2025-04-11T23:24:54Z

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{{Byline|last=Gordon|first=Andrew M.}}

User talk:Grlucas

2025-04-11T23:08:03Z

ADavis: /* Completed Additional Articles */additional remediation

{{Talk header}}
[[/Archive 202504/]]

== Final edits ==
Hello, my article is complete: [[The_Mailer_Review/Volume_4,_2010/Ernest_and_Norman_(Exit_Music)|Ernest and Norman (Exit Music)]]
:{{Reply to|Flowersbloom}} great, thank you. I made some corrections. Please be sure to sign your talk page posts. —[[User:Grlucas|Grlucas]] ([[User talk:Grlucas|talk]]) 09:59, 10 April 2025 (EDT)

Good evening, Dr. Lucas. Below is the link to my edited article:
https://projectmailer.net/pm/User:ASpeed/sandbox
:{{Reply to|ASpeed}} great. Let me know when it’s finished and posted, and I’l have a look. It appears as if you still have a bit of work to do. Please be sure to sign your talk page posts. —[[User:Grlucas|Grlucas]] ([[User talk:Grlucas|talk]]) 09:59, 10 April 2025 (EDT)

Good evening, @[[User:Grlucas|Grlucas]]. I have completed most of my Remediation Articles, but I still show issues for the one named, "[[The_Mailer_Review/Volume_4,_2010/Norman,_Papa,_and_the_Autoerotic_Construction_of_Woman|Norman, Papa, and the Autoerotic Construction of Woman]].

Based on the latest updates, [[The_Mailer_Review/Volume_4,_2010/Battles_for_Regard,_Writerly_and_Otherwise|Battles for Regard, Writerly and Otherwise]] looks good with exception of including a '''category'''.
:{{Reply to|ALedezma}} this one is good. I made some corrections before removing the banner, mostly in your sources. —[[User:Grlucas|Grlucas]] ([[User talk:Grlucas|talk]]) 09:59, 10 April 2025 (EDT)

May you let me know if there is anything I can do on my end to resolve the issues with the first [[The_Mailer_Review/Volume_4,_2010/Norman,_Papa,_and_the_Autoerotic_Construction_of_Woman|article]]?

[[User:ALedezma|ALedezma]] ([[User talk:ALedezma|talk]]) 21:47, 8 April 2025 (EDT)
:{{Reply to|ALedezma}} looking very good, but some sources missing page numbers. Please see to those. Thanks. —[[User:Grlucas|Grlucas]] ([[User talk:Grlucas|talk]]) 09:59, 10 April 2025 (EDT)

:::Thank you @[[User:Grlucas|Grlucas]] . I will review those and respond when complete. [[User:ALedezma|ALedezma]] ([[User talk:ALedezma|talk]]) 22:47, 10 April 2025 (EDT)

Dr. Lucas I finished my remediation article https://projectmailer.net/index.php?title=The_Mailer_Review/Volume_4,_2010/Norman_Mailer%27s_The_Fight:_Hemingway,_Bullfighting,_and_the_Lovely_Metaphysics_of_Boxing&action=edit [[User:TWietstruk|TWietstruk]] ([[User talk:TWietstruk|talk]]) 19:44, 8 April 2025 (EDT)
:{{Reply to| TWietstruk}} good work so far, but there is more to do: placement of footnotes (eliminate spaces around them and punctuation always goes ''before'' the footnote.); proofread for typos; fix all red errors at the bottom (most of these are from errors in sourcing); works cited entries should be bulleted list and eliminate space between entries. Thanks. —[[User:Grlucas|Grlucas]] ([[User talk:Grlucas|talk]]) 10:05, 10 April 2025 (EDT)

Dr. Lucas I have finished my assigned remediation article: https://projectmailer.net/pm/The_Mailer_Review/Volume_4,_2010/Jive-Ass_Aficionado:_Why_Are_We_in_Vietnam%3F_and_Hemingway%27s_Moral_Code#cite_note-FOOTNOTEHemingway2003-24
Username ADear.
:{{Reply to|ADear}} thank you. I have marked this as complete. Please be sure you sign your talk page posts correctly. —[[User:Grlucas|Grlucas]] ([[User talk:Grlucas|talk]]) 10:05, 10 April 2025 (EDT)

Dr. Lucas, I have finished remediating my assigned article. Please review it at your earliest convenience. The link is here: [[The_Mailer_Review/Volume_5,_2011/Norman_Mailer's_Mythmaking_in_An_American_Dream_and_“The_White_Negro”|Norman Mailer's Mythmaking in An American Dream and “The White Negro”]]—[[User:Erhernandez|Erhernandez]] ([[User talk:Erhernandez|talk]]) 08:52, 4 April 2025 (EDT)
:{{Reply to|Erhernandez}} well done! A couple of things: never bury your talk page post. Put it at the bottom, preferably in its own section by clicking "Add topic" on the top-right. I removed your banner after making a few corrections. Please have a look over it and move on to the next thing. Thanks. —[[User:Grlucas|Grlucas]] ([[User talk:Grlucas|talk]]) 09:06, 5 April 2025 (EDT)

Dr. Lucas, I transferred and edited my article. Can you look at it and remove the banner? Here's the link: [[The_Mailer_Review/Volume_4,_2010/Authorship_and_Alienation_in_Death_in_the_Afternoon_and_Advertisements_for_Myself|Authorship and Alienation in Death in the Afternoon and Advertisements for Myself]] ( [[User:APKnight25|APKnight25]] ([[User talk:APKnight25|talk]]) 13:02, 28 March 2025 (EDT) )
:{{Reply to| APKnight25}} looking good! A couple of things: never bury your talk page post. Put it at the bottom, preferably in its own section by clicking "Add topic" on the top-right. Next, eliminate all "fang" quotes in the article and add “real quotation marks.” Your sources should be a bulleted list. And there should be no space before a citation. You’re almost finished! —[[User:Grlucas|Grlucas]] ([[User talk:Grlucas|talk]]) 11:21, 30 March 2025 (EDT)

== Remediation of "Reinventing the Wheel" Mailer Article for Review ==

Dr. Lucas,

My [[The_Mailer_Review/Volume_5,_2011/Reinventing_a_New_Wheel:_The_Films_of_Norman_Mailer|article]] is ready for review.

Thank you!
[[User:TPoole|TPoole]] ([[User talk:TPoole|talk]]) 15:29, 29 March 2025 (EDT)
:{{Reply to|TPoole}} great! Could you include a link to it? Thanks. —[[User:Grlucas|Grlucas]] ([[User talk:Grlucas|talk]]) 11:07, 30 March 2025 (EDT)
::OK, I [[The Mailer Review/Volume 5, 2011/Reinventing a New Wheel: The Films of Norman Mailer|found it]]. Looking really good. Great work. There are some citation issues that need to be seen to. The two red categories at the bottom should not be there; they will go away when the citations errors are corrected. Eliminate any quotation mark "fangs" in the text and replace them with “real quotation marks.” Let me know if you need help. —[[User:Grlucas|Grlucas]] ([[User talk:Grlucas|talk]]) 11:14, 30 March 2025 (EDT)
:::@Grlucas, what are the citation issues? Which ones need correcting? [[User:TPoole|TPoole]] ([[User talk:TPoole|talk]]) 17:31, 31 March 2025 (EDT)
::::{{Reply to| TPoole}} When you click your citations, they should jump to the works cited entry they correspond to. Several of yours do not, indicated by the red “Harv and Sfn no-target errors” at the bottom. You also have a "CS1 maint: Unrecognized language" error that will likely be cleared up when you fix the citation issues. —[[User:Grlucas|Grlucas]] ([[User talk:Grlucas|talk]]) 08:55, 1 April 2025 (EDT)
:::::@Grlucas, I have tried correcting the sfn codes in my citations. I was able to get the 2 web citations to link correctly. But for some reason, I cannot get the Mailer 1967 film Wild 90 citation to link to the reference list. Please advise. [[User:TPoole|TPoole]] ([[User talk:TPoole|talk]]) 20:24, 4 April 2025 (EDT)
::::::{{Reply to| TPoole}} OK, all fixed and published. Thanks. Please move on to another remediation. —[[User:Grlucas|Grlucas]] ([[User talk:Grlucas|talk]]) 08:46, 5 April 2025 (EDT)

== Remediation of: "Contradictory Syntheses: Norman Mailer’s Left Conservatism and the Problematic of 'Totalitarianism'" ==

Dr. Lucas

I finished the remediation of the following article:

https://projectmailer.net/pm/The_Mailer_Review/Volume_5,_2011/Contradictory_Syntheses:_Norman_Mailer%E2%80%99s_Left_Conservatism_and_the_Problematic_of_%E2%80%9CTotalitarianism%E2%80%9D

It is ready for your review. Thank you.
[[User:JKilchenmann|JKilchenmann]] ([[User talk:JKilchenmann|talk]]) 19:04, 30 March 2025 (EDT)
:{{Reply to| JKilchenmann}} looks great. I made some tweaks to the references and some throughout, like changing ' and " to real apostrophes and quotation marks. A bit more clean-up, but you might want to check over it again. I removed the under-construction banner. Well one. —[[User:Grlucas|Grlucas]] ([[User talk:Grlucas|talk]]) 21:32, 30 March 2025 (EDT)

== Final Edit ==

Thank you for your comments on my remediation of
"[[The Mailer Review/Volume 4, 2010/Authorship and Alienation in Death in the Afternoon and Advertisements for Myself|Authorship and Alienation in Death in the Afternoon and Advertisements for Myself.]]"

I've eliminated the "fang quotes" and changed them to “real quotation marks.” This was a very fascinating tip that taught me something new. It's something I've never noticed before but now always will.

I also put my sources in a bulleted list and removed the space before the citations. I think I'm all set now.
:{{Reply to|APKnight25}} great work! Please help other editors to complete the volume. Thanks! —[[User:Grlucas|Grlucas]] ([[User talk:Grlucas|talk]]) 08:34, 3 April 2025 (EDT)

== Remediation for ''Firearms in the Works of Hemingway and Mailer'' ==

[[User:Grlucas|Grlucas]]

Hi Dr. Lucas,

I believe I have done everything for the Remediation of my article. Please let me know if there is anything else I need to do.

I will also link the article below:

https://projectmailer.net/pm/The_Mailer_Review/Volume_4,_2010/Firearms_in_the_Works_of_Hemingway_and_Mailer

Thank you,
Caitlin Vinson
:{{Reply to|CVinson}} great work so far. Your references must use templates, please. Blockquotes must also be done correctly. No spaces or line breaks before or after the {{tl|pg}} template. Footnote placement is also off (punctuation goes before the footnote; no spaces before or after the footnote). I will add the abstract and url. Thanks. —[[User:Grlucas|Grlucas]] ([[User talk:Grlucas|talk]]) 08:30, 3 April 2025 (EDT)

:{{Reply to|Grlucas}} Hi Dr. Lucas, I believe there have been some updates made to the project. I believe I have also updated the works cited section to show correct templates. Please let me know if there is anything further that I need to do. Thank you, Caitlin.
::{{reply to| CVinson}} please sign your talk page posts correctly. Thanks. You still need to do some work on the sources. Use the <code>|author-mask=1</code> in your template for repeated author names. Also, you must eliminate the red “Harv and Sfn no-target errors” message at the bottom. No spaces or returns before or after the {{tl|pg}} call, as I already mentioned above. No parenthetical citations should be left, either; those should all be remediated to footnotes. Thanks. —[[User:Grlucas|Grlucas]] ([[User talk:Grlucas|talk]]) 10:50, 8 April 2025 (EDT)

:{{Reply to|Grlucas}} I have updated the sources and updated the in-text citations. I am still having trouble with the "Harv and Sfn no-target errors." I have not been successful in fixing this error and have tried multiple ways to fix it. —[[User:CVinson|CVinson]] ([[User talk:Grlucas|talk]]) 8:18, 8 April 2025 (EDT)

:{{Reply to|Grlucas}} Hi Dr. Lucas, I see that I still have a red X for my remediation assignment. Is there something else I am still missing? —[[User:CVinson|CVinson]] ([[User talk:Grlucas|talk]]) 11:35, 10 April 2025 (EDT)

== Remediation for ''Norman Mailer Today'' ==
Dr. Lucas, I have finished up my remediation article [[The Mailer Review/Volume 5, 2011/Norman Mailer Today|Norman Mailer Today]], and it is ready for review. Please let me know if I missed something. Thank you! —[[User:Kamyers|Kamyers]] ([[User talk:Kamyers|talk]]) 18:20, 3 April 2025 (EDT)
:{{Reply to|Kamyers}} Great work! Please help your fellow editors finish the volume, or pick something to work on in [[The Mailer Review/Volume 4, 2010|Volume 4]]. Thanks, and well done. —[[User:Grlucas|Grlucas]] ([[User talk:Grlucas|talk]]) 07:00, 4 April 2025 (EDT)

== Remediation of “The Conception of Irreversibility: Hannah Arendt and Hemingway’s ‘Hills Like White Elephants’” ==
Dr. Lucas, I have finished my remediation of Jennifer Yirinec's article: [[The Mailer Review/Volume 5, 2011/The Conception of Irreversibility: Hannah Arendt and Hemingway’s “Hills Like White Elephants”|The Conception of Irreversibility: Hannah Arendt and Hemingway’s “Hills Like White Elephants.”]] Thank you for your assistance with the article. It is ready for its final review! [[User:JHadaway|JHadaway]] ([[User talk:JHadaway|talk]]) 10:24, 4 April 2025 (EDT)
:{{Reply to|JHadaway}} a stellar job. Well done. I removed the banner, so you can move on to another article. Thanks. —[[User:Grlucas|Grlucas]] ([[User talk:Grlucas|talk]]) 08:12, 5 April 2025 (EDT)

== Tribute Remediations ==
Dr. Lucas, I have begun work on the tributes for volume 5. [[The Mailer Review/Volume 5, 2011/Tributes to Norris Church Mailer/Grace Notes|Grace Notes]] by Stephen Borkowski is ready for its final review.—[[User:JHadaway|JHadaway]] ([[User talk:JHadaway|talk]]) 12:58, 4 April 2025 (EDT)
:{{Reply to|JHadaway}} Well done! Banner removed, url added. —[[User:Grlucas|Grlucas]] ([[User talk:Grlucas|talk]]) 08:18, 5 April 2025 (EDT)

==Oohh Normie Final Edits==
Hi Dr. Lucas, I have finished my article: [[The_Mailer_Review/Volume_4,_2010/"Oohh_Normie_—_You're_Sooo_Hemingway":_Mailer_Memories_and_Encounters|Oohh Normie, You're Sooo Hemingway]]. Please let me know if there is anything I need to fix. [[User:Tbara4554|Tbara4554]] ([[User talk:Tbara4554|talk]]) 20:01, 5 April 2025 (EDT)
:{{reply to|Tbara4554}} thank you. I made some corrections and removed the banner. You might want to have another look over it. Please move on to something else. —[[User:Grlucas|Grlucas]] ([[User talk:Grlucas|talk]]) 09:53, 6 April 2025 (EDT)

== Harlot's Ghost, Bildungsroman, Masculinity and Hemingway ==

Dr. Lucas,

The following article is ready for your review. Thanks.

https://projectmailer.net/pm/The_Mailer_Review/Volume_4,_2010/Harlot%27s_Ghost,_Bildungsroman,_Masculinity_and_Hemingway

[[User:JKilchenmann|JKilchenmann]] ([[User talk:JKilchenmann|talk]]) 21:22, 5 April 2025 (EDT)
:{{Reply to| JKilchenmann}} excellent. Thank you. —[[User:Grlucas|Grlucas]] ([[User talk:Grlucas|talk]]) 09:39, 6 April 2025 (EDT)

== I am done with this ==

https://projectmailer.net/pm/The_Mailer_Review/Volume_5,_2011/Situating_Hemingway:_Mailer,_Style,_Ethics
:Received. —[[User:Grlucas|Grlucas]] ([[User talk:Grlucas|talk]]) 10:29, 6 April 2025 (EDT)

== Final Review PM Article ==

Hi Dr. Lucas, [[The_Mailer_Review/Volume_4,_2010/Hemingway_to_Mailer_—_A_Delayed_Response_to_The_Deer_Park|here]] is my remediated article, ready for review![[User:Hobbitonya|Hobbitonya]] ([[User talk:Hobbitonya|talk]]) 12:21, 6 April 2025 (EDT)
:{{Reply to| Hobbitonya}} great work. I have removed the banner, so you are good to move on to something else. —[[User:Grlucas|Grlucas]] ([[User talk:Grlucas|talk]]) 07:20, 7 April 2025 (EDT)

== Remediation Project ==

{{reply to|Grlucas}}
I have finished my remedidation project and I am ready for it to be reviewed. '''Article link''': [https://projectmailer.net/pm/The_Mailer_Review/Volume_5,_2011/Piling_On:_Norman_Mailer’s_Utilization_of_Marilyn_Monroe#Works_Cited|Piling On: Norman Mailer's Utilization of Marilyn Monroe]

Thanks,

[[User:MerAtticus|MerAtticus]] ([[User talk:MerAtticus|talk]]) 13:04, 6 April 2025 (EDT)
:{{Reply to| MerAtticus}} good work so far. Please remove wikilinks. Change ' and " to typographical apostrophes and quotation marks. And all red errors at the bottom of the page need to be taken care of. These are likely all from coding errors in your sources. Thanks! —[[User:Grlucas|Grlucas]] ([[User talk:Grlucas|talk]]) 07:24, 7 April 2025 (EDT)

{{reply to|Grlucas}}
I have removed the wikilinks, changed to the correct typographic style and updated my sources.
'''Article link''': [https://projectmailer.net/pm/The_Mailer_Review/Volume_5,_2011/Piling_On:_Norman_Mailer’s_Utilization_of_Marilyn_Monroe#Works_Cited|Piling On: Norman Mailer's Utilization of Marilyn Monroe] Thanks, [[User:MerAtticus|MerAtticus]] ([[User talk:MerAtticus|talk]]) 21:55, 7 April 2025 (EDT)

[I forgot to fill out the summary box. I am adding my summary]
:{{Reply to| MerAtticus}} you're getting there! It looks great. You must eliminate all the red errors at the bottom. These appear when there are errors in your citations. Let me know if you need help. —[[User:Grlucas|Grlucas]] ([[User talk:Grlucas|talk]]) 09:15, 8 April 2025 (EDT)

@{{reply to|Grlucas}} I have tried everything I can think of and I still have harv and sfn no-target errors and harv and sfn multiple-target errors and cs1 uses editors parameter. Do I not include the editor? [[User:MerAtticus|MerAtticus]] ([[User talk:MerAtticus|talk]]) 16:03, 8 April 2025 (EDT)

{{reply to|Grlucas}} I have managed to get rid of two of the red target errors. I am still working on finding the harv sfn multiple target error. Thanks, [[User:MerAtticus|MerAtticus]] ([[User talk:MerAtticus|talk]]) 20:37, 8 April 2025 (EDT)

{{reply to|Grlucas}} I have tried everything i can think of to remove the last red error flag. I had to turn it in. I don't know that else I can do in this situation. I was given citation that did not follow any of the given formats. [[User:MerAtticus|MerAtticus]] ([[User talk:MerAtticus|talk]]) 21:45, 8 April 2025 (EDT)

== Remediation Submission ==

Hello!
Here's my remediated article; [[The_Mailer_Review/Volume_5,_2011/The_Devil's_Party:_Reading_and_Wreaking_Vengeance_in_The_Castle_in_the_Forest|The Devil's Party: Reading and Wreaking Vengeance in ''The Castle in the Forest'']].
Thanks! Please let me know if there's anything I can review or correct.
[[User:Maggiemrogers|Maggiemrogers]] ([[User talk:Maggiemrogers|talk]]) 13:23, 6 April 2025 (EDT)
:{{Reply to| Maggiemrogers}} nice work! Banner removed, so please move on to something else in the volume. Thanks. —[[User:Grlucas|Grlucas]] ([[User talk:Grlucas|talk]]) 07:39, 7 April 2025 (EDT)

== Vol. 4: Rumors of Grace article remediated ==

I believe I have completed remediation of ''[[The_Mailer_Review/Volume_4,_2010/Rumors_of_Grace:_God-Language_in_Hemingway_and_Mailer|Rumors of Grace: God-Language in Hemingway and Mailer]]'', vol. 4. I was having last-minute trouble with sfn errors for sources without authors, but Justin Kilchenmann helped me out, so I think they are fixed.
:{{Reply to|Sherrilledwards}} You have done a remarkable job—a real Herculean effort! Footnotes should not go in any notes. See those I changed; the others should be changed in the same way. I have done some, but the others have to be fixed, I'm afraid. Thanks! —[[User:Grlucas|Grlucas]] ([[User talk:Grlucas|talk]]) 09:20, 8 April 2025 (EDT)

== Remediation of "Inside Norman Mailer ==

Hi Dr. Lucas - I have finished remediating the article, [[The Mailer Review/Volume 4, 2010/Inside Norman Mailer|Inside Norman Mailer]]. Please let me know if I need to make any adjustments. Thank you! [[User:Chelsey.brantley|Chelsey.brantley]] ([[User talk:Chelsey.brantley|talk]]) 18:09, 7 April 2025 (EDT)
:{{Reply to|Chelsey.brantley}} good work! Please help with another article from volume 4. Thanks! —[[User:Grlucas|Grlucas]] ([[User talk:Grlucas|talk]]) 09:36, 8 April 2025 (EDT)

== Completed: Norman Mailer: Playboy Magazine ==

I hope I am doing this is right. I have finished remediating my article about Norman Mailer and its in my designated sandbox [https://projectmailer.net/pm/The_Mailer_Review/Volume_5,_2011/Norman_Mailer:_Playboy_Magazine_Heavyweight here.]
If there are any last minute edits, let me know. I got the last of the errors removed yesterday. And I believe we are on the same page with leaving the in-line citations for ''Playboy'' to be as is, since the author didn't put them down in the works cited. [[User:NrmMGA5108|NrmMGA5108]] ([[User talk:NrmMGA5108|talk]]) 20:14, 7 April 2025 (EDT)Nina Mizner
:{{Reply to|NrmMGA5108}} looking good! So, the parenthetical citations still in the article, I'm assuming, are there because of those missing sources? Please check your page numbers; some seem to be off. Thanks. —[[User:Grlucas|Grlucas]] ([[User talk:Grlucas|talk]]) 10:04, 8 April 2025 (EDT)

:{{Reply to|Grlucas}} I found the page number error and its corrected, and yes all the parenthetical citations should be referencing issues of the ''playboy'' magazine, which were not listed in the works cited. --[[User:NrmMGA5108|NrmMGA5108]] ([[User talk:NrmMGA5108|talk]]) 20:54, 10 April 2025 (EDT)

== Completed Remediation From Here to Eternity and The Naked and The Dead: Premier to Eternity? ==

Greeting Dr. Lucas,

I have made the adjustment that you mentioned.

I also made additional edits to my short footnotes and noticed that my citations did not link to my references - which has been fixed.

I have tested all of my citations, and they all work.

Here is my article by Alexander Hicks, ''From Here to Eternity and The Naked and The Dead: Premier to Eternity?''

https://projectmailer.net/pm/The_Mailer_Review/Volume_5,_2011/From_Here_to_Eternity_and_The_Naked_and_the_Dead:_Premiere_to_Eternity%3F

Have a great day.
:{{Reply to| THarrell}} Please always sign your talk page posts. Several “quoted items” in the article appear as ‘quoted items’; these must be corrected, please. No spaces or returns should surround {{tl|pg}} calls. Multiple page numbers should look like this <code><nowiki>{{sfn|Moretti|1996|pp=11-14}}</nowiki></code>; note the double <code>pp</code>. There seem to be many typos. I corrected some for you, but you must see to the rest. Thanks. —[[User:Grlucas|Grlucas]] ([[User talk:Grlucas|talk]]) 10:16, 8 April 2025 (EDT)

:{{Reply to| Grlucas}} Greetings,

Are these the only additional corrections that need to be made? This is different from what you mentioned before.

I just want to be sure that I have hit everything.

Also can you verify what other typos you are seeing, I have ran through this twice.

If something is spelt a certain way, for example "Soljer", I have left it that way. Since it is mentioned like that in the article.
—[[User:THarrell|THarrell]] ([[User talk:THarrell|talk]]) 06:49, 8 April 2025 (EDT)

:{{Reply to| Grlucas}} Greetings,

I have gone through and fixed all of the short footnotes.

I have gone line by line with a ruler to look at any typos, and fixed the words that I found that had a dash in them/needed to be lowercased.

I have also fixed the quotations.

—[[User:THarrell|THarrell]] ([[User talk:THarrell|talk]]) 12:31, 9 April 2025 (EDT)

== Remediation for “Footnote to Death in the Afternoon” ==

Greetings Dr. Lucus,

My article is ready for your review. Thank you.

https://projectmailer.net/pm/The_Mailer_Review/Volume_4,_2010/Mailer%E2%80%99s_%E2%80%9CFootnote_to_Death_in_the_Afternoon%E2%80%9D)
:{{Reply to| KForeman}} it's coming along. Please ''always'' sign your talk page posts. Right up top, there are errors. Please use the real {{tl|pg}}, like all the other articles. Citations need to be fixed. All parenthetical citations must be converted. You still have quite a bit of work to do. All red sections need to be seen to and corrected. Thanks. —[[User:Grlucas|Grlucas]] ([[User talk:Grlucas|talk]]) 10:20, 8 April 2025 (EDT)

=Remediation of "Cluster Seeds and the Mailer Legacy"=
Hello, Dr. Lucas. I have completed the remediation of [https://projectmailer.net/index.php?title=The_Mailer_Review/Volume_5,_2011/Cluster_Seeds_and_the_Mailer_Legacy&oldid=18200| my article], and it is ready for your review. Thank you!—[[User:ADavis|ADavis]] ([[User talk:ADavis|talk]]) 11:32, 8 April 2025 (EDT)@ADavis
:{{Reply to| ADavis}} got it. I think I check it yesterday and removed the banner then. Please move on to another piece. Thanks. —[[User:Grlucas|Grlucas]] ([[User talk:Grlucas|talk]]) 17:29, 8 April 2025 (EDT)

== Remediating Article: Mailer, Hemingway, and Boxing Volume 4. ==

Hello Dr. Lucas,

I have completed remediating my article. Here is the link [[The Mailer Review/Volume 4, 2010/Mailer, Hemingway, and Boxing|The Mailer Review: Volume 4: Mailer, Hemingway, Boxing (2010)]] [[User:JBrown|JBrown]] ([[User talk:JBrown|talk]]) 13:01, 8 April 2025 (EDT)JBrown
:{{Reply to|JBrown}} a good start, but all parenthetical citations need to be footnotes. Also, check your headers. Thanks. —[[User:Grlucas|Grlucas]] ([[User talk:Grlucas|talk]]) 17:29, 8 April 2025 (EDT)

== Remediation for ''Norris Church Mailer'' ==
Dr. Lucas, I have finished up remediating the article [[The Mailer Review/Volume 4, 2010/Norris Church Mailer|Norris Church Mailer]], and it is ready for review. Please let me know if I missed something. Thank you! —[[User:Kamyers|Kamyers]] ([[User talk:Kamyers|talk]]) 13:42, 8 April 2025 (EDT)
:{{reply to|Kamyers}} awesome work! Thank you! —[[User:Grlucas|Grlucas]] ([[User talk:Grlucas|talk]]) 17:29, 8 April 2025 (EDT)

== Final Edits Completed and Ready for Review ==

Dr. Lucas, I have completed my assigned remediation article: [[The_Mailer_Review/Volume_4,_2010/Looking_at_the_Past:_Nostalgia_as_Technique_in_The_Naked_and_the_Dead_and_For_Whom_the_Bell_Tolls|Looking at the Past: Nostalgia as Technique in The Naked and the Dead and For Whom the Bell Tolls]]. Please review at your convenience. I enjoyed working on this assignment. I look forward to your suggestions and feedback. All the best, Danielle (DBond007)
:{{Reply to| DBond007}} ok, good work. Please remove all the external links. Links to Wikipedia are not necessary, but if used, they need to be done correctly. There should be no spaces before {{tl|sfn}}. May sure all your ' and " are actually typographical apostrophes and quotation marks. Remove any superfluous spaces and line breaks; these mess up the formatting. Thanks! —[[User:Grlucas|Grlucas]] ([[User talk:Grlucas|talk]]) 17:29, 8 April 2025 (EDT)
:{{Reply to| Grlucas}} Thank you. I will get started on these revisions immediately. Thanks for the feedback and your time. :)[[User:DBond007|DBond007]] ([[User talk:DBond007|talk]]) 11:30, 10 April 2025 (EDT)

:{{Reply to| Grlucas}} I have completed all the requested revisions and ready for review round 2. Thank you again![[User:DBond007|DBond007]] ([[User talk:DBond007|talk]]) 12:10, 10 April 2025 (EDT)

== Completed the remediation assignment ==

Good evening Dr. Lucas,

I hope I am doing this right. Here is the link for my completed Remediation article: [http://The_Mailer_Review/Volume_4,_2010/Encounters_with_Mailer Encounters with Mailer].

I look forward to reading your feedback.

All the best,

Patrick Riley
:{{Reply to|Priley1984}} thank you! —[[User:Grlucas|Grlucas]] ([[User talk:Grlucas|talk]]) 07:40, 10 April 2025 (EDT)

== Remediation Project Submission: An Expected Encounter in an Unexpected Place ==

Link:

https://projectmailer.net/pm/The_Mailer_Review/Volume_4,_2010/Norman_Mailer:_An_Expected_Encounter_in_an_Unexpected_Place

Winnie Verna
:{{Reply to|Wverna}} received, thanks! —[[User:Grlucas|Grlucas]] ([[User talk:Grlucas|talk]]) 07:51, 10 April 2025 (EDT)

== E.Mosley ==

Good evening, @Grlucas. I have completed my Remediation Articles[[https://projectmailer.net/pm/The_Mailer_Review/Volume_4,_2010/On_Reading_Mailer_Too_Young]]. The article I had was " On Reading Mailer Too Young Volume 4, 2010
:{{Reply to| Essence903m}} thank you. I had to fix and clean-up quite a bit. Your saves also do not include summaries. When you move on to your next article, please be more careful and follow the instructions. —[[User:Grlucas|Grlucas]] ([[User talk:Grlucas|talk]]) 09:12, 10 April 2025 (EDT)

== Kynndra Watson ==

Good Evening, @grlucas. i have completed my Remediation articles: Volume 5: https://projectmailer.net/pm/The_Mailer_Review/Volume_5,_2011/Making_Masculinity_and_Unmaking_Jewishness:_Norman_Mailer%E2%80%99s_Voice_in_Wild_90_and_Beyond_the_Law and Volume 4: https://projectmailer.net/pm/The_Mailer_Review/Volume_4,_2010/Mailer,_Hemingway,_and_the_%E2%80%9CReds%E2%80%9D.

Thank you.
:{{Reply to| KWatson}} thank you, and this is a good start, but there are still many items that need to be cleaned up, like footnote indications (They go after punctuation), citation errors (all the red errors at the bottom need to be seen to), extra spaces and ALL CAPS need to be removed. Please see other completed articles for models. Thanks. —[[User:Grlucas|Grlucas]] ([[User talk:Grlucas|talk]]) 09:18, 10 April 2025 (EDT)

== Tribute Remediation ==
Dr. Lucas, I have finished [[The Mailer Review/Volume 5, 2011/Tributes to Norris Church Mailer/What Would Be the Fun of That?|"What Would Be the Fun of That?"]] by Peter Alson.—[[User:JHadaway|JHadaway]] ([[User talk:JHadaway|talk]]) 09:33, 9 April 2025 (EDT)
:{{Reply to| JHadaway}} awesome! Thank you! —[[User:Grlucas|Grlucas]] ([[User talk:Grlucas|talk]]) 09:21, 10 April 2025 (EDT)

== “Remembering Norris Church” Tribute Remediation ==
Dr. Lucas, I have finished [[The Mailer Review/Volume 5, 2011/Tributes to Norris Church Mailer/Remembering Norris Church|“Remembering Norris Church”]] by John Bowers.—[[User:JHadaway|JHadaway]] ([[User talk:JHadaway|talk]]) 16:17, 9 April 2025 (EDT)
:{{Reply to| JHadaway}} and again, excellent! Thank you! —[[User:Grlucas|Grlucas]] ([[User talk:Grlucas|talk]]) 09:22, 10 April 2025 (EDT)

== “The Norris I Knew” Tribute Remediation ==
Dr. Lucas, I have finished [[The Mailer Review/Volume 5, 2011/Tributes to Norris Church Mailer/The Norris I Knew|“The Norris I Knew”]] by Christopher Busa.—[[User:JHadaway|JHadaway]] ([[User talk:JHadaway|talk]]) 09:04, 10 April 2025 (EDT)
:{{Reply to| JHadaway}} rockin’! 👍🏼 —[[User:Grlucas|Grlucas]] ([[User talk:Grlucas|talk]]) 09:24, 10 April 2025 (EDT)

== "Norris Mailer" Tribute Remediation ==
Dr. Lucas, I have finished [[The Mailer Review/Volume 5, 2011/Tributes to Norris Church Mailer/Norris Mailer|"Norris Mailer"]] by Nancy Collins.—[[User:JHadaway|JHadaway]] ([[User talk:JHadaway|talk]]) 09:35, 10 April 2025 (EDT)
:{{Reply to| JHadaway}} thanks again. You’re tearing it up. —[[User:Grlucas|Grlucas]] ([[User talk:Grlucas|talk]]) 10:32, 10 April 2025 (EDT)

== "Rise Above It" Tribute Remediation ==

Dr. Lucas, I have finished [[The Mailer Review/Volume 5, 2011/Tributes to Norris Church Mailer/Rise Above It|"Rise Above It"]] by David Ebershoff—[[User:JHadaway|JHadaway]] ([[User talk:JHadaway|talk]]) 11:12, 10 April 2025 (EDT)

== Completed Additional Articles ==

Hello, Dr. Lucas. I have remediated [https://projectmailer.net/index.php?title=The_Mailer_Review/Volume_5,_2011/Tributes_to_Norris_Church_Mailer/A_View_Through_the_Prism&oldid=18744|"A View Through the Prism"], [https://projectmailer.net/pm/The_Mailer_Review/Volume_5,_2011/Tributes_to_Norris_Church_Mailer/Lip_Liner|"Lip Liner"], and [https://projectmailer.net/pm/The_Mailer_Review/Volume_5,_2011/The_Living_Room_Show#|"The Living Room Show"] in Volume 5. They are ready for your review. Thank you!—[[User:ADavis|ADavis]] ([[User talk:ADavis|talk]]) 12:31, 10 April 2025 (EDT)

== Submission notification sent 29 March ==

@grlucas

Dr. Lucas - I sent a Talk Page notification that I had completed the page I remediated on 29 March. The table indicates I haven't done anything yet. I sent it from the Talk Page from the article site. I don't see a response from that notification, but I had received one from you earlier in the process.
I don't understand what happened.

[[User:LogansPop22|LogansPop22]] ([[User talk:LogansPop22|talk]]) 14:54, 10 April 2025 (EDT)

== Making Masculinity and Unmaking Jewishness: Norman Mailer’s Voice in Wild 90 and Beyond the Law ==

@Grlucas, I have made some additional edits to this [https://projectmailer.net/pm/The_Mailer_Review/Volume_5,_2011/Making_Masculinity_and_Unmaking_Jewishness:_Norman_Mailer%E2%80%99s_Voice_in_Wild_90_and_Beyond_the_Law article] in Volume 5 by correcting most of the citations. There are 2 that still do not work, but I think that is because the sources are incomplete.

[[User:TPoole|TPoole]] ([[User talk:TPoole|talk]]) 21:16, 10 April 2025 (EDT)

== Red Error-Gone ==

{{reply to|Grlucas}}I have deleted all the sfn's and the red error is gone. I don't know why I didn't think about this days ago.

[[The_Mailer_Review/Volume_5,_2011/Piling_On:_Norman_Mailer’s_Utilization_of_Marilyn_Monroe|Gladstein-Monroe]]

[[User:MerAtticus|MerAtticus]] ([[User talk:MerAtticus|talk]]) 23:07, 10 April 2025 (EDT)

The Mailer Review/Volume 5, 2011/Tributes to Norris Church Mailer/Lip Liner

2025-04-11T20:06:50Z

ADavis: added body of article

{{DISPLAYTITLE:{{BASEPAGENAME}}/{{SUBPAGENAME}}}}
{{Working}}
{{MR05}}
{{byline|last=Eugenia|first=Katrina}}

{{dc|dc=B|UFFALO AND I HAVE BEEN DATING FOR FOUR MONTHS.}} He asked me to be his girlfriend a month ago. Today he asked me to help him get his mom ready for her doctor’s appointment.

We can’t find parking near 142 so Buffa asks me to wait for a spot to open up, while he heads upstairs. I’m terrible at parallel parking. Buffalo gives me his phone, and asks that I call 142 when I am at the door.

A spot opens a few blocks away.

I’m doing breathing exercises like one would do when giving birth, “Okay, Katrina, you got this. This doctor’s appointment is the last hope, if you crash the car, you’re toast. Please God, let me park this car.”

Mission accomplished.

I’m in the car, about to call Buffalo, when I realize I have my boyfriend’s phone at my fingertips. I’ve never looked through Buffa’s phone, but it’s tempting. After contemplating, I finally decide to give the texts a peak. As I go for it I hear Norman say, “you nosy bitch,” and I scream out loud, “oh, shut up, it’s just this once!” I find an infinite number of women contacting Buffa. I’m all fired up but I try to cool myself off for Norris.

Norris is sitting at her Vanity table, slightly pissed because she hates the drugs she is on, and “feels like a junky,” but other than that she is in great spirits. She points to her closet, and asks me to pick out a dress. I find a nice long comfy one.

“Okay, now open up my closet and find me the matching beige sweater.”

I open the closet to find endless sweaters, like forty-seven beige ones. I’m thinking, “Well, at least there’s no lack of reading material out there for Buff, this could take a while.” I start pulling out the sweaters one by one, and holding them up.

“Nope . . . not that one. Keep going . . . Not that one.”{{pg|45|46}}Can you believe that I never find the right sweater? Finally, Norris settles on one. She asks me to grab her brown leather boots. They are tall, fancy boots . . . . I say, “Don’t you think you should go for comfort? Maybe your UGGS?” She thinks about it for a second, then agrees.

I start talking about my favorite parts of her memoir. I went from rarely ever reading to reading at the speed of light (as far as I’m concerned) because towards the end there, Buffalo never seemed to have good news and I wanted to share every part with her, so I read faster and faster. I found that I read the fastest at work, loaded on Red Bull. So there I was, two in the morning, sitting in the basement of a club leaning on a fridge of Jell-O shots, wearing nothing but a leotard, reading Norris’ memoir as fast as I could.

Norris starts putting on beautiful makeup while I brush her hair. It comes time for the lip liner, and I am mesmerized. I start brushing slower and slower. In Jersey, lip liner is like a competitive sport, so I never gave it a chance. But man, I’m reconsidering, because Norris sure makes it look good.

Now she’s ready to go. We send Buffalo to get the car.

I suddenly get this sour puss on my face and Norris asks, “What’s wrong, Honey?”

“You wouldn’t believe all of the woman who are after Buffalo! It’s endless! I had no idea but they are texting and calling him constantly! I don’t know what to do . . . .” I instantly feel better having confessed.

Norris says in a matter of fact way, “Well, Honey, you’ve just got to tell um’ to stop.”

Just as she finishes her sentence, Buffalo bursts through the door and pumps his fists in the air as he often does when making an entrance, doing his best to make this outing as fun as possible.

We look at Buffalo, and then at each other, and she says, “I can’t imagine why.” And we crack up laughing.

I waved them off, and on my walk home, I stopped at a drugstore and got myself some lip liner.

Norris passed away just six days after that. I am so thankful for the short amount of time I got to spend with her. Norris had a magical way of disarming me, and immediately felt like a girlfriend. I was excited to have her down the street, to hold my hand when I needed it. And I suppose now, looking back, I realize why Buffalo wanted me to meet his mom, when we were only just friends, that warm August afternoon when we got ice cream.

{{Review}}

{{DEFAULTSORT:Lip Liner}}

[[Category:Tributes (MR)]]

User:ADavis/sandbox

2025-04-10T23:23:00Z

ADavis: remediated article

{{dc|dc=B|UFFALO AND I HAVE BEEN DATING FOR FOUR MONTHS.}}He asked me to be his girlfriend a month ago. Today he asked me to help him get his mom ready for her doctor’s appointment.

We can’t find parking near 142 so Buffa asks me to wait for a spot to open up, while he heads upstairs. I’m terrible at parallel parking. Buffalo gives me his phone, and asks that I call 142 when I am at the door.

A spot opens a few blocks away.

I’m doing breathing exercises like one would do when giving birth, “Okay, Katrina, you got this. This doctor’s appointment is the last hope, if you crash the car, you’re toast. Please God, let me park this car.”

Mission accomplished.

I’m in the car, about to call Buffalo, when I realize I have my boyfriend’s phone at my fingertips. I’ve never looked through Buffa’s phone, but it’s tempting. After contemplating, I finally decide to give the texts a peak. As I go for it I hear Norman say, “you nosy bitch,” and I scream out loud, “oh, shut up, it’s just this once!” I find an infinite number of women contacting Buffa. I’m all fired up but I try to cool myself off for Norris.

Norris is sitting at her Vanity table, slightly pissed because she hates the drugs she is on, and “feels like a junky,” but other than that she is in great spirits. She points to her closet, and asks me to pick out a dress. I find a nice long comfy one.

“Okay, now open up my closet and find me the matching beige sweater.”

I open the closet to find endless sweaters, like forty-seven beige ones. I’m thinking, “Well, at least there’s no lack of reading material out there for Buff, this could take a while.” I start pulling out the sweaters one by one, and holding them up.

“Nope . . . not that one. Keep going . . . Not that one.”{{pg|45|46}}Can you believe that I never find the right sweater? Finally, Norris settles on one. She asks me to grab her brown leather boots. They are tall, fancy
boots . . . . I say, “Don’t you think you should go for comfort? Maybe your UGGS?” She thinks about it for a second, then agrees.

I start talking about my favorite parts of her memoir. I went from rarely ever reading to reading at the speed of light (as far as I’m concerned) because towards the end there, Buffalo never seemed to have good news and I
wanted to share every part with her, so I read faster and faster. I found that I read the fastest at work, loaded on Red Bull. So there I was, two in the morning, sitting in the basement of a club leaning on a fridge of Jell-O shots,
wearing nothing but a leotard, reading Norris’ memoir as fast as I could.

Norris starts putting on beautiful makeup while I brush her hair. It comes time for the lip liner, and I am mesmerized. I start brushing slower and slower. In Jersey, lip liner is like a competitive sport, so I never gave it a
chance. But man, I’m reconsidering, because Norris sure makes it look good.

Now she’s ready to go. We send Buffalo to get the car

I suddenly get this sour puss on my face and Norris asks, “What’s wrong, Honey?”

“You wouldn’t believe all of the woman who are after Buffalo! It’s endless! I had no idea but they are texting and calling him constantly! I don’t know what to do . . . .” I instantly feel better having confessed.

Norris says in a matter of fact way, “Well, Honey, you’ve just got to tell um’ to stop.”

Just as she finishes her sentence, Buffalo bursts through the door and pumps his fists in the air as he often does when making an entrance, doing his best to make this outing as fun as possible.

We look at Buffalo, and then at each other, and she says, “I can’t imagine why.” And we crack up laughing.

I waved them off, and on my walk home, I stopped at a drugstore and got myself some lip liner.

Norris passed away just six days after that. I am so thankful for the short amount of time I got to spend with her. Norris had a magical way of disarming me, and immediately felt like a girlfriend. I was excited to have her down the street, to hold my hand when I needed it. And I suppose now, looking back, I realize why Buffalo wanted me to meet his mom, when we were only just friends, that warm August afternoon when we got ice cream.

The Mailer Review/Volume 5, 2011/Tributes to Norris Church Mailer/Lip Liner

2025-04-10T23:13:15Z

ADavis: Created page and added working banner

{{DISPLAYTITLE:{{BASEPAGENAME}}/{{SUBPAGENAME}}}}
{{Working}}
{{MR05}}
{{byline|last=Eugenia|first=Katrina}}

User talk:Grlucas

2025-04-10T16:31:40Z

ADavis: /* Completed Additional Articles */ new section

{{Talk header}}
[[/Archive 202504/]]

== Final edits ==
Hello, my article is complete: [[The_Mailer_Review/Volume_4,_2010/Ernest_and_Norman_(Exit_Music)|Ernest and Norman (Exit Music)]]
:{{Reply to|Flowersbloom}} great, thank you. I made some corrections. Please be sure to sign your talk page posts. —[[User:Grlucas|Grlucas]] ([[User talk:Grlucas|talk]]) 09:59, 10 April 2025 (EDT)

Good evening, Dr. Lucas. Below is the link to my edited article:
https://projectmailer.net/pm/User:ASpeed/sandbox
:{{Reply to|ASpeed}} great. Let me know when it’s finished and posted, and I’l have a look. It appears as if you still have a bit of work to do. Please be sure to sign your talk page posts. —[[User:Grlucas|Grlucas]] ([[User talk:Grlucas|talk]]) 09:59, 10 April 2025 (EDT)

Good evening, @[[User:Grlucas|Grlucas]]. I have completed most of my Remediation Articles, but I still show issues for the one named, "[[The_Mailer_Review/Volume_4,_2010/Norman,_Papa,_and_the_Autoerotic_Construction_of_Woman|Norman, Papa, and the Autoerotic Construction of Woman]].

Based on the latest updates, [[The_Mailer_Review/Volume_4,_2010/Battles_for_Regard,_Writerly_and_Otherwise|Battles for Regard, Writerly and Otherwise]] looks good with exception of including a '''category'''.
:{{Reply to|ALedezma}} this one is good. I made some corrections before removing the banner, mostly in your sources. —[[User:Grlucas|Grlucas]] ([[User talk:Grlucas|talk]]) 09:59, 10 April 2025 (EDT)

May you let me know if there is anything I can do on my end to resolve the issues with the first [[The_Mailer_Review/Volume_4,_2010/Norman,_Papa,_and_the_Autoerotic_Construction_of_Woman|article]]?

[[User:ALedezma|ALedezma]] ([[User talk:ALedezma|talk]]) 21:47, 8 April 2025 (EDT)
:{{Reply to|ALedezma}} looking very good, but some sources missing page numbers. Please see to those. Thanks. —[[User:Grlucas|Grlucas]] ([[User talk:Grlucas|talk]]) 09:59, 10 April 2025 (EDT)

Dr. Lucas I finished my remediation article https://projectmailer.net/index.php?title=The_Mailer_Review/Volume_4,_2010/Norman_Mailer%27s_The_Fight:_Hemingway,_Bullfighting,_and_the_Lovely_Metaphysics_of_Boxing&action=edit [[User:TWietstruk|TWietstruk]] ([[User talk:TWietstruk|talk]]) 19:44, 8 April 2025 (EDT)
:{{Reply to| TWietstruk}} good work so far, but there is more to do: placement of footnotes (eliminate spaces around them and punctuation always goes ''before'' the footnote.); proofread for typos; fix all red errors at the bottom (most of these are from errors in sourcing); works cited entries should be bulleted list and eliminate space between entries. Thanks. —[[User:Grlucas|Grlucas]] ([[User talk:Grlucas|talk]]) 10:05, 10 April 2025 (EDT)

Dr. Lucas I have finished my assigned remediation article: https://projectmailer.net/pm/The_Mailer_Review/Volume_4,_2010/Jive-Ass_Aficionado:_Why_Are_We_in_Vietnam%3F_and_Hemingway%27s_Moral_Code#cite_note-FOOTNOTEHemingway2003-24
Username ADear.
:{{Reply to|ADear}} thank you. I have marked this as complete. Please be sure you sign your talk page posts correctly. —[[User:Grlucas|Grlucas]] ([[User talk:Grlucas|talk]]) 10:05, 10 April 2025 (EDT)

Dr. Lucas, I have finished remediating my assigned article. Please review it at your earliest convenience. The link is here: [[The_Mailer_Review/Volume_5,_2011/Norman_Mailer's_Mythmaking_in_An_American_Dream_and_“The_White_Negro”|Norman Mailer's Mythmaking in An American Dream and “The White Negro”]]—[[User:Erhernandez|Erhernandez]] ([[User talk:Erhernandez|talk]]) 08:52, 4 April 2025 (EDT)
:{{Reply to|Erhernandez}} well done! A couple of things: never bury your talk page post. Put it at the bottom, preferably in its own section by clicking "Add topic" on the top-right. I removed your banner after making a few corrections. Please have a look over it and move on to the next thing. Thanks. —[[User:Grlucas|Grlucas]] ([[User talk:Grlucas|talk]]) 09:06, 5 April 2025 (EDT)

Dr. Lucas, I transferred and edited my article. Can you look at it and remove the banner? Here's the link: [[The_Mailer_Review/Volume_4,_2010/Authorship_and_Alienation_in_Death_in_the_Afternoon_and_Advertisements_for_Myself|Authorship and Alienation in Death in the Afternoon and Advertisements for Myself]] ( [[User:APKnight25|APKnight25]] ([[User talk:APKnight25|talk]]) 13:02, 28 March 2025 (EDT) )
:{{Reply to| APKnight25}} looking good! A couple of things: never bury your talk page post. Put it at the bottom, preferably in its own section by clicking "Add topic" on the top-right. Next, eliminate all "fang" quotes in the article and add “real quotation marks.” Your sources should be a bulleted list. And there should be no space before a citation. You’re almost finished! —[[User:Grlucas|Grlucas]] ([[User talk:Grlucas|talk]]) 11:21, 30 March 2025 (EDT)

== Remediation of "Reinventing the Wheel" Mailer Article for Review ==

Dr. Lucas,

My [[The_Mailer_Review/Volume_5,_2011/Reinventing_a_New_Wheel:_The_Films_of_Norman_Mailer|article]] is ready for review.

Thank you!
[[User:TPoole|TPoole]] ([[User talk:TPoole|talk]]) 15:29, 29 March 2025 (EDT)
:{{Reply to|TPoole}} great! Could you include a link to it? Thanks. —[[User:Grlucas|Grlucas]] ([[User talk:Grlucas|talk]]) 11:07, 30 March 2025 (EDT)
::OK, I [[The Mailer Review/Volume 5, 2011/Reinventing a New Wheel: The Films of Norman Mailer|found it]]. Looking really good. Great work. There are some citation issues that need to be seen to. The two red categories at the bottom should not be there; they will go away when the citations errors are corrected. Eliminate any quotation mark "fangs" in the text and replace them with “real quotation marks.” Let me know if you need help. —[[User:Grlucas|Grlucas]] ([[User talk:Grlucas|talk]]) 11:14, 30 March 2025 (EDT)
:::@Grlucas, what are the citation issues? Which ones need correcting? [[User:TPoole|TPoole]] ([[User talk:TPoole|talk]]) 17:31, 31 March 2025 (EDT)
::::{{Reply to| TPoole}} When you click your citations, they should jump to the works cited entry they correspond to. Several of yours do not, indicated by the red “Harv and Sfn no-target errors” at the bottom. You also have a "CS1 maint: Unrecognized language" error that will likely be cleared up when you fix the citation issues. —[[User:Grlucas|Grlucas]] ([[User talk:Grlucas|talk]]) 08:55, 1 April 2025 (EDT)
:::::@Grlucas, I have tried correcting the sfn codes in my citations. I was able to get the 2 web citations to link correctly. But for some reason, I cannot get the Mailer 1967 film Wild 90 citation to link to the reference list. Please advise. [[User:TPoole|TPoole]] ([[User talk:TPoole|talk]]) 20:24, 4 April 2025 (EDT)
::::::{{Reply to| TPoole}} OK, all fixed and published. Thanks. Please move on to another remediation. —[[User:Grlucas|Grlucas]] ([[User talk:Grlucas|talk]]) 08:46, 5 April 2025 (EDT)

== Remediation of: "Contradictory Syntheses: Norman Mailer’s Left Conservatism and the Problematic of 'Totalitarianism'" ==

Dr. Lucas

I finished the remediation of the following article:

https://projectmailer.net/pm/The_Mailer_Review/Volume_5,_2011/Contradictory_Syntheses:_Norman_Mailer%E2%80%99s_Left_Conservatism_and_the_Problematic_of_%E2%80%9CTotalitarianism%E2%80%9D

It is ready for your review. Thank you.
[[User:JKilchenmann|JKilchenmann]] ([[User talk:JKilchenmann|talk]]) 19:04, 30 March 2025 (EDT)
:{{Reply to| JKilchenmann}} looks great. I made some tweaks to the references and some throughout, like changing ' and " to real apostrophes and quotation marks. A bit more clean-up, but you might want to check over it again. I removed the under-construction banner. Well one. —[[User:Grlucas|Grlucas]] ([[User talk:Grlucas|talk]]) 21:32, 30 March 2025 (EDT)

== Final Edit ==

Thank you for your comments on my remediation of
"[[The Mailer Review/Volume 4, 2010/Authorship and Alienation in Death in the Afternoon and Advertisements for Myself|Authorship and Alienation in Death in the Afternoon and Advertisements for Myself.]]"

I've eliminated the "fang quotes" and changed them to “real quotation marks.” This was a very fascinating tip that taught me something new. It's something I've never noticed before but now always will.

I also put my sources in a bulleted list and removed the space before the citations. I think I'm all set now.
:{{Reply to|APKnight25}} great work! Please help other editors to complete the volume. Thanks! —[[User:Grlucas|Grlucas]] ([[User talk:Grlucas|talk]]) 08:34, 3 April 2025 (EDT)

== Remediation for ''Firearms in the Works of Hemingway and Mailer'' ==

[[User:Grlucas|Grlucas]]

Hi Dr. Lucas,

I believe I have done everything for the Remediation of my article. Please let me know if there is anything else I need to do.

I will also link the article below:

https://projectmailer.net/pm/The_Mailer_Review/Volume_4,_2010/Firearms_in_the_Works_of_Hemingway_and_Mailer

Thank you,
Caitlin Vinson
:{{Reply to|CVinson}} great work so far. Your references must use templates, please. Blockquotes must also be done correctly. No spaces or line breaks before or after the {{tl|pg}} template. Footnote placement is also off (punctuation goes before the footnote; no spaces before or after the footnote). I will add the abstract and url. Thanks. —[[User:Grlucas|Grlucas]] ([[User talk:Grlucas|talk]]) 08:30, 3 April 2025 (EDT)

:{{Reply to|Grlucas}} Hi Dr. Lucas, I believe there have been some updates made to the project. I believe I have also updated the works cited section to show correct templates. Please let me know if there is anything further that I need to do. Thank you, Caitlin.
::{{reply to| CVinson}} please sign your talk page posts correctly. Thanks. You still need to do some work on the sources. Use the <code>|author-mask=1</code> in your template for repeated author names. Also, you must eliminate the red “Harv and Sfn no-target errors” message at the bottom. No spaces or returns before or after the {{tl|pg}} call, as I already mentioned above. No parenthetical citations should be left, either; those should all be remediated to footnotes. Thanks. —[[User:Grlucas|Grlucas]] ([[User talk:Grlucas|talk]]) 10:50, 8 April 2025 (EDT)

:{{Reply to|Grlucas}} I have updated the sources and updated the in-text citations. I am still having trouble with the "Harv and Sfn no-target errors." I have not been successful in fixing this error and have tried multiple ways to fix it. —[[User:CVinson|CVinson]] ([[User talk:Grlucas|talk]]) 8:18, 8 April 2025 (EDT)

:{{Reply to|Grlucas}} Hi Dr. Lucas, I see that I still have a red X for my remediation assignment. Is there something else I am still missing? —[[User:CVinson|CVinson]] ([[User talk:Grlucas|talk]]) 11:35, 10 April 2025 (EDT)

== Remediation for ''Norman Mailer Today'' ==
Dr. Lucas, I have finished up my remediation article [[The Mailer Review/Volume 5, 2011/Norman Mailer Today|Norman Mailer Today]], and it is ready for review. Please let me know if I missed something. Thank you! —[[User:Kamyers|Kamyers]] ([[User talk:Kamyers|talk]]) 18:20, 3 April 2025 (EDT)
:{{Reply to|Kamyers}} Great work! Please help your fellow editors finish the volume, or pick something to work on in [[The Mailer Review/Volume 4, 2010|Volume 4]]. Thanks, and well done. —[[User:Grlucas|Grlucas]] ([[User talk:Grlucas|talk]]) 07:00, 4 April 2025 (EDT)

== Remediation of “The Conception of Irreversibility: Hannah Arendt and Hemingway’s ‘Hills Like White Elephants’” ==
Dr. Lucas, I have finished my remediation of Jennifer Yirinec's article: [[The Mailer Review/Volume 5, 2011/The Conception of Irreversibility: Hannah Arendt and Hemingway’s “Hills Like White Elephants”|The Conception of Irreversibility: Hannah Arendt and Hemingway’s “Hills Like White Elephants.”]] Thank you for your assistance with the article. It is ready for its final review! [[User:JHadaway|JHadaway]] ([[User talk:JHadaway|talk]]) 10:24, 4 April 2025 (EDT)
:{{Reply to|JHadaway}} a stellar job. Well done. I removed the banner, so you can move on to another article. Thanks. —[[User:Grlucas|Grlucas]] ([[User talk:Grlucas|talk]]) 08:12, 5 April 2025 (EDT)

== Tribute Remediations ==
Dr. Lucas, I have begun work on the tributes for volume 5. [[The Mailer Review/Volume 5, 2011/Tributes to Norris Church Mailer/Grace Notes|Grace Notes]] by Stephen Borkowski is ready for its final review.—[[User:JHadaway|JHadaway]] ([[User talk:JHadaway|talk]]) 12:58, 4 April 2025 (EDT)
:{{Reply to|JHadaway}} Well done! Banner removed, url added. —[[User:Grlucas|Grlucas]] ([[User talk:Grlucas|talk]]) 08:18, 5 April 2025 (EDT)

==Oohh Normie Final Edits==
Hi Dr. Lucas, I have finished my article: [[The_Mailer_Review/Volume_4,_2010/"Oohh_Normie_—_You're_Sooo_Hemingway":_Mailer_Memories_and_Encounters|Oohh Normie, You're Sooo Hemingway]]. Please let me know if there is anything I need to fix. [[User:Tbara4554|Tbara4554]] ([[User talk:Tbara4554|talk]]) 20:01, 5 April 2025 (EDT)
:{{reply to|Tbara4554}} thank you. I made some corrections and removed the banner. You might want to have another look over it. Please move on to something else. —[[User:Grlucas|Grlucas]] ([[User talk:Grlucas|talk]]) 09:53, 6 April 2025 (EDT)

== Harlot's Ghost, Bildungsroman, Masculinity and Hemingway ==

Dr. Lucas,

The following article is ready for your review. Thanks.

https://projectmailer.net/pm/The_Mailer_Review/Volume_4,_2010/Harlot%27s_Ghost,_Bildungsroman,_Masculinity_and_Hemingway

[[User:JKilchenmann|JKilchenmann]] ([[User talk:JKilchenmann|talk]]) 21:22, 5 April 2025 (EDT)
:{{Reply to| JKilchenmann}} excellent. Thank you. —[[User:Grlucas|Grlucas]] ([[User talk:Grlucas|talk]]) 09:39, 6 April 2025 (EDT)

== I am done with this ==

https://projectmailer.net/pm/The_Mailer_Review/Volume_5,_2011/Situating_Hemingway:_Mailer,_Style,_Ethics
:Received. —[[User:Grlucas|Grlucas]] ([[User talk:Grlucas|talk]]) 10:29, 6 April 2025 (EDT)

== Final Review PM Article ==

Hi Dr. Lucas, [[The_Mailer_Review/Volume_4,_2010/Hemingway_to_Mailer_—_A_Delayed_Response_to_The_Deer_Park|here]] is my remediated article, ready for review![[User:Hobbitonya|Hobbitonya]] ([[User talk:Hobbitonya|talk]]) 12:21, 6 April 2025 (EDT)
:{{Reply to| Hobbitonya}} great work. I have removed the banner, so you are good to move on to something else. —[[User:Grlucas|Grlucas]] ([[User talk:Grlucas|talk]]) 07:20, 7 April 2025 (EDT)

== Remediation Project ==

{{reply to|Grlucas}}
I have finished my remedidation project and I am ready for it to be reviewed. '''Article link''': [https://projectmailer.net/pm/The_Mailer_Review/Volume_5,_2011/Piling_On:_Norman_Mailer’s_Utilization_of_Marilyn_Monroe#Works_Cited|Piling On: Norman Mailer's Utilization of Marilyn Monroe]

Thanks,

[[User:MerAtticus|MerAtticus]] ([[User talk:MerAtticus|talk]]) 13:04, 6 April 2025 (EDT)
:{{Reply to| MerAtticus}} good work so far. Please remove wikilinks. Change ' and " to typographical apostrophes and quotation marks. And all red errors at the bottom of the page need to be taken care of. These are likely all from coding errors in your sources. Thanks! —[[User:Grlucas|Grlucas]] ([[User talk:Grlucas|talk]]) 07:24, 7 April 2025 (EDT)

{{reply to|Grlucas}}
I have removed the wikilinks, changed to the correct typographic style and updated my sources.
'''Article link''': [https://projectmailer.net/pm/The_Mailer_Review/Volume_5,_2011/Piling_On:_Norman_Mailer’s_Utilization_of_Marilyn_Monroe#Works_Cited|Piling On: Norman Mailer's Utilization of Marilyn Monroe] Thanks, [[User:MerAtticus|MerAtticus]] ([[User talk:MerAtticus|talk]]) 21:55, 7 April 2025 (EDT)

[I forgot to fill out the summary box. I am adding my summary]
:{{Reply to| MerAtticus}} you're getting there! It looks great. You must eliminate all the red errors at the bottom. These appear when there are errors in your citations. Let me know if you need help. —[[User:Grlucas|Grlucas]] ([[User talk:Grlucas|talk]]) 09:15, 8 April 2025 (EDT)

@{{reply to|Grlucas}} I have tried everything I can think of and I still have harv and sfn no-target errors and harv and sfn multiple-target errors and cs1 uses editors parameter. Do I not include the editor? [[User:MerAtticus|MerAtticus]] ([[User talk:MerAtticus|talk]]) 16:03, 8 April 2025 (EDT)

{{reply to|Grlucas}} I have managed to get rid of two of the red target errors. I am still working on finding the harv sfn multiple target error. Thanks, [[User:MerAtticus|MerAtticus]] ([[User talk:MerAtticus|talk]]) 20:37, 8 April 2025 (EDT)

{{reply to|Grlucas}} I have tried everything i can think of to remove the last red error flag. I had to turn it in. I don't know that else I can do in this situation. I was given citation that did not follow any of the given formats. [[User:MerAtticus|MerAtticus]] ([[User talk:MerAtticus|talk]]) 21:45, 8 April 2025 (EDT)

== Remediation Submission ==

Hello!
Here's my remediated article; [[The_Mailer_Review/Volume_5,_2011/The_Devil's_Party:_Reading_and_Wreaking_Vengeance_in_The_Castle_in_the_Forest|The Devil's Party: Reading and Wreaking Vengeance in ''The Castle in the Forest'']].
Thanks! Please let me know if there's anything I can review or correct.
[[User:Maggiemrogers|Maggiemrogers]] ([[User talk:Maggiemrogers|talk]]) 13:23, 6 April 2025 (EDT)
:{{Reply to| Maggiemrogers}} nice work! Banner removed, so please move on to something else in the volume. Thanks. —[[User:Grlucas|Grlucas]] ([[User talk:Grlucas|talk]]) 07:39, 7 April 2025 (EDT)

== Vol. 4: Rumors of Grace article remediated ==

I believe I have completed remediation of ''[[The_Mailer_Review/Volume_4,_2010/Rumors_of_Grace:_God-Language_in_Hemingway_and_Mailer|Rumors of Grace: God-Language in Hemingway and Mailer]]'', vol. 4. I was having last-minute trouble with sfn errors for sources without authors, but Justin Kilchenmann helped me out, so I think they are fixed.
:{{Reply to|Sherrilledwards}} You have done a remarkable job—a real Herculean effort! Footnotes should not go in any notes. See those I changed; the others should be changed in the same way. I have done some, but the others have to be fixed, I'm afraid. Thanks! —[[User:Grlucas|Grlucas]] ([[User talk:Grlucas|talk]]) 09:20, 8 April 2025 (EDT)

== Remediation of "Inside Norman Mailer ==

Hi Dr. Lucas - I have finished remediating the article, [[The Mailer Review/Volume 4, 2010/Inside Norman Mailer|Inside Norman Mailer]]. Please let me know if I need to make any adjustments. Thank you! [[User:Chelsey.brantley|Chelsey.brantley]] ([[User talk:Chelsey.brantley|talk]]) 18:09, 7 April 2025 (EDT)
:{{Reply to|Chelsey.brantley}} good work! Please help with another article from volume 4. Thanks! —[[User:Grlucas|Grlucas]] ([[User talk:Grlucas|talk]]) 09:36, 8 April 2025 (EDT)

== Completed: Norman Mailer: Playboy Magazine ==

I hope I am doing this is right. I have finished remediating my article about Norman Mailer and its in my designated sandbox [https://projectmailer.net/pm/The_Mailer_Review/Volume_5,_2011/Norman_Mailer:_Playboy_Magazine_Heavyweight here.]
If there are any last minute edits, let me know. I got the last of the errors removed yesterday. And I believe we are on the same page with leaving the in-line citations for ''Playboy'' to be as is, since the author didn't put them down in the works cited. [[User:NrmMGA5108|NrmMGA5108]] ([[User talk:NrmMGA5108|talk]]) 20:14, 7 April 2025 (EDT)Nina Mizner
:{{Reply to|NrmMGA5108}} looking good! So, the parenthetical citations still in the article, I'm assuming, are there because of those missing sources? Please check your page numbers; some seem to be off. Thanks. —[[User:Grlucas|Grlucas]] ([[User talk:Grlucas|talk]]) 10:04, 8 April 2025 (EDT)

== Completed Remediation From Here to Eternity and The Naked and The Dead: Premier to Eternity? ==

Greeting Dr. Lucas,

I have made the adjustment that you mentioned.

I also made additional edits to my short footnotes and noticed that my citations did not link to my references - which has been fixed.

I have tested all of my citations, and they all work.

Here is my article by Alexander Hicks, ''From Here to Eternity and The Naked and The Dead: Premier to Eternity?''

https://projectmailer.net/pm/The_Mailer_Review/Volume_5,_2011/From_Here_to_Eternity_and_The_Naked_and_the_Dead:_Premiere_to_Eternity%3F

Have a great day.
:{{Reply to| THarrell}} Please always sign your talk page posts. Several “quoted items” in the article appear as ‘quoted items’; these must be corrected, please. No spaces or returns should surround {{tl|pg}} calls. Multiple page numbers should look like this <code><nowiki>{{sfn|Moretti|1996|pp=11-14}}</nowiki></code>; note the double <code>pp</code>. There seem to be many typos. I corrected some for you, but you must see to the rest. Thanks. —[[User:Grlucas|Grlucas]] ([[User talk:Grlucas|talk]]) 10:16, 8 April 2025 (EDT)

:{{Reply to| Grlucas}} Greetings,

Are these the only additional corrections that need to be made? This is different from what you mentioned before.

I just want to be sure that I have hit everything.

Also can you verify what other typos you are seeing, I have ran through this twice.

If something is spelt a certain way, for example "Soljer", I have left it that way. Since it is mentioned like that in the article.
—[[User:THarrell|THarrell]] ([[User talk:THarrell|talk]]) 06:49, 8 April 2025 (EDT)

:{{Reply to| Grlucas}} Greetings,

I have gone through and fixed all of the short footnotes.

I have gone line by line with a ruler to look at any typos, and fixed the words that I found that had a dash in them/needed to be lowercased.

I have also fixed the quotations.

—[[User:THarrell|THarrell]] ([[User talk:THarrell|talk]]) 12:31, 9 April 2025 (EDT)

== Remediation for “Footnote to Death in the Afternoon” ==

Greetings Dr. Lucus,

My article is ready for your review. Thank you.

https://projectmailer.net/pm/The_Mailer_Review/Volume_4,_2010/Mailer%E2%80%99s_%E2%80%9CFootnote_to_Death_in_the_Afternoon%E2%80%9D)
:{{Reply to| KForeman}} it's coming along. Please ''always'' sign your talk page posts. Right up top, there are errors. Please use the real {{tl|pg}}, like all the other articles. Citations need to be fixed. All parenthetical citations must be converted. You still have quite a bit of work to do. All red sections need to be seen to and corrected. Thanks. —[[User:Grlucas|Grlucas]] ([[User talk:Grlucas|talk]]) 10:20, 8 April 2025 (EDT)

=Remediation of "Cluster Seeds and the Mailer Legacy"=
Hello, Dr. Lucas. I have completed the remediation of [https://projectmailer.net/index.php?title=The_Mailer_Review/Volume_5,_2011/Cluster_Seeds_and_the_Mailer_Legacy&oldid=18200| my article], and it is ready for your review. Thank you!—[[User:ADavis|ADavis]] ([[User talk:ADavis|talk]]) 11:32, 8 April 2025 (EDT)@ADavis
:{{Reply to| ADavis}} got it. I think I check it yesterday and removed the banner then. Please move on to another piece. Thanks. —[[User:Grlucas|Grlucas]] ([[User talk:Grlucas|talk]]) 17:29, 8 April 2025 (EDT)

== Remediating Article: Mailer, Hemingway, and Boxing Volume 4. ==

Hello Dr. Lucas,

I have completed remediating my article. Here is the link [[The Mailer Review/Volume 4, 2010/Mailer, Hemingway, and Boxing|The Mailer Review: Volume 4: Mailer, Hemingway, Boxing (2010)]] [[User:JBrown|JBrown]] ([[User talk:JBrown|talk]]) 13:01, 8 April 2025 (EDT)JBrown
:{{Reply to|JBrown}} a good start, but all parenthetical citations need to be footnotes. Also, check your headers. Thanks. —[[User:Grlucas|Grlucas]] ([[User talk:Grlucas|talk]]) 17:29, 8 April 2025 (EDT)

== Remediation for ''Norris Church Mailer'' ==
Dr. Lucas, I have finished up remediating the article [[The Mailer Review/Volume 4, 2010/Norris Church Mailer|Norris Church Mailer]], and it is ready for review. Please let me know if I missed something. Thank you! —[[User:Kamyers|Kamyers]] ([[User talk:Kamyers|talk]]) 13:42, 8 April 2025 (EDT)
:{{reply to|Kamyers}} awesome work! Thank you! —[[User:Grlucas|Grlucas]] ([[User talk:Grlucas|talk]]) 17:29, 8 April 2025 (EDT)

== Final Edits Completed and Ready for Review ==

Dr. Lucas, I have completed my assigned remediation article: [[The_Mailer_Review/Volume_4,_2010/Looking_at_the_Past:_Nostalgia_as_Technique_in_The_Naked_and_the_Dead_and_For_Whom_the_Bell_Tolls|Looking at the Past: Nostalgia as Technique in The Naked and the Dead and For Whom the Bell Tolls]]. Please review at your convenience. I enjoyed working on this assignment. I look forward to your suggestions and feedback. All the best, Danielle (DBond007)
:{{Reply to| DBond007}} ok, good work. Please remove all the external links. Links to Wikipedia are not necessary, but if used, they need to be done correctly. There should be no spaces before {{tl|sfn}}. May sure all your ' and " are actually typographical apostrophes and quotation marks. Remove any superfluous spaces and line breaks; these mess up the formatting. Thanks! —[[User:Grlucas|Grlucas]] ([[User talk:Grlucas|talk]]) 17:29, 8 April 2025 (EDT)
:{{Reply to| Grlucas}} Thank you. I will get started on these revisions immediately. Thanks for the feedback and your time. :)[[User:DBond007|DBond007]] ([[User talk:DBond007|talk]]) 11:30, 10 April 2025 (EDT)

:{{Reply to| Grlucas}} I have completed all the requested revisions and ready for review round 2. Thank you again![[User:DBond007|DBond007]] ([[User talk:DBond007|talk]]) 12:10, 10 April 2025 (EDT)

== Completed the remediation assignment ==

Good evening Dr. Lucas,

I hope I am doing this right. Here is the link for my completed Remediation article: [http://The_Mailer_Review/Volume_4,_2010/Encounters_with_Mailer Encounters with Mailer].

I look forward to reading your feedback.

All the best,

Patrick Riley
:{{Reply to|Priley1984}} thank you! —[[User:Grlucas|Grlucas]] ([[User talk:Grlucas|talk]]) 07:40, 10 April 2025 (EDT)

== Remediation Project Submission: An Expected Encounter in an Unexpected Place ==

Link:

https://projectmailer.net/pm/The_Mailer_Review/Volume_4,_2010/Norman_Mailer:_An_Expected_Encounter_in_an_Unexpected_Place

Winnie Verna
:{{Reply to|Wverna}} received, thanks! —[[User:Grlucas|Grlucas]] ([[User talk:Grlucas|talk]]) 07:51, 10 April 2025 (EDT)

== E.Mosley ==

Good evening, @Grlucas. I have completed my Remediation Articles[[https://projectmailer.net/pm/The_Mailer_Review/Volume_4,_2010/On_Reading_Mailer_Too_Young]]. The article I had was " On Reading Mailer Too Young Volume 4, 2010
:{{Reply to| Essence903m}} thank you. I had to fix and clean-up quite a bit. Your saves also do not include summaries. When you move on to your next article, please be more careful and follow the instructions. —[[User:Grlucas|Grlucas]] ([[User talk:Grlucas|talk]]) 09:12, 10 April 2025 (EDT)

== Kynndra Watson ==

Good Evening, @grlucas. i have completed my Remediation articles: Volume 5: https://projectmailer.net/pm/The_Mailer_Review/Volume_5,_2011/Making_Masculinity_and_Unmaking_Jewishness:_Norman_Mailer%E2%80%99s_Voice_in_Wild_90_and_Beyond_the_Law and Volume 4: https://projectmailer.net/pm/The_Mailer_Review/Volume_4,_2010/Mailer,_Hemingway,_and_the_%E2%80%9CReds%E2%80%9D.

Thank you.
:{{Reply to| KWatson}} thank you, and this is a good start, but there are still many items that need to be cleaned up, like footnote indications (They go after punctuation), citation errors (all the red errors at the bottom need to be seen to), extra spaces and ALL CAPS need to be removed. Please see other completed articles for models. Thanks. —[[User:Grlucas|Grlucas]] ([[User talk:Grlucas|talk]]) 09:18, 10 April 2025 (EDT)

== Tribute Remediation ==
Dr. Lucas, I have finished [[The Mailer Review/Volume 5, 2011/Tributes to Norris Church Mailer/What Would Be the Fun of That?|"What Would Be the Fun of That?"]] by Peter Alson.—[[User:JHadaway|JHadaway]] ([[User talk:JHadaway|talk]]) 09:33, 9 April 2025 (EDT)
:{{Reply to| JHadaway}} awesome! Thank you! —[[User:Grlucas|Grlucas]] ([[User talk:Grlucas|talk]]) 09:21, 10 April 2025 (EDT)

== “Remembering Norris Church” Tribute Remediation ==
Dr. Lucas, I have finished [[The Mailer Review/Volume 5, 2011/Tributes to Norris Church Mailer/Remembering Norris Church|“Remembering Norris Church”]] by John Bowers.—[[User:JHadaway|JHadaway]] ([[User talk:JHadaway|talk]]) 16:17, 9 April 2025 (EDT)
:{{Reply to| JHadaway}} and again, excellent! Thank you! —[[User:Grlucas|Grlucas]] ([[User talk:Grlucas|talk]]) 09:22, 10 April 2025 (EDT)

== “The Norris I Knew” Tribute Remediation ==
Dr. Lucas, I have finished [[The Mailer Review/Volume 5, 2011/Tributes to Norris Church Mailer/The Norris I Knew|“The Norris I Knew”]] by Christopher Busa.—[[User:JHadaway|JHadaway]] ([[User talk:JHadaway|talk]]) 09:04, 10 April 2025 (EDT)
:{{Reply to| JHadaway}} rockin’! 👍🏼 —[[User:Grlucas|Grlucas]] ([[User talk:Grlucas|talk]]) 09:24, 10 April 2025 (EDT)

== "Norris Mailer" Tribute Remediation ==
Dr. Lucas, I have finished [[The Mailer Review/Volume 5, 2011/Tributes to Norris Church Mailer/Norris Mailer|"Norris Mailer"]] by Nancy Collins.—[[User:JHadaway|JHadaway]] ([[User talk:JHadaway|talk]]) 09:35, 10 April 2025 (EDT)
:{{Reply to| JHadaway}} thanks again. You’re tearing it up. —[[User:Grlucas|Grlucas]] ([[User talk:Grlucas|talk]]) 10:32, 10 April 2025 (EDT)

== "Rise Above It" Tribute Remediation ==

Dr. Lucas, I have finished [[The Mailer Review/Volume 5, 2011/Tributes to Norris Church Mailer/Rise Above It|"Rise Above It"]] by David Ebershoff—[[User:JHadaway|JHadaway]] ([[User talk:JHadaway|talk]]) 11:12, 10 April 2025 (EDT)

== Completed Additional Articles ==

Hello, Dr. Lucas. I have remediated [https://projectmailer.net/index.php?title=The_Mailer_Review/Volume_5,_2011/Tributes_to_Norris_Church_Mailer/A_View_Through_the_Prism&oldid=18744|"A View Through the Prism"] and [https://projectmailer.net/pm/The_Mailer_Review/Volume_5,_2011/The_Living_Room_Show#|"The Living Room Show"] in Volume 5. They are ready for your review. Thank you!—[[User:ADavis|ADavis]] ([[User talk:ADavis|talk]]) 12:31, 10 April 2025 (EDT)

The Mailer Review/Volume 5, 2011/The Living Room Show

2025-04-10T16:18:39Z

ADavis:

{{DISPLAYTITLE:{{BASEPAGENAME}}/{{SUBPAGENAME}}}}
{{Working}}
{{MR05}}
{{byline|last=Brown|first=Karen}}

{{dc|dc=T|HE LIVING ROOM SHOWS WERE RUMORED TO HAVE STARTED}} one New Year’s Eve. They took place in Doug Brannon’s Spanish Mediterranean, in the bowling alley-like living room that held little more than a fireplace at one end, and a pair of long, moss green couches arranged in an L at the other. The band placed two mounted speakers on either side of the fireplace, and Doug and the other guitar players set up their amps, and brought in an array of guitars on chrome stands. The drummer, J.B. Levine, placed his red sparkle Ludwig kit in the middle of it all, and whenever enough people had arrived, or the band members grew bored milling around, or it was just late enough and everyone was drunk enough, they would play.

Margaret Carr told us about the shows, and after accompanying her to one they became a monthly part of our social routine. Margaret is one of my husband, John Rushing’s, old friends, a divorced woman with no children, whose own Mediterranean, acquired in the divorce settlement was just beginning to fall into disrepair. The awning in the front had torn, and the pool deck was cracked and discolored with mildew. There were porch lights with broken glass, and a lichen-colored run-off from the roof streaking the exterior of the house. The night of the living room shows was always a Saturday, and it would always start with drinks at Margaret Carr’s, our two children entrusted to a babysitter and all but forgotten. We’d sit out by the pool under the frangipani and the fifty-foot high cluster of bamboo and have various Martinis stolen from the menu of one of the newer restaurants. She served them in over-sized plastic Martini glasses tinted different hues, and the success or disaster of the evening was something I associated with the color of my glass.

The night of the last show, a chartreuse night, took place in April, the air thick with blooming jasmine and tangerines rotting in the grass. A cat was{{pg|458|459}}in heat somewhere in the lush overgrowth of Margaret Carr’s landscaping, and John decided to have an argument with Margaret Carr’s new boyfriend, Manuel, about his mint ’85 Corvette. He made an unkind comment, something like, “What would make you want to collect a car like that?” and Manuel, believing the question to be in earnest, began detailing all of the car’s special features. He was in his twenties, with dark eyes and a wide mouth and a chiseled torso that strained against the front of his cotton shirt. John gave him one of his looks, part disdain and part feigned shock, and he waved his hand and turned away from him in his chair to ask Margaret where she found him.

“Behind the register at your hair salon? Handing out towels in the country club?”

Margaret flushed, because as usual John was close enough to the truth to make her uncomfortable—she’d told me earlier she met Manuel in the country club entryway holding an application for a waiter position at The Nineteenth Hole. At this point Manuel realized his error and jumped up in anger, and John stayed in his chair with his legs crossed, his pants perfectly creased, sipping from his Martini glass. Margaret stood quickly, and placed her hand on the front of Manuel’s shirt, and whispered something in his ear and led him off into the house. Through the open door I could hear her mules clacking on the Saltillo tile, and Manuel’s voice, its urgent pitch, fading into the house’s depths.

We left for Doug Brannon’s around ten-thirty, following Margaret with Manuel in his Corvette. The Mediterranean faced a four-lane street and its grounds, separated from the same street by an ivy-covered wall, took up nearly a city block. The driveway was in the back, and the parking extended to the narrow streets behind the house, where the cars queued up along the curb and snaked through a neighborhood of tiny bungalows and cement block homes. Everyone went in up the driveway, through the back kitchen entrance, and on this night we parked behind a sizable line of cars, and joined a group heading down the sidewalk. We passed the hedge of gardenia and the two Magnolia trees flanking the driveway, the darkness balmy, scented with their flowers, tinged with a nervous excitement that took over everyone as we entered the kitchen.

Doug Brannon’s house was built in the twenties of terracotta block covered with heavy stucco. From the outside it was an imposing two-story structure with an arched portico and an odd carved relief of a ship at sea over{{pg|459|460}}one of the windows. The flat, pebbled roof could be accessed from a doorway in one of the upper bedrooms, and it created a porch along the front of the house, where bougainvillea climbed and shed its fuchsia petals all over the front walk. Guests would not see this, approaching at night from the back. Inside, they would remember the plaster walls, painted colors like saffron and squash and clay, and the high ceilings and oak floors, and the living room itself, which was forty feet long and lit by a large crystal chandelier dimmed by a switch near the door. On one wall three arches led to the kitchen, the dining room, and a small alcove, and on the other a bank of windows faced the four-lane street and a major intersection with a light, where the waiting cars, if they had their windows down, would be able to hear the living room show going on.

In the kitchen, people left their bottles of Jack Daniels and Absolut and Sapphire gin, their mixers, unloaded beer into a few coolers of ice on the floor. You didn’t know who was there until you went into the living room itself, where the amps were set up, and the guitars waited shining on their stands, and everyone gathered in clusters, or claimed spots on the couches, or if it was crowded moved into the adjoining room that held a large screened television that I imagined Doug watched when he was alone, but on the nights of the shows was never on.

I left John Rushing in the kitchen mixing his drink, and Margaret taking Manuel through the butler door to the dining room on a tour of the house. I stepped up onto the stair landing, and down again, through the archway into the living room that shimmered with people, the chandelier light glinting in the glasses in their hands, off the bottles of beer, the watches and bracelets at their wrists. The stereo music played, and the men’s voices were
laughing and loud, the women in their circles more calculative, their murmurs focused on lipstick shades, and the attractiveness of shoes. I recognized nearly everyone there, having seen them at the grocery store, or waiting for a table at Bella’s, or take-out at the Thai Palace. I knew a few from the afternoon pick up line at St. Mary’s school, saw others at one time or another in the mall parking lot, loading their purchases into the back of their SUVs.

I didn’t have a drink because I knew John Rushing would bring me one, and I stood by the arched entry waiting for him, when Alicia Hardcastle came up beside me and clung to my arm. The wine in her glass sloshed out onto the wood floor. She wore a sundress and sandals with high, spiky heels that would leave small dents in the wood floor. I didn’t know Alicia well, but{{pg|460|461}}when we drank together at fundraisers and private dinners we would become friends for the evening. She had wispy blond hair that always seemed to fall into her face, and narrow, tanned, freckled shoulders. Her husband, Guy, was new to John Rushing’s firm, a young attorney with longish hair the color of his wife’s, and a kind, gentle manner the others imitated behind his back.

“Listen,” she said. She slid her arm around my shoulders and whispered in my ear. “I want to have sex with Doug Brannon.”

I looked at her, and widened my eyes.

Alicia bit her lip and appeared desperate, at a loss. “Tonight,” she said.

We both looked over at Doug Brannon’s microphone, at his aquamarine guitar on its stand, and Doug Brannon himself stepping out from the shadows of the dining room archway. He moved past the cables and leaned forward toward the mike.

“Hey,” he said, his voice throaty and amplified. “What about it? Are we ready?” He wore a gray silk shirt and had the disheveled appearance of a boy whose mother hadn’t taken him for a haircut. His eyes, even in the shadowy room, shone bright and blue. Around him the other band members appeared and stepped into place, dipped their heads under guitar straps, and made noises on the strings.

“Oh God,” Alicia said.

John Rushing came up beside me and handed me a glass, its sides wet from the ice, then moved past me without saying a word. I watched him disappear into the crowd in the adjoining room, where he would probably continue on through the French doors that led to the courtyard, where a fountain ran, and garden torches gave off a bluish, smoky light, and everyone sat in folding chairs or gathered in groups with cigarettes. Alicia still held onto my arm. She brought her wine glass up to her mouth and took a large swallow, her eyes on Doug Brannon, tuning up his guitar.

It was not difficult to find someone you wanted at the living room shows. Once you walked into the house and the band began to play, the rules changed. I cannot say why, or how everyone knew it, but the air became charged, the music absorbed into the plaster walls, into the planks of the floor. It followed you outside into the courtyard and beyond, to the pool, where it became a steady, unnamed urge in your body. Now, as Doug Brannon leaned into the microphone, and the drummer counted out the first song, everyone’s head swiveled in his direction {{pg|161|462}}They were all there for the band. The men shed their suits for faded jeans or khaki shorts and topsiders. They pretended they were young again, with no children or responsibilities, and they eyed the women and joked and bobbed their heads to the music. After the band finished a set the men would call one of the members over and invite them into their groups and tell them they should put out a CD, that their cousin worked at a record company, that they might know of a backer to help them get started. They offered them cigarettes out in the courtyard, brought drinks around from their stock in the kitchen. The band would stand within these groups, with someone’s arm draped over their shoulder, and grin awkwardly, even Doug Brannon, whose acquisition of the house was always the object of speculation, who was asked at every show its square footage, how many bedrooms?

The band was more at ease with the women. They dropped their guard and their smiles grew sly. We leaned our bodies into them, grabbed their hands and pulled them down onto the couches, tugged them into corners—the living room alcove, the dining room, where the only light came in from the streetlights outside. Cornered by us the band was always ready to be taken, but only a few of us actually knew the places to suggest. It was not just the band members we ended up with. The other husbands there were potential objects of desire as well, though that was trickier, and didn’t occur until near the end of the night, when you lost track of who you came with, when the rooms blurred and you couldn’t remember how you got outside.

Margaret Carr and I knew more about the house than anyone else. Knowing the house was like learning Doug Brannon. The rooms downstairs were open and public, where nothing could really happen except whispered exchanges, or hands lingering in places unnoticed in the cover of the crowd. Margaret Carr found the library, a small room with a couch off the dining room, on the ground floor but private enough because of a narrow French door that kept it separate from the rest of the house. There were ceiling-high shelves of Doug Brannon’s books, Pascal and Bertrand Russell, Kafka’s ''The Castle'', a collection of Chekov’s stories, Kerouac’s ''On the Road'', a set of Shakespeare, and a copy of ''Jonathan Livingston Seagull'' with its original cover. There were the thick American and British Literature anthologies, a survey of Medieval History, books required by the local college for courses Doug must have taken. Scattered in with these I found glossy, hardback books on boats and Arnold Palmer that were probably gifts, and romance paperbacks from the supermarket, which I imagined were left by the women who spent{{pg|462|463}}a weekend with Doug Brannon out by his pool. Sometimes a book would be left on the end table by the lamp—''T.S. Eliot, The Complete Poems and Plays'', and I liked to sit on the library couch with my drink and read the last page Doug Brannon read, marked with the book flap. Margaret Carr liked to take men into the library in the beginning of the night, when they had just had a few drinks, and she wanted to know how their mouths felt on hers, decide if she wanted anything else to do with them later.

The most private room downstairs was the laundry room that led from the downstairs bath at the foot of the stairs. Most people thought it was a closet, with its simple painted door. Once, on a periwinkle Martini glass night, I took the drummer, J.B., into the laundry room, and even he hadn’t known it was there. We set our drinks on top of the dryer, and he pressed me up against the wall to kiss me, his hands roaming under my clothes. J.B. is funny and friendly and wears madras shirts, and is more unlike John Rushing than any man I have ever met. But even now, as he winked, and waved a stick in my direction, I remembered little else of the night except the smell of laundry detergent, and thinking that up close, that would be the smell of Doug Brannon’s t-shirts, his khaki pants.

On another night, or maybe the same one, J.B. took me out to the poolroom. This was through the courtyard gate, a part of the house connected to the garage, with its own set of French doors and an awning covered with jasmine, and pots of geraniums on the cement step. At the doors, J.B. produced a key. Inside, amidst the jumble of band equipment—a drum kit and amps and mike stands and cables coiled on the floor, and overturned ashtrays and rows of empty beer cans, he found a couch. The poolroom was dark and silent, and you could pretend no one was outside, treading the grass by the door, or beyond the screened enclosure, lounging in the chaises by the pool. You could lie down and spread out and take off clothing you may or may not find afterwards.{{pg|463|464}}might be something to experience, if you were lying down on the bare heart of pine floorboards.

I had only been upstairs once, the time I followed John Rushing, who had Margaret Carr by the hand. They went into the guest bedroom, which held two twin beds and a bureau, and had the bare, impersonal tone of a motel room, except for the door to the roof, and the set of long casement windows that faced east and looked out over the pool. I am not sure why I followed them. Maybe I had to see for myself, to watch them together out of curiosity. At the time, I believe I wanted them to know I knew, as if that would make me part of their secret. But we are almost always wrong about what we want.

As the band began to play on the night of the last show, and Alicia Hardcastle held onto my arm, I wondered what she wanted from Doug Brannon. She might have heard from the other wives that he would be seen occasionally playing golf at the club, that from their tables at the Nineteenth Hole they would watch him and not recognize him at first. She would hear he went to the Little Monkey’s coffee shop with his paper, picked up his cleaning from Morris Fonte, worked during the day from his house, though no one, really, knew what he did. Outside of his house he could easily be mistaken for the boy in wrinkled khaki pants, ordering his girlfriend a Colosso at the Dairy Joy, and once he stepped from behind the microphone at the living room shows he could mingle with the crowd and safely be overlooked. I could have warned her Doug Brannon knew how to slip in and out of an embrace and leave you untouched by the end of the night. But singing with the band in front of his fireplace, with the guitars’ melody reverberating through the room, and the bass coming up through the floor, he handed you something, like a gift you could not resist—part song, part himself.

Doug’s band played its own songs. Occasionally, near the end of the night, they might do a request of another artist’s music, but this was rare. There were bars and clubs where you could hear “Stranglehold,” or Rolling Stones covers, where the front man could pace a stage and pretend to be a rock star. Doug’s band’s music was so good that no one missed the jolt of a familiar hook, a kind of sixties, psychedelic rock, with melodies that followed jangly guitars, and lyrics inspired by his library’s holdings, Kerouac, and ''Pensee'', and Eliot’s “Quartets.” On the night of the last show the band started up and the music invaded conversations. The people in the courtyard, John Rushing among them, moved back into the house and filled the space in the liv-{{pg|464|465}}ing room, bringing the smell of the oil from the torches, the jasmine, their cigarettes. It was so loud no one could speak. They pressed in close and Doug Brannon sang, and Alicia’s eyes were on him again.

“I just love him,” she said into my ear, and I knew she would find him that night in the crowd and grab hold of his gray silk shirtsleeve and tell him this, that he would smile at her and shake his head, his eyes slit with doubt. It would be somewhere dark and advantageous for her to whisper in his ear, to slide her lips along the curve of his neck. Her husband Guy stepped up beside us, and his arm fell comfortably across Alicia’s freckled shoulders, and I moved off into the crowd, where everyone’s cologne mingled, and I could smell the lime in their drinks, where I did not have to think about Alicia’s misguided love for Doug Brannon.

After a while, I decided to look for Margaret. I wanted to tell her about Alicia, knowing the story was one she would appreciate, and I found her out at the pool in a chaise with Manuel. They were sipping from one of her Martini glasses, brought along with her in the car. No one was outside at the time, and it was a warm, spring night, and the potted tropical plants waved in the breeze and the smell of orange blossom came from across the fence from the neighbor’s yard, where the plants grew untended, a dense, jungle-like green.

“Look who’s here,” Margaret said. She raised her eyebrows at me. Her blouse was all the way unbuttoned, and her feet were bare.

“You know Alicia Hardcastle,” I said.

“Why, should I?” Margaret asked.

Manuel looked up at me, drunk, his wide brown eyes glazed, and placed his hand on my bare leg. I stood there and suddenly did not want to say anything. Manuel slid his hand up under my dress, and I stepped back and stared at them both on the chaise.

“Well?” Margaret asked.

And I knew then that Margaret had planned for me to have Manuel. She smiled and winked, her eyes lonely and full of the masked guilt that kept her seeking ways for me to pay back John Rushing, as if I still believed being unfaithful would hurt him. I glanced down at Manuel, the comb marks etched in his hair gel, his white shirt front stretched across his chest, and I felt the emptiness of the four martinis, the carved out place the vodka inhabited, vast and sorrowful. So I shook my head and turned from them, pretending to need another drink. I walked back across the lawn, but didn’t yet want to{{pg|465|466}}join the groups gathered in the courtyard. Instead I turned and wandered around the caged pool, up along the vine-covered chain-link fence. I heard Margaret calling me back, and Manuel piping in, “I’m sorry,” as if that had anything to do with it. I could just make out Doug Brannon’s neighbor’s house through the orange trees and fern, a small bungalow, its windows unlit. One night a few weeks before I’d come out here alone and been startled by a woman’s voice, thin with age, very close to me on the other side of the fence. “The jacaranda is blooming early this year,” she’d said.

I’d stepped back. In the dark I could just make out the shape of her, small and hunched in a striped housedress

“I can smell it especially strong out here,” she said. “Are you one of the party-goers?”

I told her I was, and then I felt the need to apologize for the noise. “Is it very loud?” I asked her.

“It keeps me up,” she said. “But I don’t mind being awake at night.”

She explained to me that she was nearly blind, that the night time was a solace—quiet and cool, filled with the smell of flowers. Her name was Esther. She was ninety years old. I had wondered what to say to this admission, but then she told me that it wasn’t especially advantageous to live so long. “The body goes,” she said. “A little at a time. The strangest things stay with you. Like the smell of the jacaranda.”

That night I’d heard her take tentative steps through the fern and twigs that comprised her yard, and she was gone. I’d questioned whether I had even spoken to her at all, so complete had been her disappearance. Now I stood by the fence and listened. I heard small, furtive movements—fruit rats gnawing on fallen citrus, lizards slipping through over-turned clay pots, along the bleeding heart threaded through the chain-link. I waited a long time, summoning the old woman back, but she did not appear, so I left the yard and made my way back to the courtyard. The band had stopped playing, and I watched the groups of people for Alicia and Doug Brannon and I didn’t see them, and I realized, with a stab of something close to jealousy, that he had given in to her, maybe her eyes, her admission of love. He had taken her somewhere, though I didn’t know where until later, when I saw Guy Hardcastle coming down the stairs.

He was pale, and expressionless. His sandy blond hair covered his eyes. I assumed he had seen them go up, or someone else had seen them. I imagined it might have been John Rushing, who approached by Guy looking for{{pg|466|467}}his wife had not been able to resist. He would have pulled him aside, and spared nothing, and Guy would not have believed him.

“Go look for yourself then,” John would have said, dismissing him, moving off to a group of friends to tell the story, just as I had.

And Guy had gone up the stairs to the first door, which was the guest room, and not found anything. Perhaps he heard her voice, that certain quality it held during sex, soft and full of secrets, or something else that moved him forward to the door that led to Doug Brannon’s room. The hall light was off, and he could have opened the door and they might not have seen him standing there, watching them. No one followed him down. He came clutching the banister, and brushed past me heading into the living room to mingle with the others.

And eventually the band started back up for one last set. It had to have been near two a.m. I had seen Alicia come down, carrying her shoes, but I hadn’t waited to see Doug round the stair landing. Guy Hardcastle, whose face remained white, who held a glass of iced-down scotch, stood in a small group of people he didn’t know in the TV room, and nodded at things they said, his eyes underneath his blond hair scanning the crowd for Alicia. As the band began to play she went right up to him, her dress rumpled, her cheeks flushed. Guy looked down at her and asked her a question. I never found out what it was. The music and Doug Brannon’s voice filled the rooms, spilled out into the courtyard and drifted up past the billows of cigarette smoke, and Guy turned from Alicia and put his fist through one of the French door panes. If you didn’t see it happen, you wouldn’t have known anything had, and because of the crowd, and the music, no one reacted save one or two people out in the courtyard, whose faces exaggerated shock, and
who moved through the doorway and walked off, laughing.

Most had already headed into the living room once the band began, but there were a few who had lingered, who noticed the blood, and Alicia bending over him trying to squelch it with the bottom of Guy’s shirt. I stood near the back of the group that slowly gathered around Guy, who decided to take him out into the courtyard because he was making a mess, the blood pooling and seeping into the cracks of the wood floor. Outside, in the light of the garden torches Guy’s face appeared ghostly. There was some confusion about what to do, with Guy assuring everyone he was fine, and trying to walk away, and Alicia pulling him back. A call had gone up for a doctor, but surprisingly there had been no one there that night to answer. At some point{{pg|467|468}}Guy must have weakened and sat down, and I noticed, before I went back inside, that several people had cell phones out to call the paramedics, but no one among them knew the address. They all had operators on the line, telling them different things—“Doug Brannon’s house,” someone said. “The Spanish Mediterranean on the corner of—what was it?”

I looked at Guy’s face, the hopelessness in it, and knew what he must have seen in Doug Brannon’s bedroom. The casement windows would have been opened, and he may have even felt the night air from where he stood at the door with the bed in full view. He may have watched for a while, the lights around the roofline shining in and lighting up their clothes on the floor, their bodies moving on the bed, their faces and the expressions on them. It had been winter when I had followed Margaret and John up to the guest room. The windows had been closed, and the room was filled with the scent of Margaret’s perfume. That time, the hallway light had been on, and I had opened the door and seen them clearly—John holding her back on the bed, looking like the posed and passionate movie stars in old films. Margaret had lifted her head off the pillow and squinted into the glare of the hall light without recognition, but John turned and saw me and gave me the same look of irritation he’d give one of our children if they walked in on him in the bathroom, and told me to shut the door.

I don’t know what my face had registered. I did as he told me and moved on to the next door, which was Doug Brannon’s room, and I’d gone inside and lay down on Doug Brannon’s bed. The band played downstairs, and gradually my eyes adjusted to the roofline lighting and I could see the bureau top littered with things—scraps of paper with song lyrics, matchbooks from different bars, golf tees, and a photo of Doug and two other people who may have been his brother and sister, who may have been anyone, standing on a pebbled driveway, their shoulders touching. Behind them was an old, restored truck, its paint job shining in the sun, and behind that an ivy-covered house with mountains rising up around it, shrouded in mist. Doug’s face looked out of the photograph at the person holding the camera, or at someone else beyond that, with his blue eyes and the same expression he wore when he performed in his living room, and glanced up and caught you looking at him.

Now downstairs the music filled everything. Margaret Carr sat on one of the couches, her shirt only half-buttoned. Her eyelids were heavy, and every so often she would nod off. Beside her a woman had passed out sitting up-{{pg|468|469}}right, her head tipped at an awkward angle. I stood in the alcove beside Manuel and he took my hand, and I didn’t say anything because it was two or three drinks later, and his hand felt warm and callused at the creases, and his shoulder smelled like starch, and John Rushing had moved in beside Margaret on the couch, and she was laughing and looking around the room for something, maybe us together in the alcove, maybe the small group gathered around Guy in the courtyard.

The bass thudded up and down the plaster walls, the crystals on the chandelier shook, and somewhere the ambulance maneuvered between rows of cars parked on the narrow neighborhood streets, while Guy Hardcastle bled onto the courtyard tiles, and Alicia knelt beside him, her hand over her mouth, disbelieving the amount of blood, the whiteness of his skin. The courtyard fountain bubbled, the stone angel looked on, its face fixed, impervious. I would never know what it had been like, if what she wanted from Doug Brannon could be found in a night. What we did—that groping under clothing in the laundry room, those hands, cold from clutching iced glasses, seeking skin on the poolroom couch, had nothing, really, to do with love.

Manuel threaded his fingers in mine. As I stood there I didn’t know it would be the last living room show, and I watched Doug sing, the rueful chandelier light moving across his face, his voice straining with the yearning that shifted everyone’s mood, their heads turning, eyes riveted. I realized that I loved Doug Brannon, my own version of him—the one with the women out at the pool, the one whose golf clubs leaned against a wall in the garage, who had read Eliot, whose ashtray in the poolroom overflowed with cigarette butts, whose aquamarine guitar was just then slung across hips. I saw, too, that he would have a life in which I would never play a part. “The body goes,” Esther had said. Somehow we must know that the source of all our longing is death. I watched Doug Brannon sing with the force of the band behind him, felt the song on his voice move through me and wrench my heart. I imagine now that was all I ever needed from him.

{{Review}}
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[[Category:Short Stories (MR)]]

The Mailer Review/Volume 5, 2011/The Living Room Show

2025-04-10T16:18:05Z

ADavis: changed category

The Mailer Review/Volume 5, 2011/The Living Room Show

2025-04-10T16:14:05Z

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The Mailer Review/Volume 5, 2011/The Living Room Show

2025-04-10T16:08:56Z

ADavis: added remainder of article (pp 460-469)

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{{dc|dc=T|HE LIVING ROOM SHOWS WERE RUMORED TO HAVE STARTED}} one New Year’s Eve. They took place in Doug Brannon’s Spanish Mediterranean, in the bowling alley-like living room that held little more than a fireplace at one end, and a pair of long, moss green couches arranged in an L at the other. The band placed two mounted speakers on either side of the fireplace, and Doug and the other guitar players set up their amps, and brought in an array of guitars on chrome stands. The drummer, J.B. Levine, placed his red sparkle Ludwig kit in the middle of it all, and whenever enough people had arrived, or the band members grew bored milling around, or it was just late enough and everyone was drunk enough, they would play.

Margaret Carr told us about the shows, and after accompanying her to one they became a monthly part of our social routine. Margaret is one of my husband, John Rushing’s, old friends, a divorced woman with no children, whose own Mediterranean, acquired in the divorce settlement was just beginning to fall into disrepair. The awning in the front had torn, and the pool deck was cracked and discolored with mildew. There were porch lights with broken glass, and a lichen-colored run-off from the roof streaking the exterior of the house. The night of the living room shows was always a Saturday, and it would always start with drinks at Margaret Carr’s, our two children entrusted to a babysitter and all but forgotten. We’d sit out by the pool under the frangipani and the fifty-foot high cluster of bamboo and have various Martinis stolen from the menu of one of the newer restaurants. She served them in over-sized plastic Martini glasses tinted different hues, and the success or disaster of the evening was something I associated with the color of my glass.

The night of the last show, a chartreuse night, took place in April, the air thick with blooming jasmine and tangerines rotting in the grass. A cat was{{pg|458|459}}in heat somewhere in the lush overgrowth of Margaret Carr’s landscaping, and John decided to have an argument with Margaret Carr’s new boyfriend, Manuel, about his mint ’85 Corvette. He made an unkind comment, something like, “What would make you want to collect a car like that?” and Manuel, believing the question to be in earnest, began detailing all of the car’s special features. He was in his twenties, with dark eyes and a wide mouth and a chiseled torso that strained against the front of his cotton shirt. John gave him one of his looks, part disdain and part feigned shock, and he waved his hand and turned away from him in his chair to ask Margaret where she found him.

“Behind the register at your hair salon? Handing out towels in the country club?”

Margaret flushed, because as usual John was close enough to the truth to make her uncomfortable—she’d told me earlier she met Manuel in the country club entryway holding an application for a waiter position at The Nineteenth Hole. At this point Manuel realized his error and jumped up in anger, and John stayed in his chair with his legs crossed, his pants perfectly creased, sipping from his Martini glass. Margaret stood quickly, and placed her hand on the front of Manuel’s shirt, and whispered something in his ear and led him off into the house. Through the open door I could hear her mules clacking on the Saltillo tile, and Manuel’s voice, its urgent pitch, fading into the house’s depths.

We left for Doug Brannon’s around ten-thirty, following Margaret with Manuel in his Corvette. The Mediterranean faced a four-lane street and its grounds, separated from the same street by an ivy-covered wall, took up nearly a city block. The driveway was in the back, and the parking extended to the narrow streets behind the house, where the cars queued up along the curb and snaked through a neighborhood of tiny bungalows and cement block homes. Everyone went in up the driveway, through the back kitchen entrance, and on this night we parked behind a sizable line of cars, and joined a group heading down the sidewalk. We passed the hedge of gardenia and the two Magnolia trees flanking the driveway, the darkness balmy, scented with their flowers, tinged with a nervous excitement that took over everyone as we entered the kitchen.

Doug Brannon’s house was built in the twenties of terracotta block covered with heavy stucco. From the outside it was an imposing two-story structure with an arched portico and an odd carved relief of a ship at sea over{{pg|459|460}}one of the windows. The flat, pebbled roof could be accessed from a doorway in one of the upper bedrooms, and it created a porch along the front of the house, where bougainvillea climbed and shed its fuchsia petals all over the front walk. Guests would not see this, approaching at night from the back. Inside, they would remember the plaster walls, painted colors like saffron and squash and clay, and the high ceilings and oak floors, and the living room itself, which was forty feet long and lit by a large crystal chandelier dimmed by a switch near the door. On one wall three arches led to the kitchen, the dining room, and a small alcove, and on the other a bank of windows faced the four-lane street and a major intersection with a light, where the waiting cars, if they had their windows down, would be able to hear the living room show going on.

In the kitchen, people left their bottles of Jack Daniels and Absolut and Sapphire gin, their mixers, unloaded beer into a few coolers of ice on the floor. You didn’t know who was there until you went into the living room itself, where the amps were set up, and the guitars waited shining on their stands, and everyone gathered in clusters, or claimed spots on the couches, or if it was crowded moved into the adjoining room that held a large screened television that I imagined Doug watched when he was alone, but on the nights of the shows was never on.

I left John Rushing in the kitchen mixing his drink, and Margaret taking Manuel through the butler door to the dining room on a tour of the house. I stepped up onto the stair landing, and down again, through the archway into the living room that shimmered with people, the chandelier light glinting in the glasses in their hands, off the bottles of beer, the watches and bracelets at their wrists. The stereo music played, and the men’s voices were
laughing and loud, the women in their circles more calculative, their murmurs focused on lipstick shades, and the attractiveness of shoes. I recognized nearly everyone there, having seen them at the grocery store, or waiting for a table at Bella’s, or take-out at the Thai Palace. I knew a few from the afternoon pick up line at St. Mary’s school, saw others at one time or another in the mall parking lot, loading their purchases into the back of their SUVs.

I didn’t have a drink because I knew John Rushing would bring me one, and I stood by the arched entry waiting for him, when Alicia Hardcastle came up beside me and clung to my arm. The wine in her glass sloshed out onto the wood floor. She wore a sundress and sandals with high, spiky heels that would leave small dents in the wood floor. I didn’t know Alicia well, but{{pg|460|461}}when we drank together at fundraisers and private dinners we would become friends for the evening. She had wispy blond hair that always seemed to fall into her face, and narrow, tanned, freckled shoulders. Her husband, Guy, was new to John Rushing’s firm, a young attorney with longish hair the color of his wife’s, and a kind, gentle manner the others imitated behind his back.

“Listen,” she said. She slid her arm around my shoulders and whispered in my ear. “I want to have sex with Doug Brannon.”

I looked at her, and widened my eyes.

Alicia bit her lip and appeared desperate, at a loss. “Tonight,” she said.

We both looked over at Doug Brannon’s microphone, at his aquamarine guitar on its stand, and Doug Brannon himself stepping out from the shadows of the dining room archway. He moved past the cables and leaned forward toward the mike.

“Hey,” he said, his voice throaty and amplified. “What about it? Are we ready?” He wore a gray silk shirt and had the disheveled appearance of a boy whose mother hadn’t taken him for a haircut. His eyes, even in the shadowy room, shone bright and blue. Around him the other band members appeared and stepped into place, dipped their heads under guitar straps, and made noises on the strings.

“Oh God,” Alicia said.

John Rushing came up beside me and handed me a glass, its sides wet from the ice, then moved past me without saying a word. I watched him disappear into the crowd in the adjoining room, where he would probably continue on through the French doors that led to the courtyard, where a fountain ran, and garden torches gave off a bluish, smoky light, and everyone sat in folding chairs or gathered in groups with cigarettes. Alicia still held onto my arm. She brought her wine glass up to her mouth and took a large swallow, her eyes on Doug Brannon, tuning up his guitar.

It was not difficult to find someone you wanted at the living room shows. Once you walked into the house and the band began to play, the rules changed. I cannot say why, or how everyone knew it, but the air became charged, the music absorbed into the plaster walls, into the planks of the floor. It followed you outside into the courtyard and beyond, to the pool, where it became a steady, unnamed urge in your body. Now, as Doug Brannon leaned into the microphone, and the drummer counted out the first song, everyone’s head swiveled in his direction {{pg|161|462}}They were all there for the band. The men shed their suits for faded jeans or khaki shorts and topsiders. They pretended they were young again, with no children or responsibilities, and they eyed the women and joked and bobbed their heads to the music. After the band finished a set the men would call one of the members over and invite them into their groups and tell them they should put out a CD, that their cousin worked at a record company, that they might know of a backer to help them get started. They offered them cigarettes out in the courtyard, brought drinks around from their stock in the kitchen. The band would stand within these groups, with someone’s arm draped over their shoulder, and grin awkwardly, even Doug Brannon, whose acquisition of the house was always the object of speculation, who was asked at every show its square footage, how many bedrooms?

The band was more at ease with the women. They dropped their guard and their smiles grew sly. We leaned our bodies into them, grabbed their hands and pulled them down onto the couches, tugged them into corners—the living room alcove, the dining room, where the only light came in from the streetlights outside. Cornered by us the band was always ready to be taken, but only a few of us actually knew the places to suggest. It was not just the band members we ended up with. The other husbands there were potential objects of desire as well, though that was trickier, and didn’t occur until near the end of the night, when you lost track of who you came with, when the rooms blurred and you couldn’t remember how you got outside.

Margaret Carr and I knew more about the house than anyone else. Knowing the house was like learning Doug Brannon. The rooms downstairs were open and public, where nothing could really happen except whispered exchanges, or hands lingering in places unnoticed in the cover of the crowd. Margaret Carr found the library, a small room with a couch off the dining room, on the ground floor but private enough because of a narrow French door that kept it separate from the rest of the house. There were ceiling-high shelves of Doug Brannon’s books, Pascal and Bertrand Russell, Kafka’s ''The Castle'', a collection of Chekov’s stories, Kerouac’s ''On the Road'', a set of Shakespeare, and a copy of ''Jonathan Livingston Seagull'' with its original cover. There were the thick American and British Literature anthologies, a survey of Medieval History, books required by the local college for courses Doug must have taken. Scattered in with these I found glossy, hardback books on boats and Arnold Palmer that were probably gifts, and romance paperbacks from the supermarket, which I imagined were left by the women who spent{{pg|462|463}}a weekend with Doug Brannon out by his pool. Sometimes a book would be left on the end table by the lamp—''T.S. Eliot, The Complete Poems and Plays'', and I liked to sit on the library couch with my drink and read the last page Doug Brannon read, marked with the book flap. Margaret Carr liked to take men into the library in the beginning of the night, when they had just had a few drinks, and she wanted to know how their mouths felt on hers, decide if she wanted anything else to do with them later.

The most private room downstairs was the laundry room that led from the downstairs bath at the foot of the stairs. Most people thought it was a closet, with its simple painted door. Once, on a periwinkle Martini glass night, I took the drummer, J.B., into the laundry room, and even he hadn’t known it was there. We set our drinks on top of the dryer, and he pressed me up against the wall to kiss me, his hands roaming under my clothes. J.B. is funny and friendly and wears madras shirts, and is more unlike John Rushing than any man I have ever met. But even now, as he winked, and waved a stick in my direction, I remembered little else of the night except the smell of laundry detergent, and thinking that up close, that would be the smell of Doug Brannon’s t-shirts, his khaki pants.

On another night, or maybe the same one, J.B. took me out to the poolroom. This was through the courtyard gate, a part of the house connected to the garage, with its own set of French doors and an awning covered with jasmine, and pots of geraniums on the cement step. At the doors, J.B. produced a key. Inside, amidst the jumble of band equipment—a drum kit and amps and mike stands and cables coiled on the floor, and overturned ashtrays and rows of empty beer cans, he found a couch. The poolroom was dark and silent, and you could pretend no one was outside, treading the grass by the door, or beyond the screened enclosure, lounging in the chaises by the pool. You could lie down and spread out and take off clothing you may or may not find afterwards.{{pg|463|464}}might be something to experience, if you were lying down on the bare heart of pine floorboards.

I had only been upstairs once, the time I followed John Rushing, who had Margaret Carr by the hand. They went into the guest bedroom, which held two twin beds and a bureau, and had the bare, impersonal tone of a motel room, except for the door to the roof, and the set of long casement windows that faced east and looked out over the pool. I am not sure why I followed them. Maybe I had to see for myself, to watch them together out of curiosity. At the time, I believe I wanted them to know I knew, as if that would make me part of their secret. But we are almost always wrong about what we want.

As the band began to play on the night of the last show, and Alicia Hardcastle held onto my arm, I wondered what she wanted from Doug Brannon. She might have heard from the other wives that he would be seen occasionally playing golf at the club, that from their tables at the Nineteenth Hole they would watch him and not recognize him at first. She would hear he went to the Little Monkey’s coffee shop with his paper, picked up his cleaning from Morris Fonte, worked during the day from his house, though no one, really, knew what he did. Outside of his house he could easily be mistaken for the boy in wrinkled khaki pants, ordering his girlfriend a Colosso at the Dairy Joy, and once he stepped from behind the microphone at the living room shows he could mingle with the crowd and safely be overlooked. I could have warned her Doug Brannon knew how to slip in and out of an embrace and leave you untouched by the end of the night. But singing with the band in front of his fireplace, with the guitars’ melody reverberating through the room, and the bass coming up through the floor, he handed you something, like a gift you could not resist—part song, part himself.

Doug’s band played its own songs. Occasionally, near the end of the night, they might do a request of another artist’s music, but this was rare. There were bars and clubs where you could hear “Stranglehold,” or Rolling Stones covers, where the front man could pace a stage and pretend to be a rock star. Doug’s band’s music was so good that no one missed the jolt of a familiar hook, a kind of sixties, psychedelic rock, with melodies that followed jangly guitars, and lyrics inspired by his library’s holdings, Kerouac, and ''Pensee'', and Eliot’s “Quartets.” On the night of the last show the band started up and the music invaded conversations. The people in the courtyard, John Rushing among them, moved back into the house and filled the space in the liv-{{pg|464|465}}ing room, bringing the smell of the oil from the torches, the jasmine, their cigarettes. It was so loud no one could speak. They pressed in close and Doug Brannon sang, and Alicia’s eyes were on him again.

“I just love him,” she said into my ear, and I knew she would find him that night in the crowd and grab hold of his gray silk shirtsleeve and tell him this, that he would smile at her and shake his head, his eyes slit with doubt. It would be somewhere dark and advantageous for her to whisper in his ear, to slide her lips along the curve of his neck. Her husband Guy stepped up beside us, and his arm fell comfortably across Alicia’s freckled shoulders, and I moved off into the crowd, where everyone’s cologne mingled, and I could smell the lime in their drinks, where I did not have to think about Alicia’s misguided love for Doug Brannon.

After a while, I decided to look for Margaret. I wanted to tell her about Alicia, knowing the story was one she would appreciate, and I found her out at the pool in a chaise with Manuel. They were sipping from one of her Martini glasses, brought along with her in the car. No one was outside at the time, and it was a warm, spring night, and the potted tropical plants waved in the breeze and the smell of orange blossom came from across the fence from the neighbor’s yard, where the plants grew untended, a dense, jungle-like green.

“Look who’s here,” Margaret said. She raised her eyebrows at me. Her blouse was all the way unbuttoned, and her feet were bare.

“You know Alicia Hardcastle,” I said.

“Why, should I?” Margaret asked.

Manuel looked up at me, drunk, his wide brown eyes glazed, and placed his hand on my bare leg. I stood there and suddenly did not want to say anything. Manuel slid his hand up under my dress, and I stepped back and stared at them both on the chaise.

“Well?” Margaret asked.

And I knew then that Margaret had planned for me to have Manuel. She smiled and winked, her eyes lonely and full of the masked guilt that kept her seeking ways for me to pay back John Rushing, as if I still believed being unfaithful would hurt him. I glanced down at Manuel, the comb marks etched in his hair gel, his white shirt front stretched across his chest, and I felt the emptiness of the four martinis, the carved out place the vodka inhabited, vast and sorrowful. So I shook my head and turned from them, pretending to need another drink. I walked back across the lawn, but didn’t yet want to{{pg|465|466}}join the groups gathered in the courtyard. Instead I turned and wandered around the caged pool, up along the vine-covered chain-link fence. I heard Margaret calling me back, and Manuel piping in, “I’m sorry,” as if that had anything to do with it. I could just make out Doug Brannon’s neighbor’s house through the orange trees and fern, a small bungalow, its windows unlit. One night a few weeks before I’d come out here alone and been startled by a woman’s voice, thin with age, very close to me on the other side of the fence. “The jacaranda is blooming early this year,” she’d said.

I’d stepped back. In the dark I could just make out the shape of her, small and hunched in a striped housedress

“I can smell it especially strong out here,” she said. “Are you one of the party-goers?”

I told her I was, and then I felt the need to apologize for the noise. “Is it very loud?” I asked her.

“It keeps me up,” she said. “But I don’t mind being awake at night.”

She explained to me that she was nearly blind, that the night time was a solace—quiet and cool, filled with the smell of flowers. Her name was Esther. She was ninety years old. I had wondered what to say to this admission, but then she told me that it wasn’t especially advantageous to live so long. “The body goes,” she said. “A little at a time. The strangest things stay with you. Like the smell of the jacaranda.”

That night I’d heard her take tentative steps through the fern and twigs that comprised her yard, and she was gone. I’d questioned whether I had even spoken to her at all, so complete had been her disappearance. Now I stood by the fence and listened. I heard small, furtive movements—fruit rats gnawing on fallen citrus, lizards slipping through over-turned clay pots, along the bleeding heart threaded through the chain-link. I waited a long time, summoning the old woman back, but she did not appear, so I left the yard and made my way back to the courtyard. The band had stopped playing, and I watched the groups of people for Alicia and Doug Brannon and I didn’t see them, and I realized, with a stab of something close to jealousy, that he had given in to her, maybe her eyes, her admission of love. He had taken her somewhere, though I didn’t know where until later, when I saw Guy Hardcastle coming down the stairs.

He was pale, and expressionless. His sandy blond hair covered his eyes. I assumed he had seen them go up, or someone else had seen them. I imagined it might have been John Rushing, who approached by Guy looking for{{pg|466|467}}his wife had not been able to resist. He would have pulled him aside, and spared nothing, and Guy would not have believed him.

“Go look for yourself then,” John would have said, dismissing him, moving off to a group of friends to tell the story, just as I had.

And Guy had gone up the stairs to the first door, which was the guest room, and not found anything. Perhaps he heard her voice, that certain quality it held during sex, soft and full of secrets, or something else that moved him forward to the door that led to Doug Brannon’s room. The hall light was off, and he could have opened the door and they might not have seen him standing there, watching them. No one followed him down. He came clutching the banister, and brushed past me heading into the living room to mingle with the others.

And eventually the band started back up for one last set. It had to have been near two a.m. I had seen Alicia come down, carrying her shoes, but I hadn’t waited to see Doug round the stair landing. Guy Hardcastle, whose face remained white, who held a glass of iced-down scotch, stood in a small group of people he didn’t know in the TV room, and nodded at things they said, his eyes underneath his blond hair scanning the crowd for Alicia. As the band began to play she went right up to him, her dress rumpled, her cheeks flushed. Guy looked down at her and asked her a question. I never found out what it was. The music and Doug Brannon’s voice filled the rooms, spilled out into the courtyard and drifted up past the billows of cigarette smoke, and Guy turned from Alicia and put his fist through one of the French door panes. If you didn’t see it happen, you wouldn’t have known anything had, and because of the crowd, and the music, no one reacted save one or two people out in the courtyard, whose faces exaggerated shock, and
who moved through the doorway and walked off, laughing.

Most had already headed into the living room once the band began, but there were a few who had lingered, who noticed the blood, and Alicia bending over him trying to squelch it with the bottom of Guy’s shirt. I stood near the back of the group that slowly gathered around Guy, who decided to take him out into the courtyard because he was making a mess, the blood pooling and seeping into the cracks of the wood floor. Outside, in the light of the garden torches Guy’s face appeared ghostly. There was some confusion about what to do, with Guy assuring everyone he was fine, and trying to walk away, and Alicia pulling him back. A call had gone up for a doctor, but surprisingly there had been no one there that night to answer. At some point{{pg|467|468}}Guy must have weakened and sat down, and I noticed, before I went back inside, that several people had cell phones out to call the paramedics, but no one among them knew the address. They all had operators on the line, telling them different things—“Doug Brannon’s house,” someone said. “The Spanish Mediterranean on the corner of—what was it?”

I looked at Guy’s face, the hopelessness in it, and knew what he must have seen in Doug Brannon’s bedroom. The casement windows would have been opened, and he may have even felt the night air from where he stood at the door with the bed in full view. He may have watched for a while, the lights around the roofline shining in and lighting up their clothes on the floor, their bodies moving on the bed, their faces and the expressions on them. It had been winter when I had followed Margaret and John up to the guest room. The windows had been closed, and the room was filled with the scent of Margaret’s perfume. That time, the hallway light had been on, and I had opened the door and seen them clearly—John holding her back on the bed, looking like the posed and passionate movie stars in old films. Margaret had lifted her head off the pillow and squinted into the glare of the hall light without recognition, but John turned and saw me and gave me the same look of irritation he’d give one of our children if they walked in on him in the bathroom, and told me to shut the door.

I don’t know what my face had registered. I did as he told me and moved on to the next door, which was Doug Brannon’s room, and I’d gone inside and lay down on Doug Brannon’s bed. The band played downstairs, and gradually my eyes adjusted to the roofline lighting and I could see the bureau top littered with things—scraps of paper with song lyrics, matchbooks from different bars, golf tees, and a photo of Doug and two other people who may have been his brother and sister, who may have been anyone, standing on a pebbled driveway, their shoulders touching. Behind them was an old, restored truck, its paint job shining in the sun, and behind that an ivy-covered house with mountains rising up around it, shrouded in mist. Doug’s face looked out of the photograph at the person holding the camera, or at someone else beyond that, with his blue eyes and the same expression he wore when he performed in his living room, and glanced up and caught you looking at him.

Now downstairs the music filled everything. Margaret Carr sat on one of the couches, her shirt only half-buttoned. Her eyelids were heavy, and every so often she would nod off. Beside her a woman had passed out sitting up-{{pg|468|469}}right, her head tipped at an awkward angle. I stood in the alcove beside Manuel and he took my hand, and I didn’t say anything because it was two or three drinks later, and his hand felt warm and callused at the creases, and his shoulder smelled like starch, and John Rushing had moved in beside Margaret on the couch, and she was laughing and looking around the room for something, maybe us together in the alcove, maybe the small group gathered around Guy in the courtyard.

The bass thudded up and down the plaster walls, the crystals on the chandelier shook, and somewhere the ambulance maneuvered between rows of cars parked on the narrow neighborhood streets, while Guy Hardcastle bled onto the courtyard tiles, and Alicia knelt beside him, her hand over her mouth, disbelieving the amount of blood, the whiteness of his skin. The courtyard fountain bubbled, the stone angel looked on, its face fixed, impervious. I would never know what it had been like, if what she wanted from Doug Brannon could be found in a night. What we did—that groping under clothing in the laundry room, those hands, cold from clutching iced glasses, seeking skin on the poolroom couch, had nothing, really, to do with love.

Manuel threaded his fingers in mine. As I stood there I didn’t know it would be the last living room show, and I watched Doug sing, the rueful chandelier light moving across his face, his voice straining with the yearning that shifted everyone’s mood, their heads turning, eyes riveted. I realized that I loved Doug Brannon, my own version of him—the one with the women out at the pool, the one whose golf clubs leaned against a wall in the garage, who had read Eliot, whose ashtray in the poolroom overflowed with cigarette butts, whose aquamarine guitar was just then slung across hips. I saw, too, that he would have a life in which I would never play a part. “The body goes,” Esther had said. Somehow we must know that the source of all our longing is death. I watched Doug Brannon sing with the force of the band behind him, felt the song on his voice move through me and wrench my heart. I imagine now that was all I ever needed from him.

{{Review}}
{{DEFAULTSORT: Living Room Show, The}}
[[Category: Short Stories (MR)]]

2025-03-25T18:33:00Z

ADavis: added abstract

{{Byline|last=Kaufmann|first=Donald L.|abstract=Mailer is placed within the American literary tradition as a direct descendent of late nineteenth-century and early twentieth-century Naturalism.}}
THE MAILER “SEEDS” STIRRED, as the Twentieth Century dawned and American literature soared. The last century would climax in the late 1920s, and
achieve its final “coming of age,” now superior to its English and European
counterparts, soon to be the new superpower’s final word.

An early starting line indicator in the history of literary legacy—the birth
of Ernest Hemingway in 1899.As an unknown expatriate in early 1920s Paris,
America’s future “Papa” was, probably, its first to orbit into international literary recognition and power. Meanwhile, on the home grounds, Walt Whitman, in 1892, died.

In his monumental '' Leaves of Grass'', nine editions in total, Walt Whitman
became the archetypal American Idealized Poet, the lover of the Universe,
and the singular Bard of Selfhood, Freedom and Democracy, with a Vision
of a Potential Utopian America. All his fresh idiomatic verse showered down
in future generations of writers and shaped their artistic, cultural and political beliefs, mostly “Leftist,” or “Liberal” or “Progressive” or any other relevant “ism.”

Whitman died amid minimal “cult” media (no Mark Twain sensational
funeral). Whitman’s legacy was powerful and sometimes underground, but
clearly many contemporary and later writers were inseminated with Whitman “seeds.”And Norman Mailer was one of those who had more than his
share. For the Mailer scholar, legacy quotient is based more on his authorial singularity and less on the common characteristics of his generation of
contemporary writers. Whitman’s death announced that the nineteenth-century American Realism of Howells and James had ended. In its wings (awkward space?) {{pg|280|281}}

was formed the new Literary Naturalism that might be called the “dynamic
male quintet.”

These five new literary figures—Stephen Crane, Frank Norris, Jack London, Theodore Dreiser, and the lesser writer, Richard Harding Davis, a power-packed Quintet—personified the Mailer “seed womb” that gave rise
to the man from Brooklyn and his subsequent place on the international literary scene.

The new literary generation, post-Civil War Realism, was Naturalism, a French import, and its chief spokesman was Emile Zola (1840-1902), author and activist, with a postmortem solution to the cultural ashes of the Darwinian era in which “revealed religion” had suffered a downward slide. In its place loomed Scientism and its cousin, Technology, which was clearly related to Industrialism. The spirit of objectivity was ushered in and the arts were forced to adapt to this new cultural reality. Thus, there could be no more significant aesthetic apartheid. Zola insisted on a remedial “cultural marriage.” The new union was a merging of arts and sciences.

Zola published his 1800 manifesto, ''The Experimental Novel'', in which he
advocated that writers (and other artists) imitate the scientific method and,
experimentally, return to nature, follow natural laws, and apply a somewhat
strict theory and practice. Thus, a writer must observe and record and interpret less and be more objective—underplaying figurative and melodramatic prose. This perspective was primarily theoretical, but in practice
resulted in hardcore realism that still included some romantic excess (exactly what Mailer subsequently achieved in his Naturalistic WWII novel, ''The Naked and the Dead'').

British philosopher Herbert Spencer (1820-1903) transformed the more
abstract biological Darwinism into a more practical cultural context, more
ethical and sociological. Historians dubbed this “Social Darwinism.” This
movement ushered in a new empirical arena, characterized by such stark
phrases as “struggle for existence” and “survival of the fittest,” “Laissez Faire”
and “Progress.”

There were new literary directions in the air. The two new dominant thematic “isms” were Scientism and Humanism, often hybridized. Homo sapiens existed in a materialistic and deterministic universe, manipulated by outside forces. Behavior thus was subject to two prime conditioning factors. What Zola called “psycho-chemical laws” became translated as “heredity”
(later as DNA). What Zola called the “milieu” became “environmental,” and {{pg|281|282}}

its focus was the social sciences. Humans thus were biological pawns or social ciphers with limited free will. Thus evolved a literary sensibility that emphasized a character’s external and not inner world.

Literary Naturalism offered new vistas, now Americanized, less dogmatic, and more pliable. There was a setting shift from the genteel upper and middle class to the “submerged tenth” or social bottom. The new prevailing mood was sordid, shocking, and depressing. There was new urban blight,
factories and slums, along with their agrarian equivalent, the vanishing Jeffersonian farmer.

Darwin is well known for his depictions of “atavism” or reversion to degradation or monstrosity, or earlier primal roots. In 1914, Edgar Rice Burroughs published, ''Tarzan and the Apes''. Earlier, in 1897, Bram Stoker wrote
''Dracula'', a series of written letters, published on the eve of the “movies,” and
the coming erosion of the nineteenth-century’s power of the printed word. As for lycanthropy, Frank Norris (the American Naturalist writer, except for Dreiser, with the most Mailer “seeds”) wrote ''Vandover and the Brute'', a kind of Robert Louis Stevenson’s ''Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde'' (1866) novel. Instead of “monster,” literary critics then preferred the phrase “brute,” a creature of
minimal intelligence, incompetent in the struggle for existence, and psychology and literature textbooks called such characters grotesques.

There was further new “ism” fallout, a host of new taboo-breakers—a Darwin-Spencer focus on basic human needs: sex, hunger, survival skills,
which meant more stark violence, force against force—that is, animalistic human survival. The American language was not spared. Its brainchild was the modern documentary. This new prose was steeped in objectivity. Furthermore, as writing aped the sciences, it relied on basic research and copious details. Some candor and frankness was welcomed, but not the overtly rhetorical and figurative.

The once-puritanical American vernacular finally had loosened its tongue. Taboo cultural matters, such as physical bodily functions, especially
sex, and its verbal offspring, profanity and depravity, were unleashed—at first slowly, but soon an avalanche of expletives poured out until the popular arts seemed awash with four-lettered realities. All of the above, collectively, was the cultural legacy of literary Naturalism. The first Naturalist novel, Stephen Crane’s ''Maggie: A Girl of the Streets'' (1893), modernized the literary scene. The twenty-two-year-old Crane and his shocking book ignited an overnight youth takeover of American letters and became the avant- {{pg|282|283}}

garde. At the forefront was the young male quintet, whose collective canons would transform earlier cherished literature, while they themselves were short-lived—quite literally premature deaths, except for Theodore Dreiser
who survived just three years shy of ''The Naked and the Dead''.

Mailer was born in 1923 when Naturalism was in its prime—illustrated by its 1925 masterpieces, ''An American Tragedy'' and ''The Great Gatsby''. Of these
powerful works, the pre-kindergarten Mailer would hardly be aware. But
who knows? Maybe Mailer’s literary DNA twitched and he could sense a change in times.

Stephen Crane (1871–1900) started out as a newspaperman writing the “Bowery Sketches,” which resulted, at age twenty-one, in ''Maggie''. Its focus
was slums and prostitution. This first Naturalist work shocked the country. It appeared in yellow covers, a tiny printing (at Crane’s own expense) with a self-protecting pseudonym, Johnston Smith (the two most frequently used names in the New York telephone book). Crane’s second opus was ''The Red Badge of Courage'' (1895), written from scratch with no actual war experience—and yet the first modern psychological treatment of war. This book
remained his masterpiece and, like Mailer, Crane was a literary star in his
mid-twenties. Thereafter, Crane fell in love with violence. He turned daredevil foreign war correspondent, in search of any available warfare moment, to foreshadow Hemingway and Mailer. Crane was America’s first modern
“Bad Boy Writer.” Later critics dubbed him the “Poetic Naturalist.” In raw content, his prose did have a veneer of tough fact. And he was a Zolaesque technician with a concern for form and economy. His diction remained compact, energetic, and provocative. Crane also wrote highly competent short fiction and stark verse. Crane’s work evolved into literary impressionism, with an accent on tone and mood, rather than on theme, plot, and character. The result was prose that was no longer logical and orderly, a drift toward the non-rational, amoral, and pre-speech—all of these qualities a very early preview of today’s postmodernism.

The Western canon posthumously embraced Crane’s work, and he became a classic American. A veteran Mailer legacy quotient watcher might easily recast Crane’s treatment into a transplanted 1960s Mailer scenario. Yet, obviously, Crane’s most notable disciple was Hemingway, especially their similar lifestyles. But an obsessive Crane-Hemingway-Mailer’s thread, probably diminished rather than enhanced Mailer legacy quotient. As for the {{pg|283|284}}

Crane-Mailer connection, its most positive legacy quotient factor was, despite writing in widely diverse times, each writer’s singularity.

Another figure of singularity was Frank Norris (1870–1902). His literary DNA hinted as much, as did his Chicago affluent environment: his father, a successful jeweler; his mother, a teacher and actress; and their son, being
taught the arts in Paris where he fell in love with medieval fantasy and chivalry. At age fifteen, Norris moved to San Francisco and entered the University of California, where he excelled in writing and football and fell under
Zola’s spell. Later, he fondly called himself, the “Boy Zola.” When his parents divorced, he lost most of his inheritance (over a million dollars). But he persevered and, obeying Zola, he studied San Francisco’s “social bottom,” then went off to Harvard to study writing. He covered the Boer War as a
newspaper man, then to Cuba and the Spanish-American War and, later, more domesticated, be became an editor-reader at Doubleday publishers, where he helped shepherd into print Theodore Dreiser’s historic Naturalist novel, ''Sister Carrie''. Norris’s own canon, like Crane’s, was brief, but intense. From the outset, Norris’s literary trademark was sensationalism. Two subsequent novels, his second, ''Moran of the Lady Letty'', and his fourth, ''Blix'', were, at best, pulp melodramas. Norris struck gold in his controversial,
''McTeague'' (1899). Compared with Crane’s slim yellow-wrapped ''Maggie'', Norris’s opus became America’s first major thematic Naturalist novel. Its protagonist, McTeague, was the Darwinian Adam or the “brute within” but with a heart of gold. He was sluggish, unambitious, easily pacified, a massive slowwitted, blonde-mustached dentist with enormous hands who pulled out
teeth with his bare hands, saddled with a mismatched grotesque wife, Trina
Sieppe. She was afflicted, literally enslaved with both “avarice” and “sensuality.” Such primal “greed,” both racial and ethnic, was rooted in her Swiss peasant blood, which impelled her to take her money to bed where she, psychotically, “made love” with it. Her husband disapproved and the marriage
turned violent.

The novel’s supporting cast were the people of Polk Street, a slice of San
Francisco’s social bottom, rundown and stinky, full of racial-ethnic degenerates who grossly overate and exhibited other unseemly behavior. The
novel’s denouement occurred in Death Valley, where hero and villain perished with “thirsty” operatics. Such mega-sensationalism was a natural scenario for, some say, the greatest silent film, entitled ''Greed'', directed by Erich.{{pg|284|285}}

von Stroheim, who shot on location in Death Valley. The final director’s cut was forty-two reels and was shown once in nine-and-a-half hours.

After ''McTeague'', Norris embarked on his short final phase and his first enterprise was a trilogy, ''The Epic of Wheat'', and its first novel was ''The Octopus: A Story of California'' (1901), which was panoramic serious fiction, and
well written. Its mammoth theme was economic determinism, or man in
the grip of uncontrollable forces. The two powers in conflict were the railroads, backed by urban bankers and industrialists, mostly state-wide and national, versus Californian wheat farmers, both rich and poor yet still
powerful.

The octopus in the title figuratively refers to humankind’s kinship with
those entangling crushing primordial forces in Nature, opposed by human instinct. Yet this 1901 novel was well wrought. Critics and readers marveled at Norris’s unlimited literary potential. The second novel, ''The Pit'' (“The Chicago Story”), was published posthumously in 1903 and it focused on the production of wheat. The scene shifted from the vast agrarian to the
cramped urban scene and its “survival of the fittest.” The title referred to Chicago’s Board of Trade and the plot hinged on cutthroat attempts to corner the wheat market. Curtis Jadwin, an impassioned capitalist and a leading trade speculator, tests his Darwinian-Spencerian skills, both economically and romantically. Indeed, much of the novel is devoted to Jadwin’s marital woes. The novel’s ending threatens to be an absolute tragedy when the Wheat Market crashes, which breaks Jadwin’s monopoly and erases his assets—all caused by natural forces (in this instance, unforeseen heavy
wheat production in the far West). The third and final volume, ''The Wolf'', dealt with the consumption of wheat in France, a novel which remained unfinished and unpublished.

But literary quotient analysts pondered “Boy Zola’s” marvelous literary excesses. His concept of Nature as Force and Energy, plus his “isms,” plus ideological characters such as the Neitzchean Superman and even a Superwoman (see ''Moran and the Lady Letty''), plus his anti-intellectual prose (and
more elegant English), plus his atmospheric neo-primitivism and operatic
techniques—all contributed to his status. Norris, indeed, was an outstanding stylist. His prose style was an odd hybrid, part documentary and part “purple prose.” His tonal effects were multiplex—word packets of solemn
messages in slapstick wrappings. But what most separated him from this
first wave of American Naturalists was his becoming this movement’s great {{pg|285|286}}

est symbolist, akin to the twentieth-century-enshrined Melville. The Norris canon, posthumously, struck a strong prenatal Mailer connection with Norris’s aesthetics in ''The Responsibilities of a Novelist'' (1903). There, Norris discussed three groups of novels: (a) of “plot” (of telling); (b) of “character” (of showing); and (c) (his preference), of “theme” (of proving)—the message novel. Norris also interpreted Naturalism as a new form of Romance and compared it as it differed from the earlier Realism of Howells and James.
But what fascinated Mailer observers was Norris’s theorizing about his and
America’s future. Thus, late in his life, Norris emerged as a “big thinker.”

The once “Boy Zola” called for the American Novel, a “romance of force,” and its template, man’s “animal nature” transformed into a neo-epic, and its rhetoric would resemble a lifelike “symphony of energy,” a vast "orchestration of force.” Its narrative would focus on the human struggle for food, sex,
shelter, and other earthly basic or more sublime abstractions such as power,
wisdom, and justice.

What Norris was doing was making Naturalism and nationalism synonymous, and, in doing so, was previewing the literary gospel of America as the Twentieth Century’s “global superpower.” Norris, as seer, had prefigured the first Mailer seed storm. Mailer, either by reading or osmosis, would ingest the Norris message and he would make the most of the philosophic “Boy Zola.” Yes, of these five literary revolutionaries—Crane, Norris, London, Davis, and Dreiser—Norris remained the best bet for becoming Mailer’s earliest literary “blood brother.”

At the opposite pole of minimalism, in 1900, Theodore Dreiser’s Mailer influence was limited to his landmark Naturalist novel, ''Sister Carrie''. Unlike the other four writers with their strikingly early deaths, Dreiser survived
until 1945, on the eve of Mailer’s first draft of ''The Naked and the Dead''. Consequently, the more salient Dreiser-Mailer connection occurred after Dreiser’s two female-centered novels, ''Sister Carrie'' (1900) and ''Jennie Gerhardt'' (1911). Dreiser’s first novel was an instant failure, with few sales and the barest recognition. For a decade, a stricken Dreiser did not publish. In 1900, in the midst of a literary arch-masculine “ism,” Dreiser introduced
Naturalism’s first three-dimensional female protagonist in a highly readable
novel. Concurrent heroines, such as Crane’s slum-girl, ''Maggie'', and Norris’s
Viking Superwoman, ''Moran'', were either lab “case studies” or wild male fantasies. But Caroline Meeber (sister Carrie) came off the page as a real new {{pg|286|287}}

woman in a new real environment. A potential twentieth-century bestseller,
instead, got snuffed out and Dreiser, readerless, had vanished.

Consequently, when Crane and Norris died, their muscle-bound canons boomed on, until Dreiser’s new female reality, after a decade hiatus, resurfaced about 1925, American literature’s banner year. Earlier, after ''Jennie Gerhardt'' (a sentimental ''Carrie''), Dreiser shifted into more familiar Zola-Norris
territory with his “Trilogy of Desire,” capped by his masterpiece, ''An American Tragedy'', published in 1925, as was another iconic novel, ''The Great Gatsby''. Those avid female readers of the Jazz Age Flappers also quickly assimilated ''Sister Carrie'' and were fascinated by how its heroine ended. Carrie, now a
generic “sister,” had rebelled and survived, socially unpunished, emotionally
unscathed, except for seemingly natural bemusement. Dreiser’s underlined
theme was that females’ recourse to instinct or intuition immunized them
from emotional tragedy. The 1920s vamps, of course, read Carrie’s “victory” as a call for the “new women” to go into a cultural free fall.

The fourth member of the “modern” literary Quintet was Richard Harding Davis (1864–1916), an odd fit with his literary peers, a media darling of his times, and thus an essential link from Twain and London to later media
masters, Hemingway, Fitzgerald, and Mailer. Davis was a leading journalist,
a globetrotting, derring-do reporter of wars, such as the Greek-Turkish War, the Spanish-American War, the Boer War, and World War I. Yet he was prolific, his prose was pedestrian, and he “could spin a yarn.” His short stories,
eleven volumes, numbering over eighty stories, were factually crafted, vivid, and exciting, with flashes of local color. His fiction had global settings, was highly theatrical with sensational plots, fast-paced with typed characters, and not exactly “serious” fiction. He wrote twenty-five plays. His novels were outlandishly romantic and superficial. His most representative novel was the
author’s self-image, ''A Soldier of Fortune'' (1897). Davis was known as the Beau
Brummel, or dandy-dressed, of the American press. Then, he was the ideal male—tall, handsome, tough but debonair, at ease at showy wars, in proper salons, and risqué beds—and he was blessed with a manly code of good manners (faint echoes of the later Hemingway hero).

Davis, instead, became a media-created American male hero, to be emulated and revered.

But the “other” Davis, the literary careerist, was radically different, more
like the high-risk lifestyles of Crane and London. On news assignments, Davis actually tempted death. The press loved his go-for-broke front line {{pg|287|289}}

antics. He called the Spanish-American War “splendid fun” and took part in the Battle of San Juan Hill, and made Teddy Roosevelt and his Rough Riders famous. Davis became the newspapers’ darling. He had continuous access to elite personages from presidents to kings and queens, even the
underworld.

All this fame peaked at about age twenty-six and turned into high financial rewards as Davis began to reshape both American history and journalistic fiction. Upon the heels of the 1890 U.S. Census announcing the Closing of the Frontier, Crane toured the West, and rechristened the Wild West, the “Mild West” (see “The Blue Hotel”). Davis went out West, pressed the flesh with sportive cowboys, Texas Rangers, and even Mexican murderers. He temporarily revived the myth of the Wild West, a preview of the coming power of celebrity journalists and other media hounds to temporarily remake history.

Davis also had “splendid fun” with the literary urban crime genre. In his story collection, ''Van Bibber and Others'' (1892), he introduced his new upper-class hero, Courtland Van Bibber, of rich Dutch ancestry, the moneyed young clubman and eternal playboy, the public consummate law-abider who, by night (like today’s comic books’ caped crime-stoppers), descended to the underworld, disguised, to save maidens and right wrongs. Such was the clever packaging of Robin Hood, the Scarlet Pimpernel, and Andrew Carnegie, who gave away $350 million dollars and called it, “The Gospel of Wealth.” “Van Bibber’s” ultimate tone was not seriousness, but amusement. Davis’s fiction with media accompaniment had turned American literature into banal comic grand opera.

If Mailer, during the decades of building his canon, ever pondered such quaint cultural and literary goings-on, he probably both winced and smiled at seeing a virtual repeat of those big-media shows, obvious only during
Paine’s two brief stints, and the more prolonged follow-ups by Emerson and Twain. Mailer also probably noted (with Hemingway’s melodramatic demise on his mind) that Davis died naturally in 1916, the same year as Jack London’s more mysterious death, and how Jack (call me “Wolf”), in a much shorter lifespan, and whose one-decade career, attracted intense glaring
media legacy quotient that threatened to eclipse Mark Twain.

The fifth and final Naturalist was Jack London (1876–1916). His early demise was foreshadowed by a storybook life, which read like a boyish yet mannish fantasy. He was born in the slums of San Francisco—illegitimate.{{pg|288|289}}

London’s early life—waterfront Oakland poverty and an eighth-grade education—was spent reading Kipling, Marx, Spenser, and Nietzsche.(Later, at age twenty-one, on his 1897 Yukon arctic-trek, he brought ''The Origin of Species'', ''Paradise Lost'', and read and reread ''Moby-Dick''.)

London, at age thirteen, became an oyster pirate, purchasing a sloop in San Francisco Bay. At age fifteen he drank heavily and had a mistress. At age seventeen he sailed for seven months in the Pacific. Still seventeen, London won a newspaper prize for an account of a typhoon off Japan. He then returned to Oakland for one more high school year and, in 1896, at age twenty, he spent one semester in college, where he joined a radical wing of the Socialist Party as an activist speaker. He was occasionally jailed.

In 1898, after time in the Klondike, he returned to Oakland to begin serious writing. What followed was a short but brutal ordeal (he called himself a “work
beast”). There were a sea of rejections, dramatized in his later autobiographical novel, ''Martin Eden'', and, in 1900, his breakthrough happened—
nine collected stories, ''The Son of the Wolf'', and sudden national fame. Like
Mailer, London achieved substantial notoriety in his mid-twenties. Yet the
London corpus of work, incredibly large for its sixteen-year span, was a mix
of throwaway pulp, but also some excellent writing, and thus a mixed career.

America’s natural topographical frontier was rapidly fading after the U.S.
Census declared the frontier officially closed. President Teddy Roosevelt embodied the “strenuous life” and London was its chief literary embodiment. The boy “oyster pirate” turned into a frontier strong man, a primitive adventurer who sniffed out new raw settings. There was the Klondike near-Arctic wilderness, then the bottomless South Seas, and onto the “submerged tenth” of London slums and the San Francisco waterfront. Interestingly, by Mailer’s time, the pristine frontier was truly closed shut.

London’s lifestyle also turned him into a literary pioneer. Destined to become a serious writer, he nonetheless gave birth to enhanced he-man ''Argosy'' stories and other pulp magazines, and he also toughened up the sudsy Horatio Alger (how-to-succeed) Dime Novels, with a new dose of rugged individualism. Unlike his compatriot Quintet, his canon had heavy pulp content
but it was muscular and moving, peopled at times with (successful) abysmal brutes. London’s tone, however, was excessively melodramatic, sentimental, and outlandish at times.

London’s Naturalism, at its most exotic, took place in the Klondike-Arc-{{pg|289|290}}

tic—“Seward’s Folly,” or Russia’s “white elephant gift”—that later turned into an icy golden U.S. forty-ninth state. This mammoth chunk of the near-Arctic was then mostly uncharted literary territory when London arrived
with his gold pan, ink pen, and well-thumbed ''Moby-Dick''. He wrote about
the awesome setting, people, and animals, especially the primal dog family. ''The Call of the Wild'' (1903) and its reverse-sequel ''White Fang'' (1906), two novels with dogs as makeshift protagonists, made London the first such
American writer whose canon featured serious fiction that deeply probed canine consciousness. And these probings were not only high quality experiments. They are also high canon content. London’s two canine heroes—
Buck and White Fang—could be likened to Kurtz and Marlowe in Conrad’s ''Heart of Darkness'', with canines substituting for humans in white Arctic America. Such dog destiny also played well in the Darwinian-Spenserian
context—that is, atavism or species reversion, with Buck from domestic farm dog to wolf, and, White Fang, the opposite, from wolf to subjugated dog. After studying these two canine creations, London critics either approved
or snidely remarked that London could fictionalize dogs better than people.

The Mailer canon, despite its chic “now” surface, also co-existed as a primordial descent, an American version of Jung’s racial memory, as if America had its own mythic dream life, the American as civilized animal at zero-primitive—as if Mailer were retelling London’s atavistic tale of Buck and White Fang, now transformed into the “now” human condition, with infused American superpower angst. And so the Mailer canon, periodically, would lurch into Jungian night-mythos, such as America’s primordial racism
in the celebrated essay, “The White Negro,”—or (with a global canon in the
Mailer mind), why not switch from the customary Greek-Roman American roots and lurch back to ''Ancient Evenings'' in Egypt, more at home with magic
rather than logic? And the Mailer canon was laced with primitive ornaments, such as Mailer’s—and his American Dream murderer, Rojack’s—lust for smell, Homo sapiens’ most primitive sense. Long live Buck and White Fang, and note how the positive legacy quotient light turns a dark green.

London’s addiction to socialism was Americanized, less revolutionary, and more akin to the Progressive Movement. But his core beliefs, nonetheless, were fervent. At age eighteen, to protest the 1893 “Panic’s” unemployment, London joined Kell’s “March on Washington” (early intimations of
Mailer’s “March on the Pentagon”). At age twenty, London formally joined
the Socialist Party. Immediately, his canon turned socio-political didactic.{{pg|290|291|}}

He wrote two Socialist treatises, ''War of the Classes'' and ''The Human Drift''. Zola’s “social bottom” now obsessed him. With his recently acquired fame,
he traveled to England and did a “live” documentary treatment of London slum life, a shocker about sweat dens and garbage eating in ''The People of the Abyss'' (1903). This volume was the first of later social exposés, including ''John Barleycorn'' (1913), an autobiographical memoir, a polemic in support of the
Prohibitionist Movement, his prose still highly readable and self-revealing. Soon, his hard drinking would cause serious health problems.

London's cultural and political radicalism shaped his fiction. In his 1913, ''The Valley of the Moon'', the hero and family, victimized by urban plutocrats, escape to idyllic Agrarianism. The title refers to a California utopian community, a haven from dreaded Capitalism. There the hero and wife return to the "land" and await their son's birth, a cultural and literary scenario recognized as neo-primitivism.

The more apocalyptic aspects of the classic Marxist class struggle are the centerpieces of London's ''The Iron Heel''. It was truly omniscient, structured as a fragmentary historic document, told
through a diary (1912-32) of several decades of Capitalistic persecution. Titanic class warfare was being waged between Plutocrats and the Masses, the latter's only hope of a Socialist Utopia. Such was not to be, at least in 1932, when the diary stopped. But readers were informed that after three hundred years of a dystopian nightmare, only then could blessed collectivism be restored and advanced into Utopian Socialism. Such was the tonal dichotomy of a famous writer who introduced to Literary Naturalism very readable and, yet, high quality Marxist ABCs. This radical political fallout prefigured what the 1930s "proletarian literature" and, later, would foreshadow Mailer's political odyssey from an early flirtation with Henry Wallace's tepid US communism and his gradual shift into a somewhat ambiguous, self-proclaimed "left-conservative."

With his breakthrough ''Son of the Wolf'', London was hailed as the "American Kipling," a counterpart to England's incredibly popular manly author, well known for his plain style. This development resulted in highly profitable, reader-friendly prose. it sported clear images—that is, a skilled blend of concrete sense details plus a smoothing flowing story or plot and catchy, moderate tonal passion and sincerity. Such was the formulaic prose that brought Kipling both fame and wealth.

In both the London and Mailer canons, there is a medley of thematic, tonal, and mood crossover effects. For example, London's 1905 novel, ''The'' {{pg|291|292}}

''Game'', featured a prizefighter—a Mailer fixation. And there was a plentitude of Maileresque thematic clouds, filled with metaphysical power preoccupations, hovering above one of London's best novels, ''The Sea Wolf'' (1906), famed for its Nietzschean captain of the "Ghost," a sealing schooner. Within Wolf Larson, London had transplanted the atavistic dog formula, the "Buck-half," on to a human seafaring environment, with its demonic antagonist. London said that his anti-hero symbolized "an attack on the superman philosophy." As for this novel's legacy, scholars have called Wolf Larson the "Zolaesque Captain Ahab of literary Naturalism."

London emulated Crane, Norris, and Davis, and turned into a gutsy, flashy war correspondent, covering the Russo-Japanese War and other headline chaos. He copied Twain, and embarked on a lecture tour, both street-side
among the proletariat and among eggheads at Yale and Harvard. The Klondike man, as ever, was a work beast, and now, also a spend beast. He reconditioned a great house called “Beauty Ranch”—1,500 acres, 100 employees, and at $3,000 per month a luxury mecca for worldwide guests, high and low. While this opulence was at a proliferated cost, still there was financial success. For example,
the serialization of ''The Sea Wolf'' earned $4,100, and made the novel a bestseller. During this period, London earned about $75,000 a year, but was always about $200,000 in debt, yet he still wrote about 1,000 words per day. And his fluid, inner circle friends, employees, and strangers, milked and robbed him blind, not unlike the fate of some of today’s celebrities.

In 1911 there was a new wave of fame and success, and in 1913, London unveiled “Wolf House,” a magnificent dream castle built in one year, of solid stone, and a cost of about $100,000. Soon after construction it was destroyed
by fire, probably arson. London’s luck had turned. The work beast wrote about ten hours per day to keep financially afloat. His body gave way. Those prolonged global cruises had brought him multiple tropical physical ailments and his overall health collapsed.

London became a breathing medical alert, a sick man beset with headaches, rheumatism, dysentery, painful kidney or renal nephritis, and
excess weight from overeating and heavy drinking. And there were mental maladies. He mourned the loss of an infant child. He also suffered from
spousal problems—a passive and jealous wife, which only intensified London’s melancholic yearnings for the glorious past. He was despondent over what he saw as declining sales and fame. Now, toward the end, he became
disillusioned with Socialism, and dropped pacifism and turned hawkish, a{{pg|292|293}}

supporter of World War I against Germany. He died in 1916, apparently from
uremia or a stroke or heart failure or (some whispered) suicide, but his strong legacy lived on.

The postmortem legendary London impact was impressive. In less than two decades, the work beast’s canon could boast about more than two hundred short stories, twenty novels, three plays, and over four hundred nonfiction pieces and some sizeable pulp junk. London admitted that he was
“more business man” than writer. His mammoth Darwinian-Spenserian struggle to achieve success was powerfully rendered in his “personal” novel, ''Martin Eden''.

London’s powerful legacy factor was also enhanced and sustained by American literature’s breakthrough into a global presence. In 1991, the International Copyright Law was initiated. No more foreign “pirated” editions.
Instead, both international and American literary and artistic works could
be copyrighted, and from there into a wide-open global market. This copyright bonanza, coupled with America’s Twain-fed fascination with plain prose, instantly made London America’s most translated writer. Indeed, his work was translated into more than eighty languages. In a more radical political context, London’s fame subsided in his home country, but elsewhere
it soared, especially in the young Communist Russia, and resulted in four “complete editions,” in the old USSR. London was enshrined as America’s foremost International Author.

In London’s day, when the media was still somewhat primitive, he had become a complex celebrity. On one level, he was the new flashy literary globalist. On a personal level, he concocted an idiosyncratic multiple myth
of himself, as if he were living simultaneous lives—the radical politico, the mythic Naturalist, the risky adventurer, the conspicuous consumer. And all of his front page literary agency was nurtured, clearly, by authorial megalomania. London loved being called “Wolf.” Thusly, he signed his letters and book inscriptions, and his bookplate featured an engraved picture of a wolf’s head. So in this earlier America with its quaint media, a virtual one-man show was about to exit.

On the brink of the Twentieth Century, with its media ready to go heads-on with electronics, American literature had a threesome, a trio of virtual one-man celebrity shows (Twain, London, and Davis) but only Twain would prevail with the highest legacy quotient standard. All of this notoriety was because of one book, ''Huckleberry Finn'', then as now, America’s most singu-{{pg|293|294}}

lar, quintessential book. With this media-enshrined novel, Twain had touched his (and his country's) mother tongue's central nerve. Now it was exit time for London, Davis, and all earlier American writers. At the Nineteenth Century's closing, if there were to be only one man and one book standing it would be Twain and ''Huck''.

Those who question Mailer's legacy quotient might ponder this question: Will Mailer and his literary contemporaries survive such stringent legacy quotient guidelines, previews of future "cuts." Davis is an automatic no-show, too minor and ephemeral. Crane seems pinpointed with Hemingway and, thus, a Mailer dead-end. And Dreiser, who would live on into Mailer's own time, must be considered as a potential Mailer legacy/literacy "Godfather."

The Norris-Mailer connection, indeed, was vital, and mostly from Norris's twin literary trademarks—bigness and sensationalism, especially in his more abstract prophetic stance (not found in the London canon) in his "Responsibilities of the Novelist," the lead essay in a posthumous (1903) collection. There, Norris pontificated on a cosmic-global level, on the upward march of American literature, symbolizing the fulfillment of Western civilization's destiny. All of this would seem to be strong academic "meat" for a heavy thinker like Mailer. In a "nots and bolts" more practical America, the London canon remained the best media package and best rejoinder to the legacy of Mark Twain. Yes, the London career and canon were robust with survival knowledge about the nature of authorial megalomania and media response. It all came down to control. And who had it, the writer or media?

Let us consider the life and works of Jack London and their connection to Mailer. During the heady days of literary Naturalism and its Quintet, London was the one writer who came the closest to controlling the media of his time. London was his own star performer and he played quite well for two short decades joining those few select icons (Twain, Hemingway, Fitzgerald) who are still universally recognized and respected. "Wolf" London survives today in the U.S. and overseas. His legacy quotient is well earned.

A century or more in the future, will Norman Mailer be among such august literary artists? Already there are some early positive signs for the future, those budding literary quotient seeds. For example, in their shared trait of literary megalomania, Mailer's mode, unlike London's, was expressed only secondarily through his character, personality, and career—but primarily through his protean canon. Big-theme writers tend to impress "Ivory Tower"{{pg|294|295}}

canon academicians. As for being the combative media writer, Mailer, both in the ring and on the page, was a singular battler with the media, and a controller and survivor. These qualities will play an important role in determining the Mailer Legacy.

{{Review}}

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The Mailer Review/Volume 5, 2011/Cluster Seeds and the Mailer Legacy

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ADavis: Created page with "Anjunita Davis is a graduate student at Middle Georgia State University, where she is pursuing a Master of Arts in Technical and Professional Writing and a Certificate in Teaching College Writing. She currently serves as a graduate research assistant for the Center for Middle Georgia Studies. Category:Student Editors Category:Spring 2025"

Anjunita Davis is a graduate student at Middle Georgia State University, where she is pursuing a Master of Arts in Technical and Professional Writing and a Certificate in Teaching College Writing. She currently serves as a graduate research assistant for the Center for Middle Georgia Studies.
[[Category:Student Editors]] [[Category:Spring 2025]]