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Talk:The Mailer Review/Volume 4, 2010

2025-04-21T05:10:39Z

Tbara4554:

===Article Assignments, Vol. 4===
You will need to request an article and user name for {{PM}}. You may click the link to your article below to begin your edits. Status indicators: {{tick}} = complete (ready for final edits and banner removal); {{yellow tick}} = in process; {{cross}} = not started.

{| class="wikitable sortable" style="width: 100%;"
|-
! Author !! Article !! Editor !! Status
|-
| Mailer || [[The Mailer Review/Volume 4, 2010/Postscript to the Fourth Advertisement for Myself|Postscript to the Fourth Advertisement for Myself]] || [[User:Grlucas]] || {{tick}}
|-
| Mailer || [[The Mailer Review/Volume 4, 2010/Hemingway Revisited|Hemingway Revisited]] || [[User:Grlucas]] || {{tick}}
|-
| Lennon || [[The Mailer Review/Volume 4, 2010/Hemingway to Mailer — A Delayed Response to The Deer Park|Hemingway to Mailer]] || [[User:Hobbitonya]] || {{tick}}
|-
| Hemingway || [[The Mailer Review/Volume 4, 2010/Norman, Ernest, and Greg|Norman, Ernest, and Greg]] || [[User:Grlucas]] || {{tick}}
|-
| Begiebing || [[The Mailer Review/Volume 4, 2010/Ernest and Norman: A Dialogue in Two Acts|Ernest and Norman]] || [[User:DSánchez]] || {{tick}}
|-
| Bufithis & Curnutt || [[The Mailer Review/Volume 4, 2010/A Dialogue Essay on Mailer and Hemingway|A Dialogue Essay on Mailer and Hemingway]] || [[User:Grlucas]] [[User:DBond007]] || {{yellow tick}}
|-
| Meredith || [[The Mailer Review/Volume 4, 2010/The American Civil War in The Naked and the Dead and Across the River and Into the Trees|The American Civil War]] || [[User:KaraCroissant]] || {{tick}}
|-
| Shuman || [[The Mailer Review/Volume 4, 2010/Norman vs. Ernest: Influence and Identity|Norman vs. Ernest]] || [[User:MSeleb]] || {{cross}}
|-
| Lowenburg || [[The Mailer Review/Volume 4, 2010/Hooking Off the Jab: Norman Mailer, Ernest Hemingway and Boxing|Hooking Off the Jab]] || [[User:ASpeed]] [[User:DBond007]]|| {{cross}}
|-
| Cirino || [[The Mailer Review/Volume 4, 2010/Norman Mailer's The Fight: Hemingway, Bullfighting, and the Lovely Metaphysics of Boxing|Norman Mailer's ''The Fight'']] || [[User:TWietstruk]] || {{tick}}
|-
| Boddy || [[The Mailer Review/Volume 4, 2010/Mailer, Hemingway, and Boxing|Mailer, Hemingway, and Boxing]] || [[User:JBrown]] || {{cross}}
|-
| Leeds || [[The Mailer Review/Volume 4, 2010/Firearms in the Works of Hemingway and Mailer|Firearms in the Works of Hemingway and Mailer]] || [[User:CVinson]] || {{tick}}
|-
| Plath || [[The Mailer Review/Volume 4, 2010/Jive-Ass Aficionado: Why Are We in Vietnam? and Hemingway's Moral Code|Jive-Ass Aficionado]] || [[User:ADear]] || {{cross}}
|-
| Cappell || [[The Mailer Review/Volume 4, 2010/Hemingway's Jewish Progeny: Roth and Goldstein in ''The Naked and the Dead''|Hemingway's Jewish Progeny]] || [[User:THarris]] [[User:Tbara4554]]|| {{tick}}
|-
| Peppard || [[The Mailer Review/Volume 4, 2010/Mailer, Hemingway, and the “Reds”|Mailer, Hemingway, and the “Reds”]] || [[User:KWatson]] || {{tick}}
|-
| Kaufmann || [[The Mailer Review/Volume 4, 2010/Ernest and Norman (Exit Music)|Ernest and Norman (Exit Music)]] || [[User:Flowersbloom]] || {{tick}}
|-
| Justice || [[The Mailer Review/Volume 4, 2010/Authorship and Alienation in Death in the Afternoon and Advertisements for Myself|Authorship and Alienation]] || [[User:APKnight25]] || {{tick}}
|-
| Josephs || [[The Mailer Review/Volume 4, 2010/Mailer's "Footnote to Death in the Afternoon"|Mailer's "Footnote to Death in the Afternoon"]] || [[User:KForeman]] || {{cross}}
|-
| Hays || [[The Mailer Review/Volume 4, 2010/Battles for Regard, Writerly and Otherwise|Battles for Regard]] || [[User:ALedezma]] || {{tick}}
|-
| Gladstein || [[The Mailer Review/Volume 4, 2010/Norman, Papa, and the Autoerotic Construction of Woman|Norman, Papa, and the Autoerotic Construction of Woman]] || [[User:ALedezma]] || {{tick}}
|-
| Batchelor || [[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]] || [[User:DBond007]] || {{tick}}
|-
| Robinson || [[The Mailer Review/Volume 4, 2010/Effects of Trauma on the Narrative Structures of Across the River and Into the Trees and The Naked and the Dead|Effects of Trauma on the Narrative Structures]] ||[[User:Priley1984]] || {{cross}}
|-
| Sanders || [[The Mailer Review/Volume 4, 2010/Death, Art, and the Disturbing: Hemingway and Mailer and the Art of Writing|Death, Art, and the Disturbing]] || [[User:JBawlson]] [[User:CVinson]] || {{cross}}
|-
| Stoneback || [[The Mailer Review/Volume 4, 2010/"Oohh Normie — You're Sooo Hemingway": Mailer Memories and Encounters|Mailer Memories and Encounters]] || [[User:Tbara4554]] || {{tick}}
|-
| Jacomo || [[The Mailer Review/Volume 4, 2010/Sparring with Norman|Sparing with Norman]] || [[User:Kamyers]] || {{tick}}
|-
| Gordon || [[The Mailer Review/Volume 4, 2010/Encounters with Mailer|Encounters with Mailer]] || [[User:Priley1984]] || {{tick}}
|-
| Vince || [[The Mailer Review/Volume 4, 2010/Rumors of Grace: God-Language in Hemingway and Mailer|Rumors of Grace]] || [[User:Sherrilledwards]] || {{tick}}
|-
| Apple || [[The Mailer Review/Volume 4, 2010/Inside Norman Mailer|Inside Norman Mailer]] || [[User:Chelsey.brantley]] || {{tick}}
|-
| Sinclair || [[The Mailer Review/Volume 4, 2010/Norman Mailer: An Expected Encounter in an Unexpected Place|An Expected Encounter]] || [[User:Wverna]] || {{tick}}
|-
| Klavan || [[The Mailer Review/Volume 4, 2010/On Reading Mailer Too Young|On Reading Mailer Too Young]] || [[User:Essence903m]] || {{tick}}
|-
| Miele || [[The Mailer Review/Volume 4, 2010/What Norman Mailer Taught Me about Combat|What Norman Mailer Taught Me about Combat]] || [[User:TBorel]] [[User:Flowersbloom]] [[User:Tbara4554]]|| {{tick}}
|-
| Vernon || [[The Mailer Review/Volume 4, 2010/Style, Politics, and Hemingway's Spanish Civil War Dispatches|Style, Politics, and Hemingway's Spanish Civil War Dispatches]] || [[User:MerAtticus]] || {{cross}}
|-
| Hooker || [[The Mailer Review/Volume 4, 2010/Norman Mailer: From Orgone Accumulator to Cancer Protection for Schizophrenics|From Orgone Accumulator to Cancer Protection for Schizophrenics]] || [[User:JKilchenmann]] || {{tick}}
|-
| Hinton || [[The Mailer Review/Volume 4, 2010/Advertisements for Others: The Blurbs of Norman Mailer|Advertisements for Others]] || [[User:NrmMGA5108]] || {{tick}}
|-
| Hicks || [[The Mailer Review/Volume 4, 2010/Harlot's Ghost, Bildungsroman, Masculinity and Hemingway|''Harlot’s Ghost'', ''Bildungsroman'', Masculinity and Hemingway]] || [[User:JKilchenmann]] || {{tick}}
|-
| Mercer || [[The Mailer Review/Volume 4, 2010/Automatons and the Atomic Abyss: The Naked and the Dead|Automatons and the Atomic Abyss]] || [[User:MerAtticus]] || {{tick}}
|-
| Westaway || [[The Mailer Review/Volume 4, 2010/“A Noble Pursuit”: The Armies of the Night as Outside Agitator|“A Noble Pursuit”]] || [[User:Chelsey.brantley]] || {{yellow tick}}
|-
| Fox || [[The Mailer Review/Volume 4, 2010/Norris Church Mailer|Norris Church Mailer]] || [[User:Kamyers]] || {{tick}}
|}

Talk:The Mailer Review/Volume 4, 2010

2025-04-21T05:09:26Z

Tbara4554: added information about completion of the Hemingway's Jewish Progeny

===Article Assignments, Vol. 4===
You will need to request an article and user name for {{PM}}. You may click the link to your article below to begin your edits. Status indicators: {{tick}} = complete (ready for final edits and banner removal); {{yellow tick}} = in process; {{cross}} = not started.

{| class="wikitable sortable" style="width: 100%;"
|-
! Author !! Article !! Editor !! Status
|-
| Mailer || [[The Mailer Review/Volume 4, 2010/Postscript to the Fourth Advertisement for Myself|Postscript to the Fourth Advertisement for Myself]] || [[User:Grlucas]] || {{tick}}
|-
| Mailer || [[The Mailer Review/Volume 4, 2010/Hemingway Revisited|Hemingway Revisited]] || [[User:Grlucas]] || {{tick}}
|-
| Lennon || [[The Mailer Review/Volume 4, 2010/Hemingway to Mailer — A Delayed Response to The Deer Park|Hemingway to Mailer]] || [[User:Hobbitonya]] || {{tick}}
|-
| Hemingway || [[The Mailer Review/Volume 4, 2010/Norman, Ernest, and Greg|Norman, Ernest, and Greg]] || [[User:Grlucas]] || {{tick}}
|-
| Begiebing || [[The Mailer Review/Volume 4, 2010/Ernest and Norman: A Dialogue in Two Acts|Ernest and Norman]] || [[User:DSánchez]] || {{tick}}
|-
| Bufithis & Curnutt || [[The Mailer Review/Volume 4, 2010/A Dialogue Essay on Mailer and Hemingway|A Dialogue Essay on Mailer and Hemingway]] || [[User:Grlucas]] [[User:DBond007]] || {{yellow tick}}
|-
| Meredith || [[The Mailer Review/Volume 4, 2010/The American Civil War in The Naked and the Dead and Across the River and Into the Trees|The American Civil War]] || [[User:KaraCroissant]] || {{tick}}
|-
| Shuman || [[The Mailer Review/Volume 4, 2010/Norman vs. Ernest: Influence and Identity|Norman vs. Ernest]] || [[User:MSeleb]] || {{cross}}
|-
| Lowenburg || [[The Mailer Review/Volume 4, 2010/Hooking Off the Jab: Norman Mailer, Ernest Hemingway and Boxing|Hooking Off the Jab]] || [[User:ASpeed]] [[User:DBond007]]|| {{cross}}
|-
| Cirino || [[The Mailer Review/Volume 4, 2010/Norman Mailer's The Fight: Hemingway, Bullfighting, and the Lovely Metaphysics of Boxing|Norman Mailer's ''The Fight'']] || [[User:TWietstruk]] || {{tick}}
|-
| Boddy || [[The Mailer Review/Volume 4, 2010/Mailer, Hemingway, and Boxing|Mailer, Hemingway, and Boxing]] || [[User:JBrown]] || {{cross}}
|-
| Leeds || [[The Mailer Review/Volume 4, 2010/Firearms in the Works of Hemingway and Mailer|Firearms in the Works of Hemingway and Mailer]] || [[User:CVinson]] || {{tick}}
|-
| Plath || [[The Mailer Review/Volume 4, 2010/Jive-Ass Aficionado: Why Are We in Vietnam? and Hemingway's Moral Code|Jive-Ass Aficionado]] || [[User:ADear]] || {{cross}}
|-
| Cappell || [[The Mailer Review/Volume 4, 2010/Hemingway's Jewish Progeny: Roth and Goldstein in ''The Naked and the Dead''|Hemingway's Jewish Progeny]] || [[User:THarris]] [[User:TBara4554]]|| {{tick}}
|-
| Peppard || [[The Mailer Review/Volume 4, 2010/Mailer, Hemingway, and the “Reds”|Mailer, Hemingway, and the “Reds”]] || [[User:KWatson]] || {{tick}}
|-
| Kaufmann || [[The Mailer Review/Volume 4, 2010/Ernest and Norman (Exit Music)|Ernest and Norman (Exit Music)]] || [[User:Flowersbloom]] || {{tick}}
|-
| Justice || [[The Mailer Review/Volume 4, 2010/Authorship and Alienation in Death in the Afternoon and Advertisements for Myself|Authorship and Alienation]] || [[User:APKnight25]] || {{tick}}
|-
| Josephs || [[The Mailer Review/Volume 4, 2010/Mailer's "Footnote to Death in the Afternoon"|Mailer's "Footnote to Death in the Afternoon"]] || [[User:KForeman]] || {{cross}}
|-
| Hays || [[The Mailer Review/Volume 4, 2010/Battles for Regard, Writerly and Otherwise|Battles for Regard]] || [[User:ALedezma]] || {{tick}}
|-
| Gladstein || [[The Mailer Review/Volume 4, 2010/Norman, Papa, and the Autoerotic Construction of Woman|Norman, Papa, and the Autoerotic Construction of Woman]] || [[User:ALedezma]] || {{tick}}
|-
| Batchelor || [[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]] || [[User:DBond007]] || {{tick}}
|-
| Robinson || [[The Mailer Review/Volume 4, 2010/Effects of Trauma on the Narrative Structures of Across the River and Into the Trees and The Naked and the Dead|Effects of Trauma on the Narrative Structures]] ||[[User:Priley1984]] || {{cross}}
|-
| Sanders || [[The Mailer Review/Volume 4, 2010/Death, Art, and the Disturbing: Hemingway and Mailer and the Art of Writing|Death, Art, and the Disturbing]] || [[User:JBawlson]] [[User:CVinson]] || {{cross}}
|-
| Stoneback || [[The Mailer Review/Volume 4, 2010/"Oohh Normie — You're Sooo Hemingway": Mailer Memories and Encounters|Mailer Memories and Encounters]] || [[User:Tbara4554]] || {{tick}}
|-
| Jacomo || [[The Mailer Review/Volume 4, 2010/Sparring with Norman|Sparing with Norman]] || [[User:Kamyers]] || {{tick}}
|-
| Gordon || [[The Mailer Review/Volume 4, 2010/Encounters with Mailer|Encounters with Mailer]] || [[User:Priley1984]] || {{tick}}
|-
| Vince || [[The Mailer Review/Volume 4, 2010/Rumors of Grace: God-Language in Hemingway and Mailer|Rumors of Grace]] || [[User:Sherrilledwards]] || {{tick}}
|-
| Apple || [[The Mailer Review/Volume 4, 2010/Inside Norman Mailer|Inside Norman Mailer]] || [[User:Chelsey.brantley]] || {{tick}}
|-
| Sinclair || [[The Mailer Review/Volume 4, 2010/Norman Mailer: An Expected Encounter in an Unexpected Place|An Expected Encounter]] || [[User:Wverna]] || {{tick}}
|-
| Klavan || [[The Mailer Review/Volume 4, 2010/On Reading Mailer Too Young|On Reading Mailer Too Young]] || [[User:Essence903m]] || {{tick}}
|-
| Miele || [[The Mailer Review/Volume 4, 2010/What Norman Mailer Taught Me about Combat|What Norman Mailer Taught Me about Combat]] || [[User:TBorel]] [[User:Flowersbloom]] [[User:Tbara4554]]|| {{tick}}
|-
| Vernon || [[The Mailer Review/Volume 4, 2010/Style, Politics, and Hemingway's Spanish Civil War Dispatches|Style, Politics, and Hemingway's Spanish Civil War Dispatches]] || [[User:MerAtticus]] || {{cross}}
|-
| Hooker || [[The Mailer Review/Volume 4, 2010/Norman Mailer: From Orgone Accumulator to Cancer Protection for Schizophrenics|From Orgone Accumulator to Cancer Protection for Schizophrenics]] || [[User:JKilchenmann]] || {{tick}}
|-
| Hinton || [[The Mailer Review/Volume 4, 2010/Advertisements for Others: The Blurbs of Norman Mailer|Advertisements for Others]] || [[User:NrmMGA5108]] || {{tick}}
|-
| Hicks || [[The Mailer Review/Volume 4, 2010/Harlot's Ghost, Bildungsroman, Masculinity and Hemingway|''Harlot’s Ghost'', ''Bildungsroman'', Masculinity and Hemingway]] || [[User:JKilchenmann]] || {{tick}}
|-
| Mercer || [[The Mailer Review/Volume 4, 2010/Automatons and the Atomic Abyss: The Naked and the Dead|Automatons and the Atomic Abyss]] || [[User:MerAtticus]] || {{tick}}
|-
| Westaway || [[The Mailer Review/Volume 4, 2010/“A Noble Pursuit”: The Armies of the Night as Outside Agitator|“A Noble Pursuit”]] || [[User:Chelsey.brantley]] || {{yellow tick}}
|-
| Fox || [[The Mailer Review/Volume 4, 2010/Norris Church Mailer|Norris Church Mailer]] || [[User:Kamyers]] || {{tick}}
|}

The Mailer Review/Volume 4, 2010/Hemingway's Jewish Progeny: Roth and Goldstein in ''The Naked and the Dead''

2025-04-21T05:07:05Z

Tbara4554: added article, byline, works cited and notes

{{DISPLAYTITLE:{{BASEPAGENAME}}/{{SUBPAGENAME}}}}
{{MR04}}
{{Working}} 
{{Byline|last=Cappell|first=Ezra|abstract=|url=https://projectmailer.net/pm/Ezra_Cappell}}
==I. ==
In 1926, Ernest Hemingway published his first novel, ''The Sun Also Rises'', which established his lean, hard literary voice—a style that would influence countless American writers. In 1948, a young Norman Mailer published his first novel, ''The Naked and the Dead'', to critical and commercial acclaim. In his first novel, Mailer established a tough and unforgiving narrative voice very much in Hemingway’s debt. Yet there is another aspect that unites the early work of these two often compared writers: their representation of stereotypical Jewish characters. In ''The Sun Also Rises'', Hemingway created his petulant and “superior” Jewish character, Robert Cohn, who is often seen in the narrative as being a step out of line with the other characters. Hemingway sums Cohn up as possessing “a hard, Jewish, stubborn streak” {{sfn|Hemingway|1926|p=18}}. Two of Mailer’s characters from ''The Naked and the Dead'', Roth and Goldstein, have been described by Morris Dickstein as being “almost anti-Semitic caricatures of sensitive weaklings, too eager for acceptance, as uneasy in their own skin as in a man’s army”{{sfn|Dickstein|2002 |p=33}}. As one of Mailer’s characters in ''The Naked and the Dead'' says of these two Jewish soldiers, “For that Roth and Goldstein, you could shoot ’em in the nuts and they wouldn’t even know the difference”{{sfn|Mailer|1948 |p=429}}.

How is Mailer building on Hemingway’s representation of an emasculated Jewish character as well as complicating and subverting Hemingway’s{{pg|208|209}}conception of the effete Jew? Throughout his long career as a writer, Norman Mailer was often condemned for creating stereotyped Jewish characters, or alternately, for not creating enough Jewish characters in his fiction, but I believe that far from slavishly following Ernest Hemingway’s anti-Semitic lead, Mailer in ''The Naked and the Dead'' (much like Philip Roth would do a decade later at the beginning of ''his'' career) creates a complex portrait of Jewish characters attempting to negotiate the constraints of an anti-Semitic, mid-century America. Although Mailer has often been portrayed as having broken with his Jewish upbringing and eschewed Jewish values and ideas, as we will see in this essay, I believe that Mailer was deeply engaged by both Jewish ideas and values, and that he deals with his complex Jewish identity throughout his long and prolific career, starting with his first novel in 1948 through his last published work in 2007.

==II. ==
When I was a kid growing up on Long Island, my father gave me a short biography of the “The Ghetto Wizard,” Benny Leonard, who rose from the tough tenements of the Jewish Lower East Side to become the lightweight boxing champion of the world. I remember reading about how as a young boy Benny always listened to his Jewish mother and how he not only fought with his fists, but with his head as well. A few years later when I picked up ''The Sun Also Rises'', I was keenly interested in this Jewish boxing champion of Princeton, Robert Cohn, whom readers meet in the very first line of the narrative. As I read further, I was quickly disabused of any Jewish pride I might have in Cohn. I soon discovered that not only is Hemingway’s first-person narrator, Jake Barnes, unimpressed by Cohn’s boxing title, he is even less enthralled by the “Jewish” nature of his acquaintance. After showing Cohn to be both emasculated and hen-pecked in the opening chapter of the book, Hemingway quickly adds, in the second chapter, that the extremely wealthy Cohn (after all, he is Jewish) “had a hard, Jewish, stubborn streak” {{sfn|Hemingway|1926 |p=18}}. Things quickly degenerate for Mr. Cohn from that point on. By the end of the novel—which tells of the exploits of a group of young friends carousing their way across Europe on their way to the famous bullfights of Pamplona, Spain—Cohn has managed to sucker-punch two of his friends, Bill and Jake, and he beats nearly senseless the handsome, young bull-fighter Pedro Romero. In the process of these altercations, Cohn provokes the hatred and ire of just about every character in Hemingway’s book. Toward the{{pg|209|210}}end of the novel, Jake, who in the opening chapters claimed to like Cohn, says to Brett, “I’m not sorry for him. I hate him, myself” {{sfn|Hemingway|1926 |p=186}}. To which Brett responds: “I hate him too...I hate his damned suffering”{{sfn|Hemingway|1926 |p=186}}. Later, in the same conversation, when Brett announces her intentions of having an affair with the young bullfighter Pedro Romero, Jake tells her, “You oughtn’t to do it”{{sfn|Hemingway|1926 |p=187}}. Brett responds: “Oh darling, don’t be difficult. What do you think it’s meant to have that damned Jew about...?”{{sfn|Hemingway|1926 |p=187}}.

Now, as I pick up ''The Sun Also Rises'' many years after my first encounter with Robert Cohn and his lost generation friends, I am struck by the fact that Hemingway is not content to simply produce a minor anti-Semitic character in his work, as is customary in the work of other modernist writers, for example, F. Scott Fitzgerald in ''The Great Gatsby'' with his malevolent Jew, Meyer Wolfsheim.{{efn|Recently (2005), ''Modern Fiction Studies'' devoted a special issue to this topic. In her introduction to ''Modernism’s Jews/Jewish Modernisms'', guest editor Maren Linett writes that the issue “considers some of the processes by which Jewish writers shaped literary modernism and the intricate ways modernism was in turn shaped by its figurings of Jews and Jewishness” {{sfn|Linett|2005 |p=249}}.}} In contrast, Hemingway’s anti-Semitic character Robert Cohn is crucial to the entire structure of the novel; I would go so far as to suggest that the emasculated figure of the Jew, most often viewed as a contrasting figure, might even be central to Hemingway’s credo of “grace under pressure” and the tough-guy persona that he embodied to the bitter end of his life. Hemingway portrays his Jew as the perfect (if obvious) foil to his WASP hero, Jake Barnes, a man who clearly lives up to the code. Barnes is a man of few words, but he is a man full of grace and, what critic Thomas Strychacz has termed, “emotional restraint”{{sfn|Strychacz|2002 |p=141}}. In short, Barnes is all the things that Hemingway’s imagined Jew is not.

It was not only Jewish readers who were concerned about Hemingway’s Jewish characters, but Jewish writers of the period were just as anxious about the long shadow Hemingway cast over American literature. This apprehension, some might even call it a preoccupation, is perhaps most clearly seen in the very beginning of Saul Bellow’s first novel, ''Dangling Man'', where his narrator, Joseph, frets over his masculinity. He worries that keeping “a journal nowadays is considered a kind of self-indulgence, a weakness, and in poor taste”{{sfn|Bellow|1944 |p=9}}. Although Joseph admits that this concern with his emotions and feelings is a “weakness,” in his present state of demoralization, in the midst of the fiercest fighting of World War II, suspended between civilian and military life as he waits to be inducted into the US Army, Joseph has no choice but to keep his diary. Joseph ends these thoughts with an obvious nod to Hemingway when he writes, “The hard-boiled are compensated for their silence; they fly planes or fight bulls or catch tarpon, whereas I rarely leave my room”{{sfn|Bellow|1944 |p=10}}.
{{pg|210|211}}
As a young Jewish American reader, I remember being so unsettled by Hemingway’s Jewish character Robert Cohn that I asked my father about what it all meant. He thought for a while and then replied, as was his custom, with a little story. He said that Grandpa, a survivor of several Nazi concentration camps in Belgium, used to define an anti-Semite as someone who hates Jews more than is normal. I was left to infer from this anecdote that Hemingway’s mild form of social anti-Semitism in America did not bear all that much resemblance to the horrors perpetrated upon my family by the Nazis in Europe. In short, Hemingway’s anti-Semitism was, while not particularly nice, a respectable, long-accustomed “normal” form of Jew-hatred practiced the world over. At the time, laboring to enjoy Hemingway’s novel despite the disturbing use of the term “Jew” as an adjective, I tried to “read around” the offending passages.

More recently, I was asked to substitute for a colleague who was teaching a class on modernist American writers; the class I taught was focused on ''The Sun Also Rises''. Upon re-reading Hemingway’s novel, I was more than a little disturbed by my fictional co-religionist, Robert Cohn, and due to his centrality in the novel, this time there was no “reading around” the offending passages. Perhaps more disturbing was that at the same time I had been rereading Norman Mailer’s monumental World War II tome, ''The Naked and the Dead'', for a course of my own dealing with war fiction. In my reading of Mailer’s novel and his portrayal of two Jewish soldiers, Roth and Goldstein, I was often, and uncomfortably, reminded of Hemingway’s disparaging portrait of the Jew in ''The Sun Also Rises''. So maybe Hemingway, the arch WASP American writer had a bit of a Jew problem (as did so many of the great modernist writers from T. S. Eliot to F. Scott Fitzgerald, dare I even bring up Ezra Pound?). But Norman Mailer? Nachum Malech, the proud grandson of a Rabbi? Perhaps the fault was mine? Maybe there was something in the text that I was missing? What was this Jewish American writer Norman Mailer up to in his first novel, and how might his fraught construction of Jewish characters help reveal his aims? When Morris Dickstein calls Mailer’s two Jewish characters “sensitive weaklings” and “almost anti-Semitic caricatures”{{sfn|Dickstein|2002 |p=33}}, he is wholly correct in his assessment: Roth and Goldstein are definitely stereotypical constructions of ethnic characters, as are many of the other characters in Mailer’s novel, from Martinez the Mexican American scout who in many pensive moments worries obsessively if he is a “true American,”{{pg|211|212}}to Mailer’s cliché-ridden portrait of an uneducated southern hick, Private Wilson.

My reading of Hemingway’s and Mailer’s constructions of Jewish stereotyped characters will explore the complicated legacy of Jewish fictional representation that Mailer tapped into in his first novel—so while it would be easy to suggest that in an effort to ingratiate himself to his literary hero Ernest Hemingway and to distance himself from his own biography (the good and obedient, middle-class Jewish boy who was Bar-Mitzvahed in Brooklyn), Norman Mailer slavishly copies Hemingway’s lead in creating distasteful Jewish characters—I believe that there is something far more complex going on in Mailer’s creation of his two Jewish soldiers a generation after Hemingway’s first novel was published. In fact, I would argue that Mailer is not creating his stereotypical Jewish characters in homage to Hemingway, but rather as a response and a challenge to Hemingway’s literary legacy.

==III. ==
The editors of ''The Norton Anthology of Jewish American Literature'', in their introduction to Norman Mailer, claim that “Mailer’s work occasionally includes Jewish and part-Jewish characters, good and bad, but the most deliberate avoidance of what seem to be centrally and recognizably Jewish issues in the greatest part of his prolific output over six decades has been noted and decried by almost all concerned with Jewish American literature”{{sfn|Chametzky|Felstiner|Flanzbaum|Hellerstein|2000 |p=815}}. I couldn’t disagree more with this assessment of Mailer’s career. Mailer’s portrait of Jewish characters and his sustained focus on the inherent anti-Semitism of the US Army, from the enlisted man all the way to the top of the chain of command, force readers of his first novel into a place of discomfort, a place where they will need to rethink their own preconceived notions about American ideals of pluralism and democracy in the immediate postwar period and reconsider their views on Jewish Americans’ place in that postwar pluralistic culture. I believe that Mailer is dealing with the nexus of decidedly Jewish and American issues in almost all of his works, perhaps not as explicitly as some of the critics would like to see these issues addressed, but that would seem to be beside the point. Indeed, Mashey Bernstein quite convincingly argues that “Mailer’s ideology, as an American writer and social commentator, stems from both the intellectual ideas of Judaism and how these ideas make themselves manifest in our daily lives”{{sfn|Bernstein|2008 |p=377}}. This{{pg|212|213}}focus is evident at the very beginning of Mailer’s career in ''The Naked and the Dead'' with those two stereotypically Jewish characters: Privates Roth and Goldstein.

==IV. ==
In ''Advertisements for Myself'', Mailer recounts the story of how he sent a copy of his third novel, ''The Deer Park'', to his literary hero Ernest Hemingway. The short piece, titled “Literary Pain and Shame,” reprinted in Mailer’s massive 1999 retrospective, ''The Time of Our Time'', suggests that close to a decade after writing ''The Naked and the Dead'', Mailer was still enamored of Hemingway and still obviously ambivalent about his feelings towards his literary forefather. Mailer’s inscription reads,
<blockquote>
TO ERNEST HEMINGWAY

—because finally after all these

years I am deeply curious to know

what you think of this.

—but if you do not answer, or if you

answer with the kind of crap you

use to answer unprofessional writers,

sycophants, brown-nosers, etc. , then

fuck you, and I will never attempt

to communicate with you again. {{sfn|Mailer|1998 |p=207-8}}
</blockquote>
Despite not receiving a reply from Hemingway, Mailer was still eager to meet with his hero when Hemingway was in New York City in 1958 to be interviewed by George Plimpton for ''The Paris Review''. Plimpton was friendly with both writers and attempted to set-up a dinner meeting. Although the dinner was scheduled, it never came off. In a 2002 interview with ''The Guardian'', Plimpton told the story of why Mailer never did get to meet Hemingway. In the article, “Hemingway, Mailer and Me,” Plimpton recalls,
<blockquote>
“I set it up, and then Hotchner stopped me. Said it wouldn't be a good mix. Oh, it was awful. Poor old Norman sat by the telephone. It was,” he concludes, still smiling, “very bad.” He pleads intimidation: “Hemingway? Scared to death of him. Not an easy
</blockquote>
{{pg|213|214}}
<blockquote>
man to be around. Although I must say, I do treasure that relationship.”{{sfn|Plimpton|2002 |p=4}} </blockquote>

To the casual observer it might seem that adding a Jewish writer to the mix would be toxic to the genteel dinner crowd. Might this be a rather obvious example of life following art? In this sad little drama the role of Robert Cohn was clearly played by Norman Mailer, easily pictured stubbornly sitting by his phone waiting for a call that would never arrive.

So just what was Cohn’s big “stubbornness” in ''The Sun Also Rises''? Hemingway’s narrator explains Cohn’s problem this way:
<blockquote>
Then there was another thing. He had been reading W. H. Hudson. That sounds like an innocent occupation, but Cohn had read and reread ''The Purple Land''. ''The Purple Land'' is a very sinister book if read too late in life. It recounts splendid imaginary amorous adventures of a perfect English gentleman in an intensely romantic land, the scenery of which is very well described. For a man to take it at thirty-four as a guide-book to what life holds is about as safe as it would be for a man of the same age to enter Wall Street direct from a French convent, equipped with a complete set of the more practical Alger books.{{sfn|Hemingway|1926 |p=17}}
</blockquote>

Hemingway’s narrator Jake Barnes suggests that Cohn’s stubbornness had a “romantic streak,” but just what did this schoolboy idealism entail? ''The Purple Land'' might afford us a clue:
<blockquote>
Here the lord of many leagues of land and of herds unnumbered sits down to talk with the hired shepherd, a poor, bare-footed fellow in his smoky rancho, and no class or caste difference divides them, no consciousness of their widely different positions chills the warm current of sympathy between two human hearts. How refreshing it is to meet with this perfect freedom of intercourse, tempered only by that innate courtesy and native grace of manner peculiar to Spanish Americans! What a change to a person coming from lands with higher and lower classes, each with its innumerable hateful subdivisions—to one who aspires
</blockquote>
{{pg|214|215}}
<blockquote>
not to mingle with the class above him, yet who shudders at the slouching carriage and abject demeanour of the class beneath him! If this absolute equality is inconsistent with perfect political order, I for one should grieve to see such order established.{{sfn|Hudson|1885 |p=335}}
</blockquote>
So now we can see just what makes ''The Purple Land'' such a dangerous book for Robert Cohn. At the ripe age of thirty-four, Cohn, much like the narrator of ''The Purple Land'', still dreams of being accepted into a classless society by his Anglo-Saxon peers. Surely, Jake suggests, this was an idea that Cohn’s years at Princeton should have beaten out of him. As he says of Cohn, “No one had ever made him feel he was a Jew, and hence any different from anyone else, until he went to Princeton”{{sfn|Hemingway|1926 |p=12}}. Yet Cohn—even after Princeton should have convinced him of his inherent difference from people like Jake Barnes and Lady Brett Ashley—in his arrogance and stubbornness still believes that he will be accepted by his WASP acquaintances. Hemingway’s narrator says rather bitterly of Cohn, that all of his romanticism and his “stubborn” clinging to an idea that life is fair and equal stems from Cohn’s immature belief in two books. As Jake says, “So there you were. I was sorry for him, but it is not a thing you could do anything about, because right away you ran up against the two stubbornnesses: South America could fix it and he did not like Paris. He got the first idea out of a book, and I suppose the second came out of a book too”{{sfn|Hemingway|1926 |p=20}}. So the first book that leads Cohn to think his life will be more on par with his peers in South America is clearly ''The Purple Land'' by W. H. Hudson, but what of the second book? What second book lends Cohn both his stubbornness and his air of moral superiority? Perhaps Hemingway is coyly referring to the Hebrew Bible, which he does in several key ciphered passages in ''The Sun Also Rises''.{{efn|An obvious example would be the title of his novel, ''The Sun Also Rises'', which Hemingway takes from a famous passage in Ecclesiastes{{sfn|Carroll|Prickett|2008|p=Ecc. 1.5}}.}} The Hebrew Bible speaks of the ancient Hebrews and their legendary stubbornness: “And the Lord said unto Moses: I have seen this people, and, behold, it is a stiffnecked people”{{sfn|Carroll|Prickett|2008||p=Exod. 32.9}}. Cohn’s restless dissatisfaction with the way things were in the post-World War I period for Jews, stemmed from his reading and his inherent (read: Jewish) stubbornness. Hemingway famously spoke of the need for omniscience in a young writer—to know all that one can before putting pen to paper—but in this passage, Hemingway seems to defer to God himself. It is as if Hemingway says, “See, don’t blame me, I didn’t invent this Jewish stubbornness, it is as{{pg|215|216}}old as the Hebrew Bible itself and as obvious as the large, hooked, and bent nose on Robert Cohn’s face.”

These supposed Jewish characteristics are referenced numerous times in ''The Sun Also Rises''. For example, in Chapter Fifteen, while the veterans (of both war and bullfighting) are discussing the best way to endure the graphic and violent nature of the bullfighting, Cohn takes on an air of superiority, stating “I’m not worried about how I’ll stand it. I’m only afraid I may be bored”{{sfn|Hemingway|1926 |p=165}}. As is apparent, Hemingway imbues his Jewish character with an unmitigated superior and condescending attitude, which, not surprisingly, infuriates the rest of the group. As Bill tells Jake, “That Cohn gets me. He’s got this Jewish superiority so strong that he thinks the only emotion he’ll get out of the fight will be being bored”{{sfn|Hemingway|1926 |p=166}}. Cohn’s stubborn and whiny attitude is immediately contrasted with both Jake’s quiet calm in the face of personal tragedy and with the dignified figure of the physically resplendent bullfighter, Pedro Romero. Of course, Cohn’s repeated attempts at being accepted by his gentile peers—in effect, his attempts to change the unfair nature of his social and cultural reality like in the fictional South America of ''The Purple Land''—becomes yet one more “Jewish characteristic,” to the disdain of the other group members. After all, Jake has been unfairly and mercilessly left impotent {{efn|In an interview with ''The Paris Review'', Hemingway takes exception to the wide-spread idea that Jake Barnes has been “emasculated” by his war injury:
<blockquote> '''INTERVIEWER:''' Continuing with just one question on this line: One of the advisory staff editors wonders about a parallel he feels he’s found in The Sun Also Rises between the dramatis personae of the bull ring and the characters of the novel itself. He points out that the first sentence of the book tells us Robert Cohn is a boxer; later, during the ''desencajonada'', the bull is described as using his horns like a boxer, hooking and jabbing. And just as the bull is attracted and pacified by the presence of a steer, Robert Cohn defers to Jake who is emasculated precisely as is a steer. He sees Mike as the picador, baiting Cohn repeatedly. The editor’s thesis goes on, but he wondered if it was your conscious intention to inform the novel with the tragic structure of the bullfight ritual.

'''HEMINGWAY:''' It sounds as though the advisory staff editor was a little bit screwy. Whoever said Jake was “emasculated precisely as is a steer”? Actually he had been wounded in quite a different way and his testicles were intact and not damaged. Thus he was capable of all normal feelings as a man but incapable of consummating them. The important distinction is that his wound was physical and not psychological and that he was not emasculated.{{sfn|Hemingway|1986 |p=120}}</blockquote>}} from an injury during the war, an inequity and a horror which he does his best to accept and to bear with grace; only occasionally and only in the privacy of his own hotel room does Jake despair of his condition. It is as if Hemingway is saying, here’s this true American, Jake Barnes, injured in the most brutal way fighting for other people’s freedom and all this rich Jew Cohn can think about is himself and how sad it is for him to have to spend all of his millions in Paris.

==V. ==

Which brings us to Norman Mailer, whose first novel was published to critical and commercial acclaim and he was hailed as the new, great postwar American writer. ''The Naked and the Dead'' tells the story of one platoon’s dangerous reconnaissance mission in the battle for a Japanese-held island in the Pacific, Anopopei, toward the end of World War II. Control of this island might prove of key strategic importance for ultimate victory in the Pacific and an end to the war. Throughout the novel, Mailer introduces us to the varied members of the platoon, all of whom represent different aspects of working-class America. The difficulties encountered by the enlisted men{{pg|216|217}}are contrasted with the often pampered day to day life of the officers. This is especially true of both the calculating General Cummings, a highly successful general with political ambition—at one point Cummings says, “a more effective soldier the poorer his standard of living has been in the past”{{sfn|Mailer|1948 |p=174}}—and Lieutenant Hearn, a Harvard-educated WASP who has more liberal ideas and regard for the lives of the enlisted men. The men of the platoon have for months been led by the tyrannical Sergeant Croft. After the deaths of several members of the platoon, two new Jewish soldiers, Roth and Goldstein, are added to the group. These two Jewish soldiers bear more than a passing resemblance to Hemingway’s Robert Cohn.

Despite the familial likeness of Hemingway’s and Mailer’s Jewish characters, in A. E. Hotchner’s 1966 book, ''Papa Hemingway'', Hemingway revealed his less than favorable overall opinion of ''The Naked and the Dead'' and its author: “The guy who wrote ''The Naked and the Dead''—what’s his name, Mailer—was in bad need of a manager. Can you imagine that a general wouldn’t look at the co-ordinates on his map? A made-up half-ass literary general. The whole book’s just diarrhea of the typewriter”{{sfn|Hotchner|1966 |p=113}}. While Hemingway did not admire Mailer’s credentials as a war correspondent, one thing he might have admired was Mailer’s creation of two Jewish characters as stereotypically Jewish as Robert Cohn: Privates Roth and Goldstein. So what are we to make of these two Jewish characters in ''The Naked and the Dead''?

The novel often switches between the men’s present reality in the Pacific and flashback sections called “The Time Machine,” which are interspersed throughout the narrative in which the men are seen at earlier moments of their civilian lives. At one point, the men of the platoon are sitting around waiting for the fighting to begin and, somewhat humorously, discuss the best way to give oneself a “million dollar” wound: a non-debilitating injury that will get the soldier sent home and out of the horrors of the war. In the midst of this conversation, Private Gallagher says of the two Jewish soldiers in the platoon: “For that Roth and Goldstein, you could shoot ’em in the nuts and they wouldn’t even know the difference”{{sfn|Mailer|1948 |p=429}}.

This sense of the emasculated, literally castrated, Jewish soldiers parallels Robert Cohn in Hemingway’s novel. At one point during the bullfighting section, the group of friends is talking about the awful way one of the bulls gored a steer. Cohn adds to the discussion: “It’s no life being a steer,” which leads to the following exchange:
{{pg|217|218}}
<blockquote>
“Don’t you think so? Mike says. “I would have thought you’d loved being a steer, Robert.”

“What do you mean, Mike.”

“They lead such a quiet life. They never say anything and they’re always hanging about so...I should think you’d love it. You’d never have to say a word. Come on, Robert. Do say something. Don’t just sit there....''Is'' Robert Cohn going to follow Brett around like a steer all the time?”{{sfn|Hemingway|1926 |p=146}}</blockquote>

Clearly both Hemingway and Mailer create emasculated Jewish characters. Yet despite the obvious similarities between these three fictional characters, I believe that Mailer is actually attempting something diametrically opposed to Hemingway’s Jewish portrayal. Mailer’s portrait of emasculated Jewish characters is designed to draw attention to the complex negotiations his Jewish characters must make with an outwardly hostile and clearly anti-Semitic US Army during World War II. As a result of Mailer’s multifaceted portrait of the struggle of ethnic others, in this case Jewish Americans,{{efn|A similar argument could be made about Martinez being used in ''The Naked and the Dead'' to challenge prevailing negative stereotypes about Mexican Americans.}} in a pluralistic society, readers are challenged to delve deeper into the racial, religious and social attitudes prevalent in mid-twentieth century America

==VI. ==
There are numerous parallels between Hemingway’s Cohn and Mailer’s Roth and Goldstein. Take drinking, for instance. Jake, Bill, Mike and Brett all drink legendary amounts of alcohol to dull their pain of the losses they have suffered in the war. In contrast, Cohn often does not participate in their extended drinking sessions. At the high point of the fiesta, Cohn does get drunk and passes out, leaving the others to continue their drinking for several more hours. When he reappears, Cohn tries to ingratiate himself with the group by saying “What a lot we’ve drunk”{{sfn|Hemingway|1926 |p=163}}. This elicits an angry response from Bill: “You mean what a lot ''we’ve'' drunk. You went to sleep”{{sfn|Hemingway|1926 |p=163}}.

Similarly, in ''The Naked and the Dead'', when we meet Private Roth for the first time we see how Roth’s exclusion is a result of both his own defensive actions as well as the inherent and casual anti-Semitism of the Army: “The man with whom he was bunking, a big good-natured farm boy, was still over at another tent with his friends, and Roth didn’t want to join them. He had gone along the previous night and, as it usually happened, he had felt left out of things”{{sfn|Mailer|1948 |p=50}}. We can easily see from the narrator’s{{pg|218|219}}comments how Roth is both excluded by the group and that he excludes himself, almost as a preemptive maneuver designed to gain a sense of agency in an environment in which he has very little standing and even less power. Similarly, in his isolation, Roth, a college-educated man, reflects on the intellect of his fellow soldiers and, with disdain, decides that “they were all stupid”{{sfn|Mailer|1948 |p=51}}. In this same scene, Roth has a lengthy conversation with the other Jewish member of the platoon, Goldstein. In the creation of these two figures, Mailer is attempting to draw out the numerous social and religious differences between these two vastly different Jewish characters.

Despite their obvious differences, both Jewish soldiers are despised by the other members of the platoon. In this portrayal, Mailer is scrupulously careful to honestly portray the Army in all of its inherent bigotry. For example, while speaking with Roth, Goldstein recalls overhearing a conversation earlier that day between a group of soldiers and a truck driver. The driver was warning the soldiers about the good and bad companies. The driver said, “‘Just hope you all don’t get in F Company, that’s where they stick the goddam Jewboys’”{{sfn|Mailer|1948 |p=53}}. After much mirth among the men, one of the soldiers responds. “‘If they stick me there, I’m resigning plumb out of the Army’”{{sfn|Mailer|1948 |p=53}}. Thus Mailer offers us a well-rounded conception of these two Jewish soldiers’ treatment in the Army and the difficult time they have just trying to survive in a doubly hostile environment. In addition to the constant threat of the Japanese enemy, the Jewish soldiers must always be on guard for the next anti-Semitic outburst from one of their own fellow platoon mates. Although he doesn’t respond to the anti-Semitic comments of the truck driver and the other soldiers laughing with him, Goldstein intuits “that kind of face was behind all the pogroms against the Jews”{{sfn|Mailer|1948 |p=53}}.

Or later, when some of the men are sitting around talking, one of the veterans of the platoon, Gallagher, begins to reminisce of his time back home in Boston when he used to run with a gang. He recalls an incident where he and his friends beat-up a local Jewish kid; this memory gives him a good laugh, but the story also gets him thinking about the larger problem of “the goddam Yids”{{sfn|Mailer|1948 |p=93}}. This memory leads him to dwell on his lack of advancement in civilian life, which, he also, conveniently, blames on Jewish nepotism: “if it hadn’t been for that Alderman Shapiro and his fuggin nephew Abie or Jakie”{{sfn|Mailer|1948 |p=94}}. This in turn leads him to further reflect on the two new soldiers assigned to his platoon. Gallagher says, “‘I see we got a couple of fuggin Yids in the platoon’”{{sfn|Mailer|1948 |p=94}}. Red Valsen, the unsung hero of the{{pg|219|220}}novel, tries to mitigate this harsh anti-Semitic statement of Gallagher’s by responding: “‘Yeah...they’re sonsofbitches just like the rest of us’”{{sfn|Mailer|1948 |p=94}}. Gallagher responds furiously, “‘They only been in one week and already they’re lousin’ up the platoon’”{{sfn|Mailer|1948 |p=94}}. This leads to a more subtle formulation by another soldier, Wilson, who draws a distinction between Roth, who is, by even the most objective standard, not a very good soldier, and Goldstein, who has given every indication that he might become a first-rate soldier. However, Gallagher only pushes aside all subtleties and concludes with the thought, “‘I wouldn’t trust a fuggin one of them’”{{sfn|Mailer|1948 |p=94}}.

Much like ''The Sun Also Rises'', Mailer’s novel reveals a considerable amount of talk concerning the emasculated Jewish male. In one scene, Goldstein, along with several of the men of the platoon, is complaining about the inefficiency of the Army. Along with all the other men, Goldstein adds his assessment. Yet the sadistic Sergeant Croft immediately seizes on Goldstein’s casual remark:
<blockquote>
“You bitching again, Goldstein?” Croft asked.

The anti-Semite, Goldstein thought. “I’m just expressing my opinion,” he said.

“Opinion!” Croft spat. “A bunch of goddam women have opinions.”{{sfn|Mailer|1948 |p=127}}
</blockquote>
This emasculating comment by Sergeant Croft only goads Gallagher to draw Goldstein’s manhood into further question: “What’s the matter, you want some gefüllte fish?”{{sfn|Mailer|1948 |p=127}}.

This feminization of Mailer’s two Jewish soldiers bears many of the physical stereotypes Modernist American literature often associates with Jewish characters. This is particularly true of the diminutive Roth, who often chews on his bitter thoughts of how much better he is than all of the uneducated men that surround him. Yet despite these many surface similarities with Hemingway’s Jewish characterization, ultimately Mailer portrays a complex understanding of America’s perception of the Jew both during the war years as well as in the immediate postwar period. Mailer repeatedly counters a scene that emasculates either Goldstein or Roth with a further scene highlighting the rampant anti-Semitism of the US Army.

Concurrently, Mailer also presents a strikingly realistic portrait of the difficult life for the average US soldier during World War II, and his novel is no{{pg|220|221}}idealized “best generation” portrait of the era. The soldiers and the officers are often racist and many of the men believe that their wives are unfaithful to them as they are off far from home fighting the war. In regard to his Jewish portrayal, as opposed to Hemingway, Mailer affords his readers insight into the consciousness of his Jewish characters. Mailer carefully portrays two vastly different Jews in the novel: Roth is a college-educated agnostic prone to fits of fury, pessimism, and general arrogance, while Goldstein is a working-class man from Brooklyn who, despite numerous hostile experiences, generally wants to think well of people and institutions. Ultimately, Roth proves himself an inept soldier, whereas Goldstein redeems himself by displaying fortitude and dedication in attempting to save his wounded platoon-mate Wilson. Nevertheless, Mailer asserts that both soldiers are lumped under a general term of disapprobation, and all they will ever be known as in the army is simply and eloquently—Jews.

Mailer also paints a scary yet realistic portrait of an officer corps rife with bigots and racists. At one point, an officer, Colonel Conn, is ranting in the mess hall voicing a racist tirade on “the treachery and depravity of the Negro, and the terrible fact that Jew York was in the hands of foreigners”{{sfn|Mailer|1948 |p=69}}. Lieutenant Hearn can take no more of this racism and anti-Semitism, and although he is outranked by Conn, he humiliates his superior officer in an exchange that is overheard by all of the other officers{{sfn|Mailer|1948 |p=73}}. Later that evening, General Cummings summons Hearn to his tent to upbraid him for his insubordination, but the conversation quickly turns from Hearn’s actions towards other matters: American power, politics and the progress of the war. The General says to Hearn, “I don’t disagree with Conn. There’s a hard kernel of truth in many of the things he says. As for example, ‘All Jews are noisy....They’re not all noisy, of course, but there’s an undue proportion of coarseness in that race, admit it’”{{sfn|Mailer|1948 |p=82}}. Although it might appear that Mailer is creating a stereotypical portrait of Jewish characters in ''The Naked and the Dead'', I believe that he is trying to underscore the widespread anti-Semitism inherent in all aspects of the Army, from the lowest enlisted man on up through the highest levels of command. Against this backdrop, readers of Mailer’s fiction must begin to gauge their own ideas about Jewish people in general and Roth and Goldstein in particular. Far from merely parroting Hemingway’s anti-Semitic construction of Jewish masculinity in ''The Sun Also Rises'', Mailer, a generation later, challenges his readers’ notions of{{pg|221|222}}American inclusiveness and concurrently exposes an ugly strain of anti-Semitism and racism in American institutions.

In ''The Naked and the Dead'', as in Hemingway’s novel, the ideas and feelings of the group come out most expressively and passionately at times of drunkenness. As if acknowledging Hemingway’s earlier portrait of emasculated Jewish characters, Mailer dramatizes a similar drinking scene in ''The Naked and the Dead'' to the one Hemingway wrote in ''The Sun Also Rises''. In a poignant scene, Mailer depicts five men of the platoon all pitching in to buy several canteens of homemade liquor from the mess sergeant. As they sit around getting completely hammered, one of the men, Wilson, notices Goldstein sitting off by himself writing a letter. In a moment of inclusiveness, Wilson good-naturedly invites Goldstein to join them for a drink. However, always on the defensive and having heard rumors of poisoned homemade liquor, Goldstein is wary of drinking the brew. Instead of focusing on bonding with his fellow platoon mates, Goldstein remains firmly focused on his wife and child back home in Brooklyn. Goldstein worries about what would happen to them if he were to die of poisoning out in the middle of the Pacific.

In this scene, Mailer starkly contrasts the numerous social and cultural differences and preoccupations that fuel the many conflicts between the men of the platoon. Goldstein asks Wilson, “‘Is it real whisky or is it jungle juice?’” This incites Gallagher, who tells Goldstein, “‘Take the goddam drink or leave it, Izzy’”{{sfn|Mailer|1948 |p=204}}. Of course, now that he has been insulted, Goldstein abstains, which in turn only isolates him further from the men of his platoon. Beneath the curses of his fellow soldiers, Goldstein walks back towards his tent to continue writing his letter to his wife. The narrator says, “Goldstein turned around abruptly and walked away. The circle of men who were drinking drew closer, and there was an almost tangible bond between them now”{{sfn|Mailer|1948 |p=205}}. In contrast to the solidarity of the drinking men, Goldstein sits alone in his tent feeding on his bitterness: “Once his eyes filled with tears and he shook his head angrily. Why did they hate him so? he asked himself ”{{sfn|Mailer|1948 |p=205}}.

==VII. ==
In his recent essay, “The ‘Whine’ of Jewish Manhood: Re-Reading Hemingway’s Anti-Semitism, Re-Imagining Robert Cohn,” Jeremy Kaye suggests that while the vast majority of literary critics “have most often explored Cohn{{pg|222|223}}from the site of Hemingway’s ''production'', they overlook the site of ''reception''”{{sfn|Kaye|2006 |p=48}}. Perhaps my similar interrogation of the reception of Mailer’s controversial Jewish characters has helped us move beyond an understanding of Roth and Goldstein as simple stereotypes. Far from merely imitating Hemingway, Mailer’s Jewish characters in his first novel are as great a challenge to his literary forefather as was his inscription of ''The Deer Park''. Yet that did not stop the vast majority of critics from thinking of Mailer as a self-hating Jew. That Mailer was excoriated by many Jewish readers and critics for his depiction of stereotyped Jewish fictional characters in the US Army early in his career was, only a decade later, eerily paralleled in the harsh and unforgiving reaction to one of Philip Roth’s earliest stories, “The Defender of the Faith,” which was first published in ''The New Yorker'' in 1959. After the publication of this story, Roth was accused of being a self-hating Jew as well{{sfn|Remnick|2000 |p=76}}. The public outcry against Roth was so great that in an incident recounted rather humorously in Roth’s 1988 autobiography/novel, ''The Facts'', he was forced to meet with leaders of the Anti-Defamation League to talk about the rising storm of Jewish protest his story had let loose across America{{sfn|Roth|1988 |p=123}}.

From my perspective of a half century later, I would say that Roth is continuing a tradition begun a decade previous to the publication of “Defender of the Faith,” by one of his acknowledged literary forefathers, Norman Mailer. Although Roth was excoriated for creating a negative portrait of a Jewish soldier in the figure of Sheldon Grossbart, much like Mailer before him, Roth establishes the extremely anti-Semitic environment of the US Army during World War II that places Grossbart, along with all the other Jewish soldiers, in a disadvantageous position from the very beginning of Roth’s controversial short story. One could argue that for all the Jews behaving badly in “The Defender of the Faith,” the most offensive action in the story is perpetrated by the racist and anti-Semitic Captain Barrett. As Roth’s Sergeant Marx narrates,
<blockquote>
The next morning, while chatting with Captain Barrett, I recounted the incident of the previous evening. Somehow, in the telling, it must have seemed to the Captain that I was not so much explaining Grossbart’s position as defending it. “Marx, I’d fight side by side with a nigger if the fella proved to me he was a man. I pride myself,” he said, looking out the window, “that I’ve{{pg|223|224}}got an open mind. Consequently, Sergeant, nobody gets special treatment here, for the good or the bad. All a man’s got to do is prove himself. A man fires well on the range, I give him a weekend pass. He scores high in P. T. , he gets a weekend pass. He earns it.” He turned from the window and pointed a finger at me. “You’re a Jewish fella, am I right, Marx?”{{sfn|Roth|1993 |p=166}}
</blockquote>
Friday nights are for cleaning the barracks, and Grossbart is concerned because he has heard the other men complain that the Jewish soldiers who go to religious services Friday night are really just shirking their work. When Sergeant Marx tries to explain Grossbart’s concern to the Captain, he replies,
<blockquote>
“If the Jewish personnel feels the other men are accusing them of goldbricking—well, I just don't know. Seems awful funny that suddenly the Lord is calling so loud in Private Grossman's ear he's just got to run to church.”

“Synagogue,” I said.

“Synagogue is right, Sergeant. I'll write that down for handy reference. Thank you for stopping by.”{{sfn|Roth|1993 |p=166}}
</blockquote>

Much like Mailer did in his World War II novel, we see Roth in his short story addressing anti-Semitism in the American military and how it has affected several Jewish soldiers within the service. And much like Mailer had encountered a decade earlier, Roth was immediately at the center of a firestorm of Jewish protest. In a profile of Philip Roth (published in 2000), David Remnick describes the controversy “Defender of the Faith” elicited and he quotes directly from some of the letters Roth received in the late 1950s:
<blockquote>
Mr. Roth: With your one story, “Defender of the Faith,” you have done as much harm as all the organized anti-Semitic organizations have done to make people believe that all Jews are cheats, liars, connivers. Your one story makes people—the general public—forget all the Jews who have lived, all the Jewish boys who served well in the armed services, all the Jews who live honest hard lives the world over. One letter came to the Anti-
{{pg|224|225}}
Defamation League from a prominent rabbi, reading, “What is being done to silence this man? Medieval Jews would have known what to do with him.”{{sfn|Roth|1993 |p=76}}
</blockquote>
In ''The Facts'', Roth recounts this early condemnation as being formative in his development as a writer. The outcry against Roth in 1959 continued for several years and built to a crescendo during a visit Roth made to Yeshiva University in 1962. Roth was invited to be part of a symposium on the theme of “The Crisis of Conscience in Minority Writers of Fiction.” In addition to Roth, Ralph Ellison was also a panelist, but the entire symposium, it would seem, was staged as a pretext for vilifying Roth and his supposedly anti-Semitic and self-hating work. Roth was attacked again and again by the audience members, who surrounded him to continue the barrage once the official program had come to an end. As Roth recalls in ''The Facts'',

<blockquote>
I listened to the final verdict against me, as harsh a judgment as I ever hope to hear in this or any other world. I only began to shout “Clear away, step back—I’m getting out of here” after somebody, shaking a fist in my face, began to holler, “You were brought up on anti-Semitic literature!” “Yes,” I hollered back, “and what is that?”—curious really to know what he meant. “English literature!” he cried. “English Literature is anti-Semitic literature.” {{sfn|Roth|1988 |p=129}}
</blockquote>
According to Roth, he initially wanted to forswear any more writing about Jews, and it was only years later that he understood the full import of what he termed “the Yeshiva battle.” Roth writes that “instead of putting me off Jewish fictional subjects for good,” the event “demonstrated as nothing had before the full force of aggressive rage that made the issue of Jewish self-definition and Jewish allegiance so inflammatory”{{sfn|Roth|1988 |p=129}}. Roth claims that “After an experience like mine at Yeshiva, a writer would have had to be no writer at all to go looking elsewhere for something to write about...the Jewish resistance that I aroused virtually from the start—was the luckiest break I could have had. I was branded”{{sfn|Roth|1988 |p=130}}.

Roth forcefully maintains that it was this opposition and resistance to the expectations of the Jewish community that would become the subject matter of his work for the rest of his career. Despite all of the anger focused on Roth’s{{pg|225|226}}character Grossbart, just as Mailer had done a decade before, in “Defender of the Faith,” Roth creates a stereotypical Jewish character as a means of challenging his readers to understand the inherent racism of American institutions during World War II and the effect these prevailing attitudes would have on Jewish security in postwar America. So the question remains: What about Mailer? Was Mailer similarly inspired by the overwhelmingly negative reaction the Jewish community had to his two Jewish characters in his first novel?

==IX. ==
Much like Philip Roth’s watershed experience at Yeshiva University, perhaps the initial scorn heaped upon Mailer as a result of his creation of two stereotypical Jewish characters sent the writing career of this good Jewish boy from Brooklyn on a trajectory that would confound his critics for over half a century. In responding to both the Jewish community and the anti-Semitic character of Hemingway’s Robert Cohn, Mailer launched his career with Jewish themes at the forefront. It is precisely these major Jewish themes, that in his last books, ''The Castle in the Forest'', and ''On God: An Uncommon Conversation'', Mailer would continue to explore.

Toward the end of his life Mailer was asked about his feelings for Hemingway. Mailer replied, “I wanted to be a writer since 1941, when I was 18. Hemingway was more important to us than Saint Paul is today to the Catholics”{{sfn|Weeks|2002}}. Mailer never did get to meet with Hemingway man-to-man as he had dreamed of in his youth. In that same interview—which was occasioned by the production of ''Zelda, Scott and Ernest'', the staged, dramatized reading of the letters of F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald (Mailer read Hemingway while George Plimpton read Fitzgerald)—Mailer told a ''Washington Post'' reporter that his reading Hemingway’s lines in the performance was “as close as I’ll ever get to Hemingway”{{sfn|Weeks|2002}}. Although Mailer might have spent much of his life chasing Hemingway’s ghost, ironically, it is his earliest fictional portrait of two unremarkable Jewish soldiers that will ultimately serve as his fiercest and most personal response to his literary forefather.

{{Review}}
===Notes===
{{notelist}}

===Citations===

{{Reflist}}
===Works Cited===
{{refbegin|20em|indent=yes}}
* {{cite book |last=Bellow |first=Saul |year=1944 |title=Dangling Man |location=New York |publisher=Penguin |ref=harv}}
* {{cite book |last1=Isaiah |first1=Ben|last2=Abraham |first2=Rabbi|last3=Sharfman |first3=Rabbi Benjamin |year=1949 |title=The Pentateuch and Rashi's Commentary: A Linear Translation into English |location=New York |publisher=S. S. & R. |ref=harv}}
* {{cite journal |last=Bernstein |first=Mashey |title=Jewish Values in the Work of Norman Mailer.| journal= The Mailer Review |volume=2.1 |date=2008 |pages=376-384 |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |editor-last1=Chametzky |editor-first1=Jules |editor-last2=Felstiner |editor-first2=John |editor-last3=Flanzbaum |editor-first3=Hilene |editor-last4=Hellerstein |editor-first4=Kathryn |year=2000 |title=Jewish American Literture: A Norton Anthology |location=New York |publisher=W.W. Norton & Co. |ref=harv}}
* {{cite book |last=Dickstein |first=Morris |year=2002 |title=Leopards in the Temple |location=Cambridge |publisher=Harvard UP |ref=harv}}
*{{cite book |last=Hemingway |first=Ernest |editor-last1=Plimpton |editor-first1=George |editor-last2=Bruccoli |editor-first2=Matthew Joseph|date=1986 |title=The Art of Fiction: Ernest Hemingway |location= Jackson |publisher= UP of Mississippi |pages=109-129 |ref=harv }}.
* {{cite book |last=Hemingway |first=Ernest |year=1926 |title=The Sun Also Rises |location=New York |publisher=Scribner, 2006 |ref=harv}}
* {{cite book |last=Hotchner |first=A. E. |year=1966 |title=Papa Hemingway |location=Cambridge |publisher=De Capo Press, 2004 |ref=harv}}
* {{cite book |last=Hudson |first=W.H. |year=1885 |title=The Purple Land |location=New York |publisher=E.P. Dutton and Company, 1916 |ref=harv}}
* {{cite journal |last=Kaye |first=Jeremy |title=The ‘Whine’ of Jewish Manhood: Re-Reading Hemingway’s Anti-Semitism, ReImagining Robert Cohn |journal= The Hemingway Review |volume=25.2 |date=2006 |pages=44-60 |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |editor-last1=Carroll |editor-first1=Robert |editor-last2=Prickett |editor-first2=Stephen |year=2008 |title=Kings James Bible |location=Oxford |publisher=Oxford UP |ref=harv}}
* {{cite journal |last=Linett |first=Maren |title=Introduction: Modernism’s Jews/Jewish Modernisms. |journal= Modernism’s Jews/Jewish Modernisms |issue=Spec. issue of Modern Fiction Studies |volume=51.2 |date=2005 |pages=246-257 |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Mailer |first=Norman |year=2007 |title=The Castle in the Forest |location=New York |publisher=Random House |ref=harv}}
* {{cite journal |last=Mailer |first=Norman |title=The Time of our Time |journal=Literary Pain and Shame. |date=1998 |pages=207-9|location=New York |publisher=Random House |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Mailer |first=Norman |year=1948 |title=The Naked and The Dead |location=New York |publisher=Rinehart and Company |ref=harv}}
* {{cite book |last1=Mailer |first1=Norman |last2=Lennon |first2=Michael |year=2007 |title=On God: An Uncommon Conversation |location=New York |publisher=Random House |ref=harv}}
* {{cite news |last=Plimpton |first=George |editor-last=Burkeman |editor-first=Oliver |date=2002 |title=Hemingway, Mailer and Me. |work=The Guardian |ref=harv }}
* {{cite news |last=Remnick |first=David |date={{date|May 8, 2000}} |title=Into the Clear: Philip Roth Puts Turbulence in its Place.|url= |work=The New Yorker |edition=76 |location=LexisNexis |page= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite journal |last=Roth |first=Philip |year=1993 |title=Defender of the Faith |journal=Goodbye Columbus and Five Short Stories |location=New York |publisher=Vintage |pages=159-200 |ref=harv}}
* {{cite book |last=Roth |first=Philip |year=1988 |title=The Facts |location=New York |publisher=Penguin |ref=harv}}
* {{cite journal |last=Strychacz |first=Thomas |year=2002 |title=The Sort of Things You Should Not Admit: Hemingway's Aesthetics of Emotional Restraint |journal=Boys Don't Cry |editor-last1=Shamir |editor-first1=Milette |editor-last2=Travis |editor-first2=Jennifer |pages=141-166 |ref=harv}}
* {{cite news |last=Weeks |first=Linton |date={{date|January 12, 2002}} |title=A Pride of Lions; For Norman Mailer et al., the Importance of Being Ernest, Scott and Zelda |url= |work=The Washington Post |edition=C01 |location=LexisNexis |page= |ref=harv }}

{{Refend}}

{{Review}}
{{DEFAULTSORT:Hemingway's Jewish Progeny: Roth and Goldstein in ''The Naked and the Dead''}}
[[Category:Articles (MR)]]

The Mailer Review/Volume 4, 2010/Style, Politics, and Hemingway's Spanish Civil War Dispatches

2025-04-21T00:47:31Z

Tbara4554:

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{{byline|last=Vernon |first=Alex |abstract=The Spanish Civil War began in July 1936 as a rebellion of generals against the Republic’s electorally-restored left-leaning government. Hemingway held a deep love for Spain dating from his trips to the bullfights in the early 1920s. He finally made it to the war-torn country in March of 1937 to report on the war for the North American Newspaper Alliance (NANA), to assess the situation in his role as chairman of the ambulance corps committee of the pro-Republican American Friends of Spanish Democracy. By war’s end in April 1939, Hemingway would make four trips to Spain and write thirty-one dispatches. |url=http://prmlr.us/mr04ver |note=Adapted and printed with permission from ''Hemingway’s Second War: Bearing Witness to the Spanish Civil War.'' Iowa City: U of Iowa Press, 2011.}}
{{dc|dc=T|he Spanish Civil War began on}} 17-18 July, 1936 as a rebellion of generals against the Republic’s electorally restored left-leaning government. Hemingway held a deep love for Spain dating from his trips to the bullfights in the early 1920s. He finally made it to the war-torn country in March of 1937 to report on the war for the North American Newspaper Alliance (NANA), to assess the situation in his role as chairman of the ambulance corps committee of the pro-Republican American Friends of Spanish Democracy, to collaborate with Dutch filmmaker Joris Ivens on the pro-Republican documentary ''The Spanish Earth'', and to pursue his fledgling love affair with Martha Gellhorn.

By war’s end in April 1939, Hemingway would make four trips to Spain and write thirty-one dispatches for NANA.{{sfn|Watson|1988|p=4}}{{efn|Quotations from the NANA dispatches follow the Diplomatic Text established by William Braasch’s “Hemingway’s Spanish Civil War Dispatches.” I prefer NANA’s titles rather than {{harvtxt|Watson|1988}}’s. For my disagreements with some of Watson’s datings, see my comments on specific dispatches in ''Hemingway’s Second War''.}} The secondary sources habitually judge them inferior journalism. Carlos Baker in the first Hemingway biography, for example, complains that the dialogue was “so heavily stamped with personal mannerisms as to be of doubtful authenticity.” Baker sees a “curious monotony in his stories of battles and bombardments,” a gratuitous use of graphic imagery “to shock his readers,” and “a note of triumphant boastfulness” in reporting proximity to danger. He also faults Hemingway for “often hint[ing] he was alone when in fact he was usually with Martha Gellhorn, Matthews, and Delmer.” Hemingway lacked Dos Passos’ “eye for telling details” and the “meticulous exactitude and inclusiveness that characterized the best work of Herbert Matthews and Sefton Delmer.”{{sfn|Baker|1969|p=329}}

Philip Knightley’s ''The First Casualty'', the standard history of war correspondence, paraphrases Baker but with a trouncing final judgment:{{pg|427|428}}Hemingway’s “performance as a war correspondent was abysmally bad.” But Knightley goes beyond “technical” dissatisfaction to moral condemnation. Not just “unjustifiably optimistic”—an excusable offense—Hemingway’s reporting was “unforgivable” in its “total failure to report the Communist persecution, imprisonment, and summary execution of ‘untrustworthy elements’ on the Republican side, when he knew this was happening and when disclosing it might well have prevented further horrors like this.”{{sfn|Knightley|2004|pp=231–32}}{{efn|In my view, {{harvtxt|Knightley|2004}} does not sufficiently acknowledge his paraphrasing of {{harvtxt|Baker|1969}}.}}

Such criticisms in the final analysis might bear out. As Scott Donaldson writes, Hemingway advanced the Republican cause in his dispatches by eliciting “the deepest possible feelings of horror and of sympathy for the victims” of the Madrid bombardment; his “undue optimism” often “ignored Loyalist defeats and exaggerated the importance of its victories”; and “he repeatedly called attention to the participation of Italians and Germans on Franco’s side.”{{sfn|Donaldson|2009|p=426}} It also served as a recruitment tool—Milton Wolff, for example, acknowledged the strong influence Hemingway’s dispatches had on his decision to volunteer. Nevertheless, I think it a worthwhile exercise to attend a little more studiously to Hemingway’s dispatches, their context, and their artistry. I don’t necessarily intend to reverse the general opinion of the correspondence, only to achieve a better and more sympathetic understanding.

Herbert Matthews’ reporting for the ''New York Times'' will serve as a convenient comparison for two reasons. First, because both Baker and Knightley use Matthews’ journalism as the standard of excellence to pass judgment on Hemingway’s; and second, because the two worked practically side-by-side, seeing and reporting on many of the same events. In fact so closely did they work together that NANA sometimes complained that the ''Times'' was not buying Hemingway’s pieces because they resembled Matthews,’ and at one point Matthews’ own editors at the Times suspected him of plagiarizing Hemingway.{{sfn|Donaldson|2009|pp=411, 420}} A note from Matthews’ assigned editor Raymond McCaw provides, in two columns, seven quite similar passages from Hemingway’s Aragon front dispatches of September 13 and 14 with Matthews’ of September 14, with a penciled note at the bottom: “a deadly parallel if you ask me.”{{sfn|McCaw|1937c}} Edwin James, the managing editor and McCaw’s boss, eventually agreed with Matthews’ defense: “It is quite apparent that you did not file any duplicate of the Hemingway story, or vice versa. As I understand it, the similarity arose from the fact that you{{pg|428|429}}both went to see the same show and saw it at the same time [sic], under the same conditions.”{{sfn|James|1937b}}

Matthews’ dispatches ring of Republican bias as much if not more than anything Hemingway ever filed. The ''Times'' received many letters to the editor complaining about Matthews’ undisguised politics, which also gave serious concern to some of his editors. His description of the Republican May 1937 infighting in Barcelona is a striking example of how his news veered into propaganda and shows just how much he passed along the government’s version of events. The government’s “BLOODLESS TRIUMPH FOUGHT WITH RECOGNIZED WEAPONS OF DEMOCRACY” turned out to be blatantly false, as the government and the “COMMUNISTS [WHO] DISTINGUISHED THEMSELVES” resorted to violent suppression. His blaming the uprising on the anarchist CNT working as Franco operatives parrots the government’s and the communist party’s public position, even though both charges—that the anarchists precipitated the events and that they were under Nationalist direction—were also false. His dispatch’s optimistic close also equivocates the political reality: “NEW GOVERNMENT HAS TAKEN POWER WHICH APPEARS TOVE CONFIDENCE VAST MAJORITY SPANIARDS IN LOYALIST TERRITORY AND TIS HOPED WILL GAIN EQUAL CONFIDENCE ABROAD STOP VIOLENCE AND REVOLUTION BEEN REPUDIATED AND NEWAND FAR HOPEFULLER PERIOD SEEMS BEGINNING.”{{sfn|McCaw|1937a}}The ''Times'', knowing full well the one-sided coverage of a correspondent writing from one side of the conflict, had a reporter on both sides: Matthews with the Republicans, and William Carney with the Nationalists. They got their facts right (or wrong) as often as the other, their editors concluded;{{sfn|James|1937a}} and they inspired about the same number of letters of complaint.{{sfn|James|1939}}

Furthermore, Matthews’ dispatches received a great deal of substantive editorial revisions. One of Matthews’ Teruel reports had to be cut for length, as McCaw informed James: “This bird sent 2844 words on the same facts which Hemingway covered much better in less than half that number. I wonder if Matthews thinks the paper is thriving, and that cable tolls do not matter a damn. Of course, it had to be cut for space anyway.” McCaw most likely refers here to Matthews’ dispatch corresponding to Hemingway’s “The Attack on Teruel,” though Matthews’ account of the fall of Teruel is also much longer (and more long-winded) than Hemingway’s, and just as personal in terms of describing the dangers{{pg|429|430}} he faced. Indeed its length allows him to share even more of the action he endured.{{sfn|McCaw|1937b}}

Raymond McCaw held a general professional disagreement with Matthews perhaps tainted with over zealousness. Whether a personal or political motive informed that disagreement can’t be determined from the evidence I’ve seen. It is also clear that McCaw’s charges bear some validity—that any responsible editor could have easily and reasonably taken issue where McCaw did. One of the more interesting examples concerns Matthews’ piece on Guadalajara. Because he only saw evidence on Franco’s side of Italian forces, he only reported on Italians. But the ''Times'' editors heard from other sources that German soldiers also participated in the March offensive. They thought it prudent, from this confusion, to change (nine times) “Italian” to “Rebel,” “the foe,” or “Insurgent.” When Matthews saw the published piece he wrote a strenuous objection. In some instances the editors changed paraphrased quotations from his sources. One large paragraph omitted by the editors stressed the first-hand nature of the information, and Matthews underlines the key words: “All day, at every place we stopped and no matter whom we talked to or what we saw, there was only one label—Italian. The dead bodies, the prisoners, the material of every kind, the men who had occupied Brihuega and then fled were Italian and nothing but Italian.” Here and elsewhere in his original story, Matthews emphasizes the “personal knowledge” of its information.{{sfn|Matthews|1937a}}{{efn|James supported McCaw on these changes, though later acknowledged that altering quoted sources was perhaps unwarranted (29 April 1937; Herbert Matthews Collection, Box 1 Folder 3).}} Yet Matthews did not report on the foreigners fighting for the Republic—it was in fact the Italian Garibali Battalion that routed Franco’s Italians. We might surmise government censorship behind this silence, though Matthews would not cable news of “CENSORSHIP STRICTER” and “BAN ON MENTIONING INTERNATIONALS INCLUDING AMERICANS INSTITUTED TODAY” until July.{{sfn|Matthews|1937b}} Perhaps he cautiously self-censored, or politically self-censored for the same reasons the government would eventually ban mention. Still, his stridency about the omission of foreigners on one side is striking given his knowledge of their contribution to the other side. For this reason too, and his omission of other nationalities on the insurgent side, it seemed only fair to his editor “to stand on the statement that the majority of the Rebels were Italians and let it go at that.”{{sfn|James|1937c}} A reasonable decision.

Throughout his correspondence to his editors and his several books,{{pg|430|431}}Matthews maintained a passionate defense of his eyewitness journalistic standard, a position those close to him understood. “Matthews never believed anything he had not seen with his own eyes,” Joris Ivens wrote. “He never saw his job as reporter as one that permitted him to sit in his hotel and read the handouts of the War Ministry.” {{sfn|Ivens|1969|p=112}} Sidney Franklin recalls that some writers wrote their pieces before arriving in Madrid, and came only for the “legitimacy” of the Madrid dateline.{{sfn|Franklin|1952|p=232}}And Matthews hated, on principle, having his name attached to an article that violated the integrity of his witness. The only way to achieve objectivity, for Matthews, was to acknowledge one’s subjective perspective. Writing to his publisher, Matthews argued that “the full documentary value” of his coverage was lost when the editors altered his submissions for “the apparent necessity of giving more or less equal space to both sides.”{{sfn|Matthews|1939}}

As with Matthews, so too Hemingway. Indeed the commitment to subjectivity
fit quite well with Hemingway’s modernist aesthetics. If Hemingway
focused the dispatches on his perspective—on his own experience dodging
artillery—more than Matthews and more than most, he did so at least partially
to fulfill expectations. NANA approached him, after all, for his name
and personality as much as whatever he would write. Before he even left the
states it pitched him to potential publications, sending out a promotional release with text to be used alongside his forthcoming dispatches and suggesting
they include a photograph: “Mr. Hemingway’s assignment is to get both from the bombed towns and bombed trenches the human story of the war, not just an account of the game being played by general staffs with pins
and a map.”{{sfn|NANA|1937}} NANA also released each individual dispatch with a one-sentence “precede” about the “famous” or “noted” author. Ernest Hemingway was not writing as Herbert Mathews, ace reporter; Hemingway was writing as Ernest Hemingway, famous author of novels and stories well known to be drawn from his own experiences.

That he understood this to be his assignment is further evidenced by a
cable Matthews sent to his ''Times'' editors on April 9, 1937, concerning the
Loyalist attack: “WORKED CONJOINTL WITH HEMINGWAY TODAY HE SENDING EYEWITNESS DESCRIPTION WHILE EYE SENT GENERAL STRATEGY.”{{sfn|Matthews|1937a}}When a year later the ''Times'' asked NANA to ensure Hemingway’s reports differed from Matthews, NANA complied by asking Hemingway “to emphasize color rather than straight reporting” not necessarily out of dissatisfaction with Hemingway’s reportage as Baker contends,{{efn|{{harvtxt|Baker|1969}}’s notes date the ''Times'' request to NANA as 8 Apr. 1938, and NANA’s to Hemingway as 15
Apr. 1938 (Princeton University, Firestone Library: Box 18, Folder 8 “1938”), the date of “The Bombing of Tortosa” dispatch.}} but to increase{{pg|431|432}}the chance of selling to the ''Times'' and indeed to ensure the spirit of NANA’s original arrangement with Hemingway. {{sfn|Baker|1969|p=329}}Far from dissatisfied, NANA wrote Hemingway at the end of August 1938 a letter of agreement for his coverage of “a general European war” should it break out, “written in your colorful style” (Hemingway was in Paris, on his way to Spain for the last time during the war).{{sfn|Wheeler|1938}}When Edmund Wilson criticized the selected dispatches reprinted in ''Fact'', Hemingway wrote him that “I was paid to write what are called ‘eye witness’ accounts . . .what is called, or was asked for as ‘color stuff.’ Most of such stuff is faked. Mine was not. It was straight reporting and the personal stuff was what had been asked for by the editors. “Wilson’s estimation was also based upon ''Fact’s'' inclusion of the “The Old Man at the Bridge” story from ''Ken'', “not a news dispatch” at all.{{sfn|Hemingway|1938a}}Speaking at Carnegie Hall before the showing of a rough cut of ''The Spanish Earth'', shortly after his first trip to Spain and so very much in the context of his wartime work, Hemingway defined the writer’s problem as “project[ing] [what is true] in such a way that it becomes a part of the experience of the person who reads it.”{{sfn|Hemingway|2002|p=193}}

Personal, anecdotal journalism had been Hemingway’s signature style from his earliest days filing reports, in the early 1920s from Paris, when his editor at the ''Toronto Star Weekly'' “encouraged [. . .] what Hemingway did best: write about himself in the act of being a reporter.”{{sfn|Reynolds|1989|p=45}}How could he expect that NANA would expect anything else, if indeed NANA did expect anything else? In the Spanish Civil War he at least maintained his eyewitness posture; in World War II, however, he couldn’t keep himself out. His first piece, about D-Day, begins, “No one remembers the date of the Battle of Shiloh. But the day ''we took'' Fox Green beach was the sixth of June, and the wind was blowing hard out of the northwest.”{{sfn|Hemingway|1967|p=340}}His venue too—''Collier’s'' magazine—and the fact that he had not written anything in three years further contributed to the story-like nature of the WWII stories, in which he figured as a protagonist—not to mention the stories and involvement he couldn’t write about, armed and running around France more of a free agent than his guerilla-hero Robert Jordan ever was (though he began to transform these experiences into fiction in several unpublished stories). In wartime China in 1943, filing articles for Ralph Ingersoll’s short-lived ''PM'' New York afternoon daily, Hemingway did not even care to be called a news reporter.{{sfn|Moreira|2006|p=99}}

It should be mentioned that Hemingway and Matthews enjoyed a great{{pg|432|433}}friendship and working relationship. Hemingway usually brought Matthews, who did not have a car, on his excursions. When Matthews left Madrid for a break in mid April 1937, he had already ensured Hemingway would provide coverage to the ''Times'' through NANA. For one thing, Hemingway did not have to worry about Matthews as a rival for the history books. He could endorse his friends’ book, ''Two Wars and More to Come'', and praise him as “the ablest and the bravest war correspondent writing today “who “when the fakers are all dead [. . .] will be read in the schools” (Advertisement 21) because Matthews posed no threat to Hemingway’s own chances to be read in the schools. The only brief Hemingway ever expressed he really reserved for Matthews’ editors, for not wanting his Teruel street-fighting story and for cutting references to himself in Matthews’ Teruel dispatches so that it appeared only Matthews had been there.{{sfn|Hemingway|2003|p=462}}

As for Hemingway’s neglecting to name everyone with him for every story, the ''Times'' cutting of his name suggests that such exactitude was hardly a priority. A paper had no incentive for announcing the fact that a competitor’s
correspondent stood beside its own to see and report the same
events. NANA changed at least one vague Hemingway “we,” which admits
to the presence of others, to “this correspondent”
—we can hardly fault Hemingway for working in the spirit of his
employer’s standards.{{sfn|NANA|1938}}{{efn|“we” in typescript and radiogram (Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, University of Texas-Austin: Ernest Hemingway Collection Box 1 Folder 1 and Folder 25).}} Do readers care that Matthews, Delmer, Gellhorn,
and others were there? The story’s effect and the limited word count also
weighed against such roll calls. One editor chose not to clutter the dispatch
on the great retreat across the Ebro with all the names of the American International Brigade volunteers Hemingway encountered, an omission of
Content more far serious than that of omitted correspondent names.{{efn| Radiogram insert dateline 4 April 1938 (HRC: Ernest Hemingway Collection Box 1 Folder 25).}} Hemingway
often gave the names of the reporters with him, such as at Teruel;
nor was he the only reporter to sometimes neglect to do so. Martha Gellhorn,
for example, used a vague “we” and singled herself out as the primary
participant in some of her stories.

By using first-person reportage Hemingway—and Matthews and Gellhorn And most of the group covering the war—were operating solidly within
convention. William Stott, in ''Documentary Expression and Thirties America'',
calls this first-person ''participant observer'' technique “the most common sort
of documentary reportage in the thirties” that worked “by vicarious persuasion:
the writer partook of the events he reported and bared his feelings
and attitudes to influence the reader’s own.”{{sfn|Stott|1986|pp=178-9}}{{efn|He specifically includes Hemingway et al (180). {{harvtxt|Stott|1986}}}} Stott also observes {{pg|433|434}}another technique to enable documentary reportage to “talk to us, and convince us that we, our deepest interests, are engaged,” in the use of the second person: “Thirties documentaries constantly address ‘you,’ the ‘you’ who is we the audience, and exhorts, wheedles, begs us to identify, pity, participate.” His examples include Dorothy Parker’s Spanish Civil War writing, and Hemingway’s 1935 “First-Hand Report on the Florida Hurricane.”{{sfn|Stott|1986|pp=27-8}} A number of Hemingway’s NANA dispatches employ the second-person as a way of bringing the reader along for the ride.

Hemingway’s dispatches used personal pronouns more artfully than is generally recognized. “A New Kind of War,” which William Braasch Watson notes as having been “[w]ritten with more care and imagination” than its predecessors, begins in second person: “The window of the hotel is open and, as you lie in bed, you hear the firing in the front line seventeen blocks away.”{{sfn|Watson|1988|p=29}} He takes “you” outside, to see the damage and the dead from the bombing. “Someone makes a joke about missing teeth and someone else says not to make that joke. And everyone has the feeling that characterizes war. It wasn’t me, see? It wasn’t me.”{{sfn|Watson|1988|p=30}} The tension between the first person and second-person pronouns—the movement toward identification with “you” and the insistence that “it wasn’t me”—continues in the next line. Here the reader is at once still in the narrator’s shoes, but strangely distanced from the narrator through biographical tidbit and, at the same time, asked to see himself in the enemy: “The Italian dead up on the Guadalajara weren’t you although Italian dead, because of where you had spent your boyhood, always seemed, still, like Our Dead.”{{sfn|Watson|1988|p=30}} It is worth quoting at length the dispatch’s transition to first person:
<blockquote>
After the shell that lit on the sidewalk in front of the hotel you got a beautiful double corner room on that side, twice the size of the one you’d had, for less than a dollar. It wasn’t me they killed. See? No. Not me. It wasn’t me anymore.

Then in a hospital given by the American Friends of Spanish Democracy located out behind the Morata front along the road
to Valencia they said, “Raven wants to see you.”

“Do I know him?”

“I don’t think so,” they said. “But he wants to see you.”

“Where is he?”

“Upstairs.”{{pg|434|435}}In the room upstairs they are giving a blood transfusion to a man with a very gray face who lay on a cot with his arm out looking away from the gurgling bottle and moaning in a very impersonal way. He moaned mechanically and at regular intervals and it did not seem to be him that made the sound. His lips did not move.

“Where’s Raven?” I asked.

“I’m here,” said Raven.{{sfn|Watson|1988|p=31}}</blockquote>
The piece simply could not have sustained the second-person for the remaining five pages. More significantly, for this deeply personal exchange between the writer and the faceless, eyeless soldier, Hemingway could not hide in the rhetorical device of the second-person. In the process, he effects a reversal of the usual pronoun game; instead of identifying with the all embracing “you,” we leave that trick behind and become fully attached to
the narratorial “I” as ourselves, as we might not have been had the article
begun in the first person. And even as the narrator identifies himself by name
for the only time in any of the dispatches—“Hemingway,” and later
“Ernest”—as decidedly not ourselves. We do not say, ''It isn’t me''. The historian
Hugh Thomas notes “the refreshing candour” of Hemingway’s naming
himself “in the world of the International Brigades, where no one’s name
seemed to be truthfully given.”{{sfn|Thomas|2001|p=591}}{{efn|For Watson, the dispatch “seems, in fact, on the verge of becoming a story.”{{harvtxt|Watson|1988|p=29}}}}

A year later Hemingway’s “Tortosa Calmly Awaits Assault” resists admitting
the city’s imminent fall. Yet it does so anyway, by subtly alluding to the
wartime rhetoric of sacrificed blood irrigating the earth and rejuvenating
Spain. Such rhetoric was common during the war, appearing in speeches,
print, and poetry. Many of the poems in Cary Nelson’s anthology ''The Wound
and the Dream: Sixty Years of American Poems about the Civil War'' join in the
Spanish and international chorus’s general connection between Republican
soldiers and the land, and the particular singing of their dead nourishing
the land. We find such language in La Pasionaria’s farewell address to the International Brigades, her epilogue to ''The Book of the XV Brigade'', and Hemingway’s famous eulogy “On the American Dead in Spain”: “For our dead are
a part of the earth of Spain now and the earth of Spain can never die. Each
winter it will seem to die and each spring it will come alive again. Our dead
will live with it forever.”{{sfn|Nelson|1994|p=3}}{{efn| Reprinted in {{harvtxt|Bruccoli|2006|p=76}} and {{harvtxt|Nelson|1994}} ''Remembering'' 37 (the drafts at the JFK are titled “The Dead at Jarama”). In addition to the poems in Nelson’s anthology, see the excerpt from Boris Todrin’s “Spanish Sowing” in {{harvtxt|Guttmann|1962|pp=179-180}}.}} The Tortosa dispatch implies the deaths of{{pg|435|436}}many Republican soldiers in its final paragraph’s description of the newborn onions:
<blockquote>The artillery was picking up a little now. Two came in at a fairly useful place and as the smoke blew away ahead and settled through the trees, you picked an armful of spring onions from a field beside the trail that led to the Tortosa road. They were the first onions of the spring and peeling one I found they were plump white and not too strong. The Ebro Delta has a fine rich land, and where the onions grow, tomorrow will be a battle.
{{sfn|Watson|1988|p=84}}</blockquote>

The echo is quiet, and perhaps unconscious, but there nevertheless. The opening boastfulness of “American Veterans Tell of Escaping Insurgents”
should be taken somewhat ironically. The dispatch begins by announcing
that for “two days we have been doing the most dangerous thing
you can do in this war. That is keep close behind an unstabilized line where
the enemy are attacking with mechanized forces.” Then, a few pages later,
we learn about the Abraham Lincoln Brigade survivors of the spring 1938
Nationalist offensive that took Bob Merriman and eventually reached the
Mediterranean Sea. Reading about these survivors creeping through enemy
camps, stepping on a sleeping German soldier’s hand, sprinting “across an
open field toward the Ebro bank and being sniped at by artillery controlled
by an observation plane overhead” and then “the desperate swimming of
the Ebro” naked, we are asked to place the correspondent’s plight in due perspective.{{sfn|Watson|1988|pp=71-2}} This story certainly escapes the charge of a monotonous
battle and bombing scene; its switch from apparently boastful to
awe-struck witness feels almost deliberately self-conscious. Other choice selfironic
moments come in the dispatches of that pre-Teruel quiet fall of 1938.
The one titled “Hemingway, Covering War, Tells of Brush with Death” has little
to report from Madrid other than the new aftershave brand he is trying.
In “Loyalists’ Drive Seen Progressing as Planned,” he writes that “Shells are
all much the same and if they don’t hit you there is no story and if they do
you won’t have to write it.” {{sfn|Watson|1988|p=58}}

Hemingway’s dispatches are sometimes monotonous because his war was
Usually monotonous—as wars are most of the time. It should also be kept in
mind that scholars reviewing Hemingway’s NANA dispatches one after{{pg|436|437}}another do not relive the original reading experience. Hemingway wrote dispatches sporadically, papers did not run all of his dispatches, papers edited and cut them, and readers read at least a couple of papers’ worth of other articles in between. He told Edmund Wilson as much in defending himself against Wilson’s critique of the selected (and heavily edited and cut) dispatches reprinted in ''Fact'' without his consent: “If you are being paid to be shot at and write about it you are supposed to mention the shooting. [. . .] But I do not go in for re-printing journalism.”{{sfn|Hemingway|1938a}}

If we can in this way better understand his style, and at least explain it if
not excuse it, we similarly ought to try to contextualize—and perhaps
excuse—the moral problem. The two issues here are the specific condemnation
of Hemingway’s silence about Republican atrocities and the general
question of biased reporting (the latter of which has already partially been
addressed).

Hemingway knew, as Donaldson writes, that mentioning the atrocities
“would arouse anticommunist sentiments back in the States and effectively
undermine any possibility of American intervention.”{{sfn|Donaldson|2009|p=394}} It is also doubtful
that reporting them would have stopped them. But reporting Republican
atrocities from Spain was not possible for the simple reason that all dispatches
went through a government censor. Matthews cabled his editors
from Paris in May 1937 to tell them that “censorship does not permit us to
say when the ‘telefonica’ is hit. So whenever you see reference in my
despatches [sic] to ‘an important building in the center of the city’ or words
to that effect, the cable desk can know that it is the telefonica.” {{sfn|Matthews|1937c}} As already noted, by July he would cable “CENSORSHIP
STRICTER” as the ban on mentioning internationals went into effect. {{sfn|Matthews|1937d}}{{sfn|Matthews|1937e}} Cowles’ memoir confirms the
aggressive censorship, observing that it limited journalists to exactly the kind of material Hemingway wrote about:
<blockquote>There were frequent attempts to “beat the censor” by employing American slang expressions, but this came to an end when a Canadian girl joined the staff. The International Brigades were not allowed to be publicized; no reference could be made to Russian armaments, and buildings and streets which suffered
bombardments could not be identified.</blockquote>{{pg|437|438}}<blockquote>It was only in the realm of the human interest story that the journalists had a free hand. They could describe bombardments to their heart’s content.{{sfn|Cowles|1941|p=20}}</blockquote>
Hemingway and everyone else—to reserve incrimination for Hemingway is hardly just. No correspondent covering Republican Spain reported suspicious imprisonments and disappearances by government agents.

Hemingway, through Joris Ivens and ''The Spanish Earth'' project, had better
access to officials than most. Had he been able somehow to report such
activity, he would have lost that access and would probably have been kicked
out of the country. His fame would have likely prevented his own officially
sponsored disappearance, though he still worried, especially as so many of
such crimes on the Republican side occurred from free agents. When Jasper
Wood printed the anarchist F.A.I. banner in the limited edition book version
of ''The Spanish Earth'', Hemingway expressed his anxieties bluntly in a letter
to Jasper on August 20, 1938. It is hardly “petulant,” he scolded, “not to wish
to be shot.”{{sfn|Davison|1988|p=128}} Hostility in the Republic against the anarchists
ran high; after the Barcelona May Day conflict, the government’s foreign
minister told U.S. Ambassador Claude Bowers that “anarchist revolt
throughout Catalonia and not only expected but welcomed as an opportunity
to liquidate the anarchists who have been hostile from the beginning.”
{{sfn|United States|1954|p=292}}{{efn| The Ambassador in Spain (Bowers), then in France, to the Secretary of State, 5 May 1937.}}

It is possible that Hemingway’s dispatch stating that “not one friend [. . .]
has been executed or is missing” was his clever means of reporting
the rumors and indeed the general fact while evading the censors, as in this very dispatch he acknowledged the presence of a censor after a bombardment.{{sfn|Watson|1988|p=34}}
Matthews, on the other hand, never found a way to mention the
censors or admit even the possibility of people gone missing in the Republic.
Peter Moreira has observed that in a 1943 dispatch Hemingway related a remark by a British officer about the Chinese Nationalist government’s being
“hopeless on the offensive” because censorship “prevented American reporters
From actually saying that the Nationalists wouldn’t attack, surmising that by telling this anecdote Hemingway could sneak such a judgment into
his reports.”{{sfn|Moreira|2006|p=77}} In Spain, censors aside, the eyewitness standard and his
own safety and continuing ability to report the war, and, yes, his passionate
support of the government contributed to his decision. He could have written
about government abuses from the states, but then could not return to{{pg|438|439}}cover the war and support the cause—a justification other journalists, those who did not return after the spring of 1937, did not enjoy. In his mind too, knowing what he heard of fascist atrocities, any reportage against the government lessening its chances of victory through killing hopes of increased international aid would have led to more deaths at Franco’s hands that the much smaller number inspired by fifth column paranoia.{{efn|''Hemingway’s Second War'' discusses in greater depth Hemingway’s politics and his falling out
with John Dos Passos over the execution of José Robles.}}

The accusation that Hemingway did not write about Republican atrocities
because he was saving it for his fiction I find baseless.{{sfn|Knightley|2004|p=232}}{{sfn|Baker|1969|p=402}}{{efn|Hemingway’s casual comment to colleagues calling dibs on Pepe Quintanilla, the executioner of
Madrid, is not sufficient evidence.}}Carolyn Moorehead, in her biography of Martha Gellhorn, describes
the climate for the Madrid correspondents that first spring: “And so,
day by day, the correspondents walked a thin and nervous line between truth,
evasions, and propaganda, telling one another that though it was not all right
if things were made up and presented as true, it was acceptable to describe
what you wanted, provided it was true and provided your readers were aware
of your position.”{{sfn|Moorehead|2003|p=125}} My own sense is that they did not walk the line quite
so nervously; their passionate commitment, and their principles of position
disclosure and the eyewitness standard, made that walk relatively easy.

The problem of ''committed journalism'', even sixty years later, has not been
resolved—as anyone paying attention to the media and world affairs well
knows. One person’s truth is another person’s propaganda. Certainly, as
Knightley notes, reporting from “the heart” affects one’s judgment.{{sfn|Knightley|2004|pp=234-5}}
Yet to attempt “balance,” per the edits to Matthews’ Guadalajara piece, betrays
one’s believed truth. Furthermore, the kind of reporting done by the
correspondents with the Republic—committed, one-sided, optimistic,
heroic, human interest work by embedded writers—would be practiced
widely and without reserve during World War II. Such narrative journalism,
with roots in Louise May Alcott’s “Hospital Sketches” series published in the
''Boston Commonwealth'', and more immediately in 1930s social documentary
writing whose “essence” is “not information”, anticipated postwar
new journalism’s adoption of novelistic narrative technique for nonfiction
which culminated with such wartime books as Norman Mailer’s ''Armies of
the Night'' and Michael Herr’s ''Dispatches''.{{sfn|Stott|1986|p=11}} Some of Hemingway’s NANA dispatches
fall in this line of development.

Today we might categorize such writing under the awkward umbrella
term ''creative nonfiction''. That term certainly fits the mixed bag of nonfiction
narratives and commentaries Hemingway published during the war in
Ken magazine. These pieces are essays, not journalism, several of which{{pg|439|440}}directly appeal for support for the Republic, and most of which really deal with the approaching world war. ''Ken'' wanted “precisely the kind of opinion articles he could not write for NANA.”{{sfn|Donaldson|2009|p=433}} His article, “The Cardinal Picks a Winner,” shows a photo of a row of dead children from Barcelona and another one with Nationalist officers saluting and Catholic officials with raised hands, apparently making the fascist salute as well. He ends ironically: “So I ''don’t believe'' the people shown in the photo can really be making it. I would rather prefer to think that the photograph was faked.”{{sfn|Donaldson|2009|p=436}} When Hemingway argues in “A Program for U.S. Realism” that the United States should stay out of the next war except to stuff its pockets through arms sales, one has to wonder, given his call and the democratic nations’ failure to save Spain, if we are to sniff sarcasm here.

The language of the dispatches, with their corrective intent against
Franco’s propaganda, does risk propagandizing. Hemingway’s optimism and
anti-fascism certainly colored his correspondence work. His criticism of the
anarchist and POUM militia for their inactivity on the Aragon front, for example,
sounds a lot like the Spanish Communist Party’s.{{efn|It at least sounds almost exactly like Dolores Ibarruri in her memoir. To the anarchists’ complaint
that they had no arms, she retorts “that they had more arms than did many other fronts. . . .
What they didn’t have and what they were constantly demanding were airplanes and tanks .And
they didn’t have them because the Republic government didn’t have them either, except for those
it received as aid from the Soviet Union.”{{harvtxt|Ibarruri|1966|pp=283-4}} Yet the various Catalonia militia were not
as well equipped with small arms as the more regular Popular Army units, and because of the
terrain tanks and planes were in fact necessary.}}
But unlike
Matthews, Hemingway limited his reports within the Republic to military
matters. Hemingway may have generally condemned the anarchists in his
nonfiction, considering their activity as hampering the war effort, but he
never repeated the accusation of their collaboration with the rebels, as
Matthews had done. And when Hemingway commented on the Bareclona
crisis, he referred only to the government—not the communists, as
Matthews had done.{{efn|{{harvtxt|Hemingway|1937}}’s comments in “Hemingway, en Route Home Expects Loyalists to Win” NANA staff
correspondent dispatch. Though arguably he was propagandizing by hiding the communist influence—
to mention the communists to an American audience would not gain sympathy for the
cause.}}Nor did he write articles asserting the limited role of
the communists in the government, or explaining Spanish anarchism, also
as Matthews had done.{{efn|An article on the communists’ limited role appeared in late November 1937, as discussed in a
missive from The Ambassador in Spain (Bowers), then in France, to the Secretary of State on 2
Dec. 1937. Matthews’ “Anarchism: Spain’s Enigma” appeared in the ''New York Times'' 22 Aug. 1937:6, 14.}}

During one of Hemingway’s stateside breaks between trips to Spain, his
children asked if he was a “tool” of Stalin, an accusation tossed by a schoolmate
who, presumably parroting his or her parents, probably understood
the term no better than Hemingway’s children. {{sfn|Hemingway|1938b}}
Hemingway believed in the Republic’s potential, but he was never a dupe of
the Spanish Communist Party (PCE) or Comintern. As did many others, he
accepted PCE’s presence in the government for its discipline and organization
toward winning the war, and he understood the material necessity for
Comintern’s support. It should also be noted, as historians Hugh Thomas
and Helen Graham have reminded us, that the communism associated with
the Republic wasn’t particularly communist anyway.{{sfn|Thomas|2001|p=628}}{{sfn|Graham|2002|p=184}} {{pg|440|441}}

Hemingway declined to follow Joris Ivens’ suggestion that he write a
dispatch on the significant role of the political commissars in the Republican
military, even though that would have meant
featuring his brave new friend Gustav Regler.{{sfn|Ivens|1969}} Hemingway also, in a letter
justifying his work to Jack Wheeler at NANA, wrote about choosing not to
send a dispatch he had written because it might strike readers as propaganda
“no matter how true.”{{sfn|Hemingway|1938b}}

Hemingway went to Spain to see the war himself and to support the Republic
through his ambulance fund. The paychecks from NANA and the
fundraising from ''The Spanish Earth'' helped. Whatever propagandistic streak
colors the dispatches pales in comparison to the documentary. The filmmaker,
Joris Ivens, was well established in European communist circles. The
documentary genre then and now has occupied a slippery position between
the extremes of impossible-to-achieve empirical nonfiction and of the outright
fictionalized. Evaluations of Hemingway’s journalism are informed by
knowledge of ''The Spanish Earth'' and the ''Ken'' essays to the detriment of the
journalism. And the very nature of the slippery documentary genre may enable
the film to escape opprobrium. It wasn’t reportage; it was altogether
something else. But for that matter, Hemingway’s dispatches weren’t purely
reportage either, and if not ''altogether'' something else, still something else,
and should be reckoned with accordingly.

== Notes ==
{{notelist|20em}}

==Citations==
{{Reflist|15em}}

==Works Cited==
{{refbegin|indent=1|20em}}
* {{cite book |last=Baker
|first=Carlos |date=1969 |title= Ernest Hemingway: A Life Story |url= |location=New York |publisher= Scribner |pages= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book
|last=Bruccoli |first=Matthew |date=2006 |title=Hemingway and the Mechanism of Fame |url= |location=Columbia |publisher=U of South Caronia P |pages= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Cowles |first=Virginia |date=1941 |title=Looking for Trouble |url= |location=New York
|publisher=Harper & Brothers |pages= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite journal |last=Davison |first=Richard Allan |title=The Publication of Hemingway’s The Spanish Earth: An Untold Story |url= |journal=Hemingway Review
|volume=7.2 |issue= |date=1988
|pages=122-130 |access-date= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Donaldson
|first=Scott |date=2009 |title=Fitzgerald & Hemingway: Works and Days |url= |location=New York |publisher=Columbia UP |pages= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Franklin |first=Sidney |date=1952 |title=Bullfighter from Brooklyn |url= |location=New York |publisher=Prentice-Hall |pages= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Graham |first=Helen |date=2002 |title=The Spanish Republic at War 1936-1939 |url= |location=Cambridge |publisher=Cambridge UP |pages= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Guttmann |first=Allen |date=1962 |title=The Wound in the Heart: American and the Spanish Civil War |url= |location=New York |publisher=Free Press of Glencoe |pages= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Hemingway |first=Ernest |date=1967 |title=By-Line: Ernest Hemingway |url= |location=New York |publisher=Scibner |pages=
|ref=harv }}
* {{cite journal
|last=Hemingway
|first=Ernest
|editor-last=Trogdon
|editor-first=Robert W.
|author-mask=1
|title=Fascism is a Lie
|url=
|journal=Ernest Hemingway: A Literary Reference |volume==
|issue=
|date=2002
|pages=193-6
|location=New York
|publisher=Carroll & Graf
|access-date=
|ref=harv }}
* {{cite book
|last=Hemingway
|first=Ernest
|author-mask=1
|date=10 May 1937
|chapter=Hemingway, en Route Home Expects Loyalists to Win
|title=TS. Ernest Hemingway Collection
|url=
|location=John F. Kennedy Library, Boston
|publisher=
|pages=
|ref=harv }}
* {{cite book
|last=Hemingway
|first=Ernest
|author-mask=1
|date=nd
|chapter=The Home Front
|title=TS. Ernest Hemingway Collection
|url=
|location=John F. Kennedy Library, Boston
|publisher=
|pages=
|ref=harv }}
* {{cite book
|last=Hemingway
|first=Ernest
|author-mask=1
|date=10 Dec 1938a
|chapter=Letter to Edmund Wilson
|title=TS. Ernest Hemingway Collection
|url=
|location=John F. Kennedy Library, Boston
|publisher=
|pages=
|ref=harv }}
* {{cite book
|last=Hemingway
|first=Ernest
|author-mask=1
|date=2 June 1938b
|chapter=Letter to Jack Wheeler
|title=TS. Ernest Hemingway Collection
|url=
|location=John F. Kennedy Library, Boston
|publisher=
|pages=
|ref=harv }}
* {{cite book
|last=Hemingway
|first=Ernest
|author-mask=1
|date=14 Feb 1939
|chapter=On the American Dead in Spain
|title=TS. New Masses
|url=
|location=John F. Kennedy Library, Boston
|publisher=
|pages=3
|ref=harv }}
* {{cite book
|last=Hemingway
|first=Ernest
|editor-last=Baker
|editor-first=Carlos
|author-mask=1
|date=2003
|chapter=The Hadely Mowrer
|title=Ernest Hemingway: Selected Letters, 1917-1961
|url=
|location=New York
|publisher=Scribner
|pages=462-3
|ref=harv }}
* {{cite book
|last=Ibarruri
|first=Dolores
|date=1966
|title=They Shall Not Pass: The Autobiography of La Pasionaria
|url=
|location=United States
|publisher=International Publishers
|pages=
|ref=harv }}
* {{cite book
|last=Ivens
|first=Joris
|date=1969
|title=The Camera and I
|url=
|location=New York
|publisher=International Publishers
|pages=
|ref=harv }}
* {{cite book
|last=Ivens
|first=Joris
|author-mask=1
|date=26 Apr 1937
|chapter=Letter to Ernest Hemingway
|title=MS. Ernest Hemingway Collection
|url=
|location=John F. Kennedy Library, Boston
|publisher=
|pages=
|ref=harv }}
* {{cite book
|last=James
|first=Edwin
|date=20 Nov 1937a
|chapter=Letter to Bertrand Weaver
|title=MS. Herbert Matthews Collection, Box 1 Folder 4
|url=
|location= Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, University of Texas-Austin
|publisher=
|pages=
|ref=harv }}
* {{cite book
|last=James
|first=Edwin
|author-mask=1
|date=12 Oct 1937b
|chapter=Letter to Herbert Matthews
|title=MS. Herbert Matthews Collection, Box 1 Folder 10
|url=
|location= Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, University of Texas-Austin
|publisher=
|pages=
|ref=harv }}
* {{cite book
|last=James
|first=Edwin
|author-mask=1
|date=25 Apr 1939
|chapter=Letter to M.B. Tenney
|title=MS. Herbert Matthews Collection, Box 1 Folder 10
|url=
|location= Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, University of Texas-Austin
|publisher=
|pages=
|ref=harv }}
* {{cite book
|last=James
|first=Edwin
|author-mask=1
|date=23 Apr 1937c
|chapter=Letter to Sulzberger
|title=MS. Herbert Matthews Collection, Box 1 Folder 3
|url=
|location= Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, University of Texas-Austin
|publisher=
|pages=
|ref=harv }}
* {{cite book
|last=Knightley
|first=Phillip
|date=2004
|title=The First Casualty: The War Correspondent as Hero and Myth-Maker from the Crimea to Iraq
|url=
|location=Baltimore
|publisher=John Hopkins
|pages=
|ref=harv }}
* {{cite book
|last=Matthews
|first=Herbert
|author-mask=
|date=9 Apr 1937a
|chapter=Letter to Edwin James
|title=TS. Herbert Matthews Collection, Box 1 Folder 3
|url=
|location= Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, University of Texas-Austin
|publisher=
|pages=
|ref=harv }}
* {{cite book
|last=Matthews
|first=Herbert
|author-mask=1
|date=11 Apr 1937b
|chapter=Letter to Edwin James
|title=MS. Herbert Matthews Collection, Box 1 Folder 3
|url=
|location= Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, University of Texas-Austin
|publisher=
|pages=
|ref=harv }}
* {{cite book
|last=Matthews
|first=Herbert
|author-mask=1
|date=8 May 1937c
|chapter=Letter to Edwin James
|title=MS. Herbert Matthews Collection, Box 1 Folder 3
|url=
|location= Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, University of Texas-Austin
|publisher=
|pages=
|ref=harv }}
* {{cite book
|last=Matthews
|first=Herbert
|author-mask=1
|date=6 July 1937d
|chapter=Letter to Edwin James
|title=MS. Herbert Matthews Collection, Box 1 Folder 3
|url=
|location= Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, University of Texas-Austin
|publisher=
|pages=
|ref=harv }}
* {{cite book
|last=Matthews
|first=Herbert
|author-mask=1
|date=July 1937e
|chapter=Letter to Edwin James
|title=MS. Herbert Matthews Collection, Box 1 Folder 4
|url=
|location= Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, University of Texas-Austin
|publisher=
|pages=
|ref=harv }}
* {{cite book
|last=Matthews
|first=Herbert
|author-mask=1
|date=22 March 1939
|chapter=Letter to Sulzberger
|title=MS. Herbert Matthews Collection, Box 1 Folder 9
|url=
|location= Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, University of Texas-Austin
|publisher=
|pages=
|ref=harv }}
* {{cite book
|last=McCaw
|first=Raymond
|author-mask=
|date=20 May 1937a
|chapter=Letter to Edwin James
|title=MS. Herbert Matthews Collection, Box 1 Folder 3
|url=
|location=Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, University of Texas-Austin
|publisher=
|pages=
|ref=harv }}
* {{cite book
|last=McCaw
|first=Raymond
|author-mask=1
|date=20 Dec 1937b
|chapter=Letter to Edwin James
|title=MS. Herbert Matthews Collection, Box 1 Folder 5
|url=
|location=Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, University of Texas-Austin
|publisher=
|pages=
|ref=harv }}
* {{cite book
|last=McCaw
|first=Raymond
|author-mask=1
|date=23 Sep 1937c
|chapter=Note to Herbert Matthews
|title=MS. Herbert Matthews Collection, Box 1 Folder 4
|url=
|location= Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, University of Texas-Austin
|publisher=
|pages=
|ref=harv }}
* {{cite book
|last=Moorehead
|first=Caroline
|date=2003
|title=Gellhorn: A Twentieth-Century Life
|url=
|location=New York
|publisher=Henry Holt
|pages=
|ref=harv }}
* {{cite book
|last=Moreira
|first=Peter
|date=2006
|title=Hemingway on the China Front: His WWII Spy Mission with Martha Gellhorn
|url=
|location=Washington D.C.
|publisher=Potomac Books
|pages=
|ref=harv }}
* {{cite book
|last=NANA
|first=
|date=5 Feb 1937
|chapter=Promotion Box: Hemingway, For Immediate Release
|title=TS. Ernest Hemingway Collection
|url=
|location=John F. Kennedy Library, Boston
|publisher=
|pages=
|ref=harv }}
* {{cite book
|last=NANA
|first=
|author-mask=1
|date=4 Apr 1938
|chapter=Promotion Box: American Veterans Tell of Escaping Insurgents
|title=TS. Ernest Hemingway Collection
|url=
|location=John F. Kennedy Library, Boston
|publisher=
|pages=
|ref=harv }}
* {{cite book
|editor-last=Nelson
|editor-first=Card
|date=1994
|title=Remembering Spain: Hemingway’s Civil War Eulogy and the Veterans of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade
|url=
|location=Urbana
|publisher=U of Illinois
|pages=
|ref=harv }}
* {{cite book
|last=Reynolds
|first=Michael
|date=1989
|title=Hemingway: The Paris Years
|url=
|location=New York
|publisher=Norton
|pages=
|ref=harv }}
* {{cite book
|last=Stott
|first=William
|date=1986
|title=Documentary Expression and Thirties America
|url=
|location=Chicago
|publisher=U of Chicago P
|pages=
|ref=harv }}
* {{cite book
|last=Thomas
|first=Hugh
|date=2001
|title=The Spanish Civil War, Rev. ed.
|url=
|location=New York
|publisher=Modern Library
|pages=
|ref=harv }}
* {{cite magazine
|last=''Two Wars and More to Come''
|first=
|date=24 Jan 1938
|title=Best Sellers of the Week Here and Elsewhere
|type=Advertisement
|url=
|magazine=New York Times
|pages=
|access-date=
|ref=harv }}
* {{cite journal
|last=United States
|first=
|title=Dept. of State
|url=
|journal= Foreign Relations of the Untied States, 1937 |volume=1
|issue=General
|date=1954
|pages=
|location=Washington
|publisher=GPO
|access-date=
|ref=harv }}
* {{cite journal
|last=Watson
|first=William Braasch
|title=Hemingway’s Spanish Civil War Dispatches
|url=
|journal=The Hemingway Review |volume=7.2
|issue=
|date=1988
|pages=4-121
|access-date=
|ref=harv }}
* {{cite book
|last=Wheeler
|first=John H.
|author-mask=1
|date=10 Dec 1938
|chapter=Letter to Hemingway
|title=MS. Ernest Hemingway Collection, Box 3 Folder 14
|url=
|location=Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, University of Texas-Austin
|publisher=
|pages=
|ref=harv }}

{{refend}}
{{Review}}
{{DEFAULTSORT:Style, Politics, and Hemingway's Spanish Civil War Dispatches}}
[[Category:Articles (MR)]]

The Mailer Review/Volume 4, 2010/Style, Politics, and Hemingway's Spanish Civil War Dispatches

2025-04-20T23:11:59Z

Tbara4554: fixed a spacing and spelling

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{{byline|last=Vernon |first=Alex |abstract=The Spanish Civil War began in July 1936 as a rebellion of generals against the Republic’s electorally-restored left-leaning government. Hemingway held a deep love for Spain dating from his trips to the bullfights in the early 1920s. He finally made it to the war-torn country in March of 1937 to report on the war for the North American Newspaper Alliance (NANA), to assess the situation in his role as chairman of the ambulance corps committee of the pro-Republican American Friends of Spanish Democracy. By war’s end in April 1939, Hemingway would make four trips to Spain and write thirty-one dispatches. |url=http://prmlr.us/mr04ver |note=Adapted and printed with permission from ''Hemingway’s Second War: Bearing Witness to the Spanish Civil War.'' Iowa City: U of Iowa Press, 2011.}}
{{dc|dc=T|he Spanish Civil War began on}} 17-18 July, 1936 as a rebellion of generals against the Republic’s electorally restored left-leaning government. Hemingway held a deep love for Spain dating from his trips to the bullfights in the early 1920s. He finally made it to the war-torn country in March of 1937 to report on the war for the North American Newspaper Alliance (NANA), to assess the situation in his role as chairman of the ambulance corps committee of the pro-Republican American Friends of Spanish Democracy, to collaborate with Dutch filmmaker Joris Ivens on the pro-Republican documentary ''The Spanish Earth'', and to pursue his fledgling love affair with Martha Gellhorn.

By war’s end in April 1939, Hemingway would make four trips to Spain and write thirty-one dispatches for NANA.{{sfn|Watson|1988|p=4}}{{efn|Quotations from the NANA dispatches follow the Diplomatic Text established by William Braasch’s “Hemingway’s Spanish Civil War Dispatches.” I prefer NANA’s titles rather than {{harvtxt|Watson|1988}}’s. For my disagreements with some of Watson’s datings, see my comments on specific dispatches in ''Hemingway’s Second War''.}} The secondary sources habitually judge them inferior journalism. Carlos Baker in the first Hemingway biography, for example, complains that the dialogue was “so heavily stamped with personal mannerisms as to be of doubtful authenticity.” Baker sees a “curious monotony in his stories of battles and bombardments,” a gratuitous use of graphic imagery “to shock his readers,” and “a note of triumphant boastfulness” in reporting proximity to danger. He also faults Hemingway for “often hint[ing] he was alone when in fact he was usually with Martha Gellhorn, Matthews, and Delmer.” Hemingway lacked Dos Passos’ “eye for telling details” and the “meticulous exactitude and inclusiveness that characterized the best work of Herbert Matthews and Sefton Delmer.”{{sfn|Baker|1969|p=329}}

Philip Knightley’s ''The First Casualty'', the standard history of war correspondence, paraphrases Baker but with a trouncing final judgment:{{pg|427|428}}Hemingway’s “performance as a war correspondent was abysmally bad.” But Knightley goes beyond “technical” dissatisfaction to moral condemnation. Not just “unjustifiably optimistic”—an excusable offense—Hemingway’s reporting was “unforgivable” in its “total failure to report the Communist persecution, imprisonment, and summary execution of ‘untrustworthy elements’ on the Republican side, when he knew this was happening and when disclosing it might well have prevented further horrors like this.”{{sfn|Knightley|2004|pp=231–32}}{{efn|In my view, {{harvtxt|Knightley|2004}} does not sufficiently acknowledge his paraphrasing of {{harvtxt|Baker|1969}}.}}

Such criticisms in the final analysis might bear out. As Scott Donaldson writes, Hemingway advanced the Republican cause in his dispatches by eliciting “the deepest possible feelings of horror and of sympathy for the victims” of the Madrid bombardment; his “undue optimism” often “ignored Loyalist defeats and exaggerated the importance of its victories”; and “he repeatedly called attention to the participation of Italians and Germans on Franco’s side.”{{sfn|Donaldson|2009|p=426}} It also served as a recruitment tool—Milton Wolff, for example, acknowledged the strong influence Hemingway’s dispatches had on his decision to volunteer. Nevertheless, I think it a worthwhile exercise to attend a little more studiously to Hemingway’s dispatches, their context, and their artistry. I don’t necessarily intend to reverse the general opinion of the correspondence, only to achieve a better and more sympathetic understanding.

Herbert Matthews’ reporting for the ''New York Times'' will serve as a convenient comparison for two reasons. First, because both Baker and Knightley use Matthews’ journalism as the standard of excellence to pass judgment on Hemingway’s; and second, because the two worked practically side-by-side, seeing and reporting on many of the same events. In fact so closely did they work together that NANA sometimes complained that the ''Times'' was not buying Hemingway’s pieces because they resembled Matthews,’ and at one point Matthews’ own editors at the Times suspected him of plagiarizing Hemingway.{{sfn|Donaldson|2009|pp=411, 420}} A note from Matthews’ assigned editor Raymond McCaw provides, in two columns, seven quite similar passages from Hemingway’s Aragon front dispatches of September 13 and 14 with Matthews’ of September 14, with a penciled note at the bottom: “a deadly parallel if you ask me.”{{sfn|McCaw|1937c}} Edwin James, the managing editor and McCaw’s boss, eventually agreed with Matthews’ defense: “It is quite apparent that you did not file any duplicate of the Hemingway story, or vice versa. As I understand it, the similarity arose from the fact that you{{pg|428|429}}both went to see the same show and saw it at the same time [sic], under the same conditions.”{{sfn|James|1937b}}

Matthews’ dispatches ring of Republican bias as much if not more than anything Hemingway ever filed. The ''Times'' received many letters to the editor complaining about Matthews’ undisguised politics, which also gave serious concern to some of his editors. His description of the Republican May 1937 infighting in Barcelona is a striking example of how his news veered into propaganda and shows just how much he passed along the government’s version of events. The government’s “BLOODLESS TRIUMPH FOUGHT WITH RECOGNIZED WEAPONS OF DEMOCRACY” turned out to be blatantly false, as the government and the “COMMUNISTS [WHO] DISTINGUISHED THEMSELVES” resorted to violent suppression. His blaming the uprising on the anarchist CNT working as Franco operatives parrots the government’s and the communist party’s public position, even though both charges—that the anarchists precipitated the events and that they were under Nationalist direction—were also false. His dispatch’s optimistic close also equivocates the political reality: “NEW GOVERNMENT HAS TAKEN POWER WHICH APPEARS TOVE CONFIDENCE VAST MAJORITY SPANIARDS IN LOYALIST TERRITORY AND TIS HOPED WILL GAIN EQUAL CONFIDENCE ABROAD STOP VIOLENCE AND REVOLUTION BEEN REPUDIATED AND NEWAND FAR HOPEFULLER PERIOD SEEMS BEGINNING.”{{sfn|McCaw|1937a}}The ''Times'', knowing full well the one-sided coverage of a correspondent writing from one side of the conflict, had a reporter on both sides: Matthews with the Republicans, and William Carney with the Nationalists. They got their facts right (or wrong) as often as the other, their editors concluded;{{sfn|James|1937a}} and they inspired about the same number of letters of complaint.{{sfn|James|1939}}

Furthermore, Matthews’ dispatches received a great deal of substantive editorial revisions. One of Matthews’ Teruel reports had to be cut for length, as McCaw informed James: “This bird sent 2844 words on the same facts which Hemingway covered much better in less than half that number. I wonder if Matthews thinks the paper is thriving, and that cable tolls do not matter a damn. Of course, it had to be cut for space anyway.” McCaw most likely refers here to Matthews’ dispatch corresponding to Hemingway’s “The Attack on Teruel,” though Matthews’ account of the fall of Teruel is also much longer (and more long-winded) than Hemingway’s, and just as personal in terms of describing the dangers{{pg|429|430}} he faced. Indeed its length allows him to share even more of the action he endured.{{sfn|McCaw|1937b}}

Raymond McCaw held a general professional disagreement with Matthews perhaps tainted with over zealousness. Whether a personal or political motive informed that disagreement can’t be determined from the evidence I’ve seen. It is also clear that McCaw’s charges bear some validity—that any responsible editor could have easily and reasonably taken issue where McCaw did. One of the more interesting examples concerns Matthews’ piece on Guadalajara. Because he only saw evidence on Franco’s side of Italian forces, he only reported on Italians. But the ''Times'' editors heard from other sources that German soldiers also participated in the March offensive. They thought it prudent, from this confusion, to change (nine times) “Italian” to “Rebel,” “the foe,” or “Insurgent.” When Matthews saw the published piece he wrote a strenuous objection. In some instances the editors changed paraphrased quotations from his sources. One large paragraph omitted by the editors stressed the first-hand nature of the information, and Matthews underlines the key words: “All day, at every place we stopped and no matter whom we talked to or what we saw, there was only one label—Italian. The dead bodies, the prisoners, the material of every kind, the men who had occupied Brihuega and then fled were Italian and nothing but Italian.” Here and elsewhere in his original story, Matthews emphasizes the “personal knowledge” of its information.{{sfn|Matthews|1937a}}{{efn|James supported McCaw on these changes, though later acknowledged that altering quoted sources was perhaps unwarranted (29 April 1937; Herbert Matthews Collection, Box 1 Folder 3).}} Yet Matthews did not report on the foreigners fighting for the Republic—it was in fact the Italian Garibali Battalion that routed Franco’s Italians. We might surmise government censorship behind this silence, though Matthews would not cable news of “CENSORSHIP STRICTER” and “BAN ON MENTIONING INTERNATIONALS INCLUDING AMERICANS INSTITUTED TODAY” until July.{{sfn|Matthews|1937b}} Perhaps he cautiously self-censored, or politically self-censored for the same reasons the government would eventually ban mention. Still, his stridency about the omission of foreigners on one side is striking given his knowledge of their contribution to the other side. For this reason too, and his omission of other nationalities on the insurgent side, it seemed only fair to his editor “to stand on the statement that the majority of the Rebels were Italians and let it go at that.”{{sfn|James|1937c}} A reasonable decision.

Throughout his correspondence to his editors and his several books,{{pg|430|431}}Matthews maintained a passionate defense of his eyewitness journalistic standard, a position those close to him understood. “Matthews never believed anything he had not seen with his own eyes,” Joris Ivens wrote. “He never saw his job as reporter as one that permitted him to sit in his hotel and read the handouts of the War Ministry.” {{sfn|Ivens|1969|p=112}} Sidney Franklin recalls that some writers wrote their pieces before arriving in Madrid, and came only for the “legitimacy” of the Madrid dateline.{{sfn|Franklin|1952|p=232}}And Matthews hated, on principle, having his name attached to an article that violated the integrity of his witness. The only way to achieve objectivity, for Matthews, was to acknowledge one’s subjective perspective. Writing to his publisher, Matthews argued that “the full documentary value” of his coverage was lost when the editors altered his submissions for “the apparent necessity of giving more or less equal space to both sides.”{{sfn|Matthews|1939}}

As with Matthews, so too Hemingway. Indeed the commitment to subjectivity
fit quite well with Hemingway’s modernist aesthetics. If Hemingway
focused the dispatches on his perspective—on his own experience dodging
artillery—more than Matthews and more than most, he did so at least partially
to fulfill expectations. NANA approached him, after all, for his name
and personality as much as whatever he would write. Before he even left the
states it pitched him to potential publications, sending out a promotional release with text to be used alongside his forthcoming dispatches and suggesting
they include a photograph: “Mr. Hemingway’s assignment is to get both from the bombed towns and bombed trenches the human story of the war, not just an account of the game being played by general staffs with pins
and a map.”{{sfn|NANA|1937}} NANA also released each individual dispatch with a one-sentence “precede” about the “famous” or “noted” author. Ernest Hemingway was not writing as Herbert Mathews, ace reporter; Hemingway was writing as Ernest Hemingway, famous author of novels and stories well known to be drawn from his own experiences.

That he understood this to be his assignment is further evidenced by a
cable Matthews sent to his ''Times'' editors on April 9, 1937, concerning the
Loyalist attack: “WORKED CONJOINTLY WITH HEMINGWAY TODAY HE SENDING EYEWITNESS DESCRIPTION WHILE EYE SENT GENERAL STRATEGY.”{{sfn|Matthews|1937a}}When a year later the ''Times'' asked NANA to ensure Hemingway’s reports differed from Matthews, NANA complied by asking Hemingway “to emphasize color rather than straight reporting” not necessarily out of dissatisfaction with Hemingway’s reportage as Baker contends,{{efn|{{harvtxt|Baker|1969}}’s notes date the ''Times'' request to NANA as 8 Apr. 1938, and NANA’s to Hemingway as 15
Apr. 1938 (Princeton University, Firestone Library: Box 18, Folder 8 “1938”), the date of “The Bombing of Tortosa” dispatch.}} but to increase{{pg|431|432}}the chance of selling to the ''Times'' and indeed to ensure the spirit of NANA’s original arrangement with Hemingway. {{sfn|Baker|1969|p=329}}Far from dissatisfied, NANA wrote Hemingway at the end of August 1938 a letter of agreement for his coverage of “a general European war” should it break out, “written in your colorful style” (Hemingway was in Paris, on his way to Spain for the last time during the war).{{sfn|Wheeler|1938}}When Edmund Wilson criticized the selected dispatches reprinted in ''Fact'', Hemingway wrote him that “I was paid to write what are called ‘eye witness’ accounts . . .what is called, or was asked for as ‘color stuff.’ Most of such stuff is faked. Mine was not. It was straight reporting and the personal stuff was what had been asked for by the editors. “Wilson’s estimation was also based upon ''Fact’s'' inclusion of the “The Old Man at the Bridge” story from ''Ken'', “not a news dispatch” at all.{{sfn|Hemingway|1938a}}Speaking at Carnegie Hall before the showing of a rough cut of ''The Spanish Earth'', shortly after his first trip to Spain and so very much in the context of his wartime work, Hemingway defined the writer’s problem as “project[ing] [what is true] in such a way that it becomes a part of the experience of the person who reads it.”{{sfn|Hemingway|2002|p=193}}

Personal, anecdotal journalism had been Hemingway’s signature style from his earliest days filing reports, in the early 1920s from Paris, when his editor at the ''Toronto Star Weekly'' “encouraged [. . .] what Hemingway did best: write about himself in the act of being a reporter.”{{sfn|Reynolds|1989|p=45}}How could he expect that NANA would expect anything else, if indeed NANA did expect anything else? In the Spanish Civil War he at least maintained his eyewitness posture; in World War II, however, he couldn’t keep himself out. His first piece, about D-Day, begins, “No one remembers the date of the Battle of Shiloh. But the day ''we took'' Fox Green beach was the sixth of June, and the wind was blowing hard out of the northwest.”{{sfn|Hemingway|1967|p=340}}His venue too—''Collier’s'' magazine—and the fact that he had not written anything in three years further contributed to the story-like nature of the WWII stories, in which he figured as a protagonist—not to mention the stories and involvement he couldn’t write about, armed and running around France more of a free agent than his guerilla-hero Robert Jordan ever was (though he began to transform these experiences into fiction in several unpublished stories). In wartime China in 1943, filing articles for Ralph Ingersoll’s short-lived ''PM'' New York afternoon daily, Hemingway did not even care to be called a news reporter.{{sfn|Moreira|2006|p=99}}

It should be mentioned that Hemingway and Matthews enjoyed a great{{pg|432|433}}friendship and working relationship. Hemingway usually brought Matthews, who did not have a car, on his excursions. When Matthews left Madrid for a break in mid April 1937, he had already ensured Hemingway would provide coverage to the ''Times'' through NANA. For one thing, Hemingway did not have to worry about Matthews as a rival for the history books. He could endorse his friends’ book, ''Two Wars and More to Come'', and praise him as “the ablest and the bravest war correspondent writing today “who “when the fakers are all dead [. . .] will be read in the schools” (Advertisement 21) because Matthews posed no threat to Hemingway’s own chances to be read in the schools. The only brief Hemingway ever expressed he really reserved for Matthews’ editors, for not wanting his Teruel street-fighting story and for cutting references to himself in Matthews’ Teruel dispatches so that it appeared only Matthews had been there.{{sfn|Hemingway|2003|p=462}}

As for Hemingway’s neglecting to name everyone with him for every story, the ''Times'' cutting of his name suggests that such exactitude was hardly a priority. A paper had no incentive for announcing the fact that a competitor’s
correspondent stood beside its own to see and report the same
events. NANA changed at least one vague Hemingway “we,” which admits
to the presence of others, to “this correspondent”
—we can hardly fault Hemingway for working in the spirit of his
employer’s standards.{{sfn|NANA|1938}}{{efn|“we” in typescript and radiogram (Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, University of Texas-Austin: Ernest Hemingway Collection Box 1 Folder 1 and Folder 25).}} Do readers care that Matthews, Delmer, Gellhorn,
and others were there? The story’s effect and the limited word count also
weighed against such roll calls. One editor chose not to clutter the dispatch
on the great retreat across the Ebro with all the names of the American International Brigade volunteers Hemingway encountered, an omission of
Content more far serious than that of omitted correspondent names.{{efn| Radiogram insert dateline 4 April 1938 (HRC: Ernest Hemingway Collection Box 1 Folder 25).}} Hemingway
often gave the names of the reporters with him, such as at Teruel;
nor was he the only reporter to sometimes neglect to do so. Martha Gellhorn,
for example, used a vague “we” and singled herself out as the primary
participant in some of her stories.

By using first-person reportage Hemingway—and Matthews and Gellhorn And most of the group covering the war—were operating solidly within
convention. William Stott, in ''Documentary Expression and Thirties America'',
calls this first-person ''participant observer'' technique “the most common sort
of documentary reportage in the thirties” that worked “by vicarious persuasion:
the writer partook of the events he reported and bared his feelings
and attitudes to influence the reader’s own.”{{sfn|Stott|1986|pp=178-9}}{{efn|He specifically includes Hemingway et al (180). {{harvtxt|Stott|1986}}}} Stott also observes {{pg|433|434}}another technique to enable documentary reportage to “talk to us, and convince us that we, our deepest interests, are engaged,” in the use of the second person: “Thirties documentaries constantly address ‘you,’ the ‘you’ who is we the audience, and exhorts, wheedles, begs us to identify, pity, participate.” His examples include Dorothy Parker’s Spanish Civil War writing, and Hemingway’s 1935 “First-Hand Report on the Florida Hurricane.”{{sfn|Stott|1986|pp=27-8}} A number of Hemingway’s NANA dispatches employ the second-person as a way of bringing the reader along for the ride.

Hemingway’s dispatches used personal pronouns more artfully than is generally recognized. “A New Kind of War,” which William Braasch Watson notes as having been “[w]ritten with more care and imagination” than its predecessors, begins in second person: “The window of the hotel is open and, as you lie in bed, you hear the firing in the front line seventeen blocks away.”{{sfn|Watson|1988|p=29}} He takes “you” outside, to see the damage and the dead from the bombing. “Someone makes a joke about missing teeth and someone else says not to make that joke. And everyone has the feeling that characterizes war. It wasn’t me, see? It wasn’t me.”{{sfn|Watson|1988|p=30}} The tension between the first person and second-person pronouns—the movement toward identification with “you” and the insistence that “it wasn’t me”—continues in the next line. Here the reader is at once still in the narrator’s shoes, but strangely distanced from the narrator through biographical tidbit and, at the same time, asked to see himself in the enemy: “The Italian dead up on the Guadalajara weren’t you although Italian dead, because of where you had spent your boyhood, always seemed, still, like Our Dead.”{{sfn|Watson|1988|p=30}} It is worth quoting at length the dispatch’s transition to first person:
<blockquote>
After the shell that lit on the sidewalk in front of the hotel you got a beautiful double corner room on that side, twice the size of the one you’d had, for less than a dollar. It wasn’t me they killed. See? No. Not me. It wasn’t me anymore.

Then in a hospital given by the American Friends of Spanish Democracy located out behind the Morata front along the road
to Valencia they said, “Raven wants to see you.”

“Do I know him?”

“I don’t think so,” they said. “But he wants to see you.”

“Where is he?”

“Upstairs.”{{pg|434|435}}In the room upstairs they are giving a blood transfusion to a man with a very gray face who lay on a cot with his arm out looking away from the gurgling bottle and moaning in a very impersonal way. He moaned mechanically and at regular intervals and it did not seem to be him that made the sound. His lips did not move.

“Where’s Raven?” I asked.

“I’m here,” said Raven.{{sfn|Watson|1988|p=31}}</blockquote>
The piece simply could not have sustained the second-person for the remaining five pages. More significantly, for this deeply personal exchange between the writer and the faceless, eyeless soldier, Hemingway could not hide in the rhetorical device of the second-person. In the process, he effects a reversal of the usual pronoun game; instead of identifying with the all embracing “you,” we leave that trick behind and become fully attached to
the narratorial “I” as ourselves, as we might not have been had the article
begun in the first person. And even as the narrator identifies himself by name
for the only time in any of the dispatches—“Hemingway,” and later
“Ernest”—as decidedly not ourselves. We do not say, ''It isn’t me''. The historian
Hugh Thomas notes “the refreshing candour” of Hemingway’s naming
himself “in the world of the International Brigades, where no one’s name
seemed to be truthfully given.”{{sfn|Thomas|2001|p=591}}{{efn|For Watson, the dispatch “seems, in fact, on the verge of becoming a story.”{{harvtxt|Watson|1988|p=29}}}}

A year later Hemingway’s “Tortosa Calmly Awaits Assault” resists admitting
the city’s imminent fall. Yet it does so anyway, by subtly alluding to the
wartime rhetoric of sacrificed blood irrigating the earth and rejuvenating
Spain. Such rhetoric was common during the war, appearing in speeches,
print, and poetry. Many of the poems in Cary Nelson’s anthology ''The Wound
and the Dream: Sixty Years of American Poems about the Civil War'' join in the
Spanish and international chorus’s general connection between Republican
soldiers and the land, and the particular singing of their dead nourishing
the land. We find such language in La Pasionaria’s farewell address to the International Brigades, her epilogue to ''The Book of the XV Brigade'', and Hemingway’s famous eulogy “On the American Dead in Spain”: “For our dead are
a part of the earth of Spain now and the earth of Spain can never die. Each
winter it will seem to die and each spring it will come alive again. Our dead
will live with it forever.”{{sfn|Nelson|1994|p=3}}{{efn| Reprinted in {{harvtxt|Bruccoli|2006|p=76}} and {{harvtxt|Nelson|1994}} ''Remembering'' 37 (the drafts at the JFK are titled “The Dead at Jarama”). In addition to the poems in Nelson’s anthology, see the excerpt from Boris Todrin’s “Spanish Sowing” in {{harvtxt|Guttmann|1962|pp=179-180}}.}} The Tortosa dispatch implies the deaths of{{pg|435|436}}many Republican soldiers in its final paragraph’s description of the newborn onions:
<blockquote>The artillery was picking up a little now. Two came in at a fairly useful place and as the smoke blew away ahead and settled through the trees, you picked an armful of spring onions from a field beside the trail that led to the Tortosa road. They were the first onions of the spring and peeling one I found they were plump white and not too strong. The Ebro Delta has a fine rich land, and where the onions grow, tomorrow will be a battle.
{{sfn|Watson|1988|p=84}}</blockquote>

The echo is quiet, and perhaps unconscious, but there nevertheless. The opening boastfulness of “American Veterans Tell of Escaping Insurgents”
should be taken somewhat ironically. The dispatch begins by announcing
that for “two days we have been doing the most dangerous thing
you can do in this war. That is keep close behind an unstabilized line where
the enemy are attacking with mechanized forces.” Then, a few pages later,
we learn about the Abraham Lincoln Brigade survivors of the spring 1938
Nationalist offensive that took Bob Merriman and eventually reached the
Mediterranean Sea. Reading about these survivors creeping through enemy
camps, stepping on a sleeping German soldier’s hand, sprinting “across an
open field toward the Ebro bank and being sniped at by artillery controlled
by an observation plane overhead” and then “the desperate swimming of
the Ebro” naked, we are asked to place the correspondent’s plight in due perspective.{{sfn|Watson|1988|pp=71-2}} This story certainly escapes the charge of a monotonous
battle and bombing scene; its switch from apparently boastful to
awe-struck witness feels almost deliberately self-conscious. Other choice selfironic
moments come in the dispatches of that pre-Teruel quiet fall of 1938.
The one titled “Hemingway, Covering War, Tells of Brush with Death” has little
to report from Madrid other than the new aftershave brand he is trying.
In “Loyalists’ Drive Seen Progressing as Planned,” he writes that “Shells are
all much the same and if they don’t hit you there is no story and if they do
you won’t have to write it.” {{sfn|Watson|1988|p=58}}

Hemingway’s dispatches are sometimes monotonous because his war was
Usually monotonous—as wars are most of the time. It should also be kept in
mind that scholars reviewing Hemingway’s NANA dispatches one after{{pg|436|437}}another do not relive the original reading experience. Hemingway wrote dispatches sporadically, papers did not run all of his dispatches, papers edited and cut them, and readers read at least a couple of papers’ worth of other articles in between. He told Edmund Wilson as much in defending himself against Wilson’s critique of the selected (and heavily edited and cut) dispatches reprinted in ''Fact'' without his consent: “If you are being paid to be shot at and write about it you are supposed to mention the shooting. [. . .] But I do not go in for re-printing journalism.”{{sfn|Hemingway|1938a}}

If we can in this way better understand his style, and at least explain it if
not excuse it, we similarly ought to try to contextualize—and perhaps
excuse—the moral problem. The two issues here are the specific condemnation
of Hemingway’s silence about Republican atrocities and the general
question of biased reporting (the latter of which has already partially been
addressed).

Hemingway knew, as Donaldson writes, that mentioning the atrocities
“would arouse anticommunist sentiments back in the States and effectively
undermine any possibility of American intervention.”{{sfn|Donaldson|2009|p=394}} It is also doubtful
that reporting them would have stopped them. But reporting Republican
atrocities from Spain was not possible for the simple reason that all dispatches
went through a government censor. Matthews cabled his editors
from Paris in May 1937 to tell them that “censorship does not permit us to
say when the ‘telefonica’ is hit. So whenever you see reference in my
despatches [sic] to ‘an important building in the center of the city’ or words
to that effect, the cable desk can know that it is the telefonica.” {{sfn|Matthews|1937c}} As already noted, by July he would cable “CENSORSHIP
STRICTER” as the ban on mentioning internationals went into effect. {{sfn|Matthews|1937d}}{{sfn|Matthews|1937e}} Cowles’ memoir confirms the
aggressive censorship, observing that it limited journalists to exactly the kind of material Hemingway wrote about:
<blockquote>There were frequent attempts to “beat the censor” by employing American slang expressions, but this came to an end when a Canadian girl joined the staff. The International Brigades were not allowed to be publicized; no reference could be made to Russian armaments, and buildings and streets which suffered
bombardments could not be identified.</blockquote>{{pg|437|438}}<blockquote>It was only in the realm of the human interest story that the journalists had a free hand. They could describe bombardments to their heart’s content.{{sfn|Cowles|1941|p=20}}</blockquote>
Hemingway and everyone else—to reserve incrimination for Hemingway is hardly just. No correspondent covering Republican Spain reported suspicious imprisonments and disappearances by government agents.

Hemingway, through Joris Ivens and ''The Spanish Earth'' project, had better
access to officials than most. Had he been able somehow to report such
activity, he would have lost that access and would probably have been kicked
out of the country. His fame would have likely prevented his own officially
sponsored disappearance, though he still worried, especially as so many of
such crimes on the Republican side occurred from free agents. When Jasper
Wood printed the anarchist F.A.I. banner in the limited edition book version
of ''The Spanish Earth'', Hemingway expressed his anxieties bluntly in a letter
to Jasper on August 20, 1938. It is hardly “petulant,” he scolded, “not to wish
to be shot.”{{sfn|Davison|1988|p=128}} Hostility in the Republic against the anarchists
ran high; after the Barcelona May Day conflict, the government’s foreign
minister told U.S. Ambassador Claude Bowers that “anarchist revolt
throughout Catalonia and not only expected but welcomed as an opportunity
to liquidate the anarchists who have been hostile from the beginning.”
{{sfn|United States|1954|p=292}}{{efn| The Ambassador in Spain (Bowers), then in France, to the Secretary of State, 5 May 1937.}}

It is possible that Hemingway’s dispatch stating that “not one friend [. . .]
has been executed or is missing” was his clever means of reporting
the rumors and indeed the general fact while evading the censors, as in this very dispatch he acknowledged the presence of a censor after a bombardment.{{sfn|Watson|1988|p=34}}
Matthews, on the other hand, never found a way to mention the
censors or admit even the possibility of people gone missing in the Republic.
Peter Moreira has observed that in a 1943 dispatch Hemingway related a remark by a British officer about the Chinese Nationalist government’s being
“hopeless on the offensive” because censorship “prevented American reporters
From actually saying that the Nationalists wouldn’t attack, surmising that by telling this anecdote Hemingway could sneak such a judgment into
his reports.”{{sfn|Moreira|2006|p=77}} In Spain, censors aside, the eyewitness standard and his
own safety and continuing ability to report the war, and, yes, his passionate
support of the government contributed to his decision. He could have written
about government abuses from the states, but then could not return to{{pg|438|439}}cover the war and support the cause—a justification other journalists, those who did not return after the spring of 1937, did not enjoy. In his mind too, knowing what he heard of fascist atrocities, any reportage against the government lessening its chances of victory through killing hopes of increased international aid would have led to more deaths at Franco’s hands that the much smaller number inspired by fifth column paranoia.{{efn|''Hemingway’s Second War'' discusses in greater depth Hemingway’s politics and his falling out
with John Dos Passos over the execution of José Robles.}}

The accusation that Hemingway did not write about Republican atrocities
because he was saving it for his fiction I find baseless.{{sfn|Knightley|2004|p=232}}{{sfn|Baker|1969|p=402}}{{efn|Hemingway’s casual comment to colleagues calling dibs on Pepe Quintanilla, the executioner of
Madrid, is not sufficient evidence.}}Carolyn Moorehead, in her biography of Martha Gellhorn, describes
the climate for the Madrid correspondents that first spring: “And so,
day by day, the correspondents walked a thin and nervous line between truth,
evasions, and propaganda, telling one another that though it was not all right
if things were made up and presented as true, it was acceptable to describe
what you wanted, provided it was true and provided your readers were aware
of your position.”{{sfn|Moorehead|2003|p=125}} My own sense is that they did not walk the line quite
so nervously; their passionate commitment, and their principles of position
disclosure and the eyewitness standard, made that walk relatively easy.

The problem of ''committed journalism'', even sixty years later, has not been
resolved—as anyone paying attention to the media and world affairs well
knows. One person’s truth is another person’s propaganda. Certainly, as
Knightley notes, reporting from “the heart” affects one’s judgment.{{sfn|Knightley|2004|pp=234-5}}
Yet to attempt “balance,” per the edits to Matthews’ Guadalajara piece, betrays
one’s believed truth. Furthermore, the kind of reporting done by the
correspondents with the Republic—committed, one-sided, optimistic,
heroic, human interest work by embedded writers—would be practiced
widely and without reserve during World War II. Such narrative journalism,
with roots in Louise May Alcott’s “Hospital Sketches” series published in the
''Boston Commonwealth'', and more immediately in 1930s social documentary
writing whose “essence” is “not information”, anticipated postwar
new journalism’s adoption of novelistic narrative technique for nonfiction
which culminated with such wartime books as Norman Mailer’s ''Armies of
the Night'' and Michael Herr’s ''Dispatches''.{{sfn|Stott|1986|p=11}} Some of Hemingway’s NANA dispatches
fall in this line of development.

Today we might categorize such writing under the awkward umbrella
term ''creative nonfiction''. That term certainly fits the mixed bag of nonfiction
narratives and commentaries Hemingway published during the war in
Ken magazine. These pieces are essays, not journalism, several of which{{pg|439|440}}directly appeal for support for the Republic, and most of which really deal with the approaching world war. ''Ken'' wanted “precisely the kind of opinion articles he could not write for NANA.”{{sfn|Donaldson|2009|p=433}} His article, “The Cardinal Picks a Winner,” shows a photo of a row of dead children from Barcelona and another one with Nationalist officers saluting and Catholic officials with raised hands, apparently making the fascist salute as well. He ends ironically: “So I ''don’t believe'' the people shown in the photo can really be making it. I would rather prefer to think that the photograph was faked.”{{sfn|Donaldson|2009|p=436}} When Hemingway argues in “A Program for U.S. Realism” that the United States should stay out of the next war except to stuff its pockets through arms sales, one has to wonder, given his call and the democratic nations’ failure to save Spain, if we are to sniff sarcasm here.

The language of the dispatches, with their corrective intent against
Franco’s propaganda, does risk propagandizing. Hemingway’s optimism and
anti-fascism certainly colored his correspondence work. His criticism of the
anarchist and POUM militia for their inactivity on the Aragon front, for example,
sounds a lot like the Spanish Communist Party’s.{{efn|It at least sounds almost exactly like Dolores Ibarruri in her memoir. To the anarchists’ complaint
that they had no arms, she retorts “that they had more arms than did many other fronts. . . .
What they didn’t have and what they were constantly demanding were airplanes and tanks .And
they didn’t have them because the Republic government didn’t have them either, except for those
it received as aid from the Soviet Union.”{{harvtxt|Ibarruri|1966|pp=283-4}} Yet the various Catalonia militia were not
as well equipped with small arms as the more regular Popular Army units, and because of the
terrain tanks and planes were in fact necessary.}}
But unlike
Matthews, Hemingway limited his reports within the Republic to military
matters. Hemingway may have generally condemned the anarchists in his
nonfiction, considering their activity as hampering the war effort, but he
never repeated the accusation of their collaboration with the rebels, as
Matthews had done. And when Hemingway commented on the Bareclona
crisis, he referred only to the government—not the communists, as
Matthews had done.{{efn|{{harvtxt|Hemingway|1937}}’s comments in “Hemingway, en Route Home Expects Loyalists to Win” NANA staff
correspondent dispatch. Though arguably he was propagandizing by hiding the communist influence—
to mention the communists to an American audience would not gain sympathy for the
cause.}}Nor did he write articles asserting the limited role of
the communists in the government, or explaining Spanish anarchism, also
as Matthews had done.{{efn|An article on the communists’ limited role appeared in late November 1937, as discussed in a
missive from The Ambassador in Spain (Bowers), then in France, to the Secretary of State on 2
Dec. 1937. Matthews’ “Anarchism: Spain’s Enigma” appeared in the ''New York Times'' 22 Aug. 1937:6, 14.}}

During one of Hemingway’s stateside breaks between trips to Spain, his
children asked if he was a “tool” of Stalin, an accusation tossed by a schoolmate
who, presumably parroting his or her parents, probably understood
the term no better than Hemingway’s children. {{sfn|Hemingway|1938b}}
Hemingway believed in the Republic’s potential, but he was never a dupe of
the Spanish Communist Party (PCE) or Comintern. As did many others, he
accepted PCE’s presence in the government for its discipline and organization
toward winning the war, and he understood the material necessity for
Comintern’s support. It should also be noted, as historians Hugh Thomas
and Helen Graham have reminded us, that the communism associated with
the Republic wasn’t particularly communist anyway.{{sfn|Thomas|2001|p=628}}{{sfn|Graham|2002|p=184}} {{pg|440|441}}

Hemingway declined to follow Joris Ivens’ suggestion that he write a
dispatch on the significant role of the political commissars in the Republican
military, even though that would have meant
featuring his brave new friend Gustav Regler.{{sfn|Ivens|1969}} Hemingway also, in a letter
justifying his work to Jack Wheeler at NANA, wrote about choosing not to
send a dispatch he had written because it might strike readers as propaganda
“no matter how true.”{{sfn|Hemingway|1938b}}

Hemingway went to Spain to see the war himself and to support the Republic
through his ambulance fund. The paychecks from NANA and the
fundraising from ''The Spanish Earth'' helped. Whatever propagandistic streak
colors the dispatches pales in comparison to the documentary. The filmmaker,
Joris Ivens, was well established in European communist circles. The
documentary genre then and now has occupied a slippery position between
the extremes of impossible-to-achieve empirical nonfiction and of the outright
fictionalized. Evaluations of Hemingway’s journalism are informed by
knowledge of ''The Spanish Earth'' and the ''Ken'' essays to the detriment of the
journalism. And the very nature of the slippery documentary genre may enable
the film to escape opprobrium. It wasn’t reportage; it was altogether
something else. But for that matter, Hemingway’s dispatches weren’t purely
reportage either, and if not ''altogether'' something else, still something else,
and should be reckoned with accordingly.

== Notes ==
{{notelist|20em}}

==Citations==
{{Reflist|15em}}

==Works Cited==
{{refbegin|indent=1|20em}}
* {{cite book |last=Baker
|first=Carlos |date=1969 |title= Ernest Hemingway: A Life Story |url= |location=New York |publisher= Scribner |pages= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book
|last=Bruccoli |first=Matthew |date=2006 |title=Hemingway and the Mechanism of Fame |url= |location=Columbia |publisher=U of South Caronia P |pages= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Cowles |first=Virginia |date=1941 |title=Looking for Trouble |url= |location=New York
|publisher=Harper & Brothers |pages= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite journal |last=Davison |first=Richard Allan |title=The Publication of Hemingway’s The Spanish Earth: An Untold Story |url= |journal=Hemingway Review
|volume=7.2 |issue= |date=1988
|pages=122-130 |access-date= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Donaldson
|first=Scott |date=2009 |title=Fitzgerald & Hemingway: Works and Days |url= |location=New York |publisher=Columbia UP |pages= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Franklin |first=Sidney |date=1952 |title=Bullfighter from Brooklyn |url= |location=New York |publisher=Prentice-Hall |pages= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Graham |first=Helen |date=2002 |title=The Spanish Republic at War 1936-1939 |url= |location=Cambridge |publisher=Cambridge UP |pages= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Guttmann |first=Allen |date=1962 |title=The Wound in the Heart: American and the Spanish Civil War |url= |location=New York |publisher=Free Press of Glencoe |pages= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Hemingway |first=Ernest |date=1967 |title=By-Line: Ernest Hemingway |url= |location=New York |publisher=Scibner |pages=
|ref=harv }}
* {{cite journal
|last=Hemingway
|first=Ernest
|editor-last=Trogdon
|editor-first=Robert W.
|author-mask=1
|title=Fascism is a Lie
|url=
|journal=Ernest Hemingway: A Literary Reference |volume==
|issue=
|date=2002
|pages=193-6
|location=New York
|publisher=Carroll & Graf
|access-date=
|ref=harv }}
* {{cite book
|last=Hemingway
|first=Ernest
|author-mask=1
|date=10 May 1937
|chapter=Hemingway, en Route Home Expects Loyalists to Win
|title=TS. Ernest Hemingway Collection
|url=
|location=John F. Kennedy Library, Boston
|publisher=
|pages=
|ref=harv }}
* {{cite book
|last=Hemingway
|first=Ernest
|author-mask=1
|date=nd
|chapter=The Home Front
|title=TS. Ernest Hemingway Collection
|url=
|location=John F. Kennedy Library, Boston
|publisher=
|pages=
|ref=harv }}
* {{cite book
|last=Hemingway
|first=Ernest
|author-mask=1
|date=10 Dec 1938a
|chapter=Letter to Edmund Wilson
|title=TS. Ernest Hemingway Collection
|url=
|location=John F. Kennedy Library, Boston
|publisher=
|pages=
|ref=harv }}
* {{cite book
|last=Hemingway
|first=Ernest
|author-mask=1
|date=2 June 1938b
|chapter=Letter to Jack Wheeler
|title=TS. Ernest Hemingway Collection
|url=
|location=John F. Kennedy Library, Boston
|publisher=
|pages=
|ref=harv }}
* {{cite book
|last=Hemingway
|first=Ernest
|author-mask=1
|date=14 Feb 1939
|chapter=On the American Dead in Spain
|title=TS. New Masses
|url=
|location=John F. Kennedy Library, Boston
|publisher=
|pages=3
|ref=harv }}
* {{cite book
|last=Hemingway
|first=Ernest
|editor-last=Baker
|editor-first=Carlos
|author-mask=1
|date=2003
|chapter=The Hadely Mowrer
|title=Ernest Hemingway: Selected Letters, 1917-1961
|url=
|location=New York
|publisher=Scribner
|pages=462-3
|ref=harv }}
* {{cite book
|last=Ibarruri
|first=Dolores
|date=1966
|title=They Shall Not Pass: The Autobiography of La Pasionaria
|url=
|location=United States
|publisher=International Publishers
|pages=
|ref=harv }}
* {{cite book
|last=Ivens
|first=Joris
|date=1969
|title=The Camera and I
|url=
|location=New York
|publisher=International Publishers
|pages=
|ref=harv }}
* {{cite book
|last=Ivens
|first=Joris
|author-mask=1
|date=26 Apr 1937
|chapter=Letter to Ernest Hemingway
|title=MS. Ernest Hemingway Collection
|url=
|location=John F. Kennedy Library, Boston
|publisher=
|pages=
|ref=harv }}
* {{cite book
|last=James
|first=Edwin
|date=20 Nov 1937a
|chapter=Letter to Bertrand Weaver
|title=MS. Herbert Matthews Collection, Box 1 Folder 4
|url=
|location= Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, University of Texas-Austin
|publisher=
|pages=
|ref=harv }}
* {{cite book
|last=James
|first=Edwin
|author-mask=1
|date=12 Oct 1937b
|chapter=Letter to Herbert Matthews
|title=MS. Herbert Matthews Collection, Box 1 Folder 10
|url=
|location= Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, University of Texas-Austin
|publisher=
|pages=
|ref=harv }}
* {{cite book
|last=James
|first=Edwin
|author-mask=1
|date=25 Apr 1939
|chapter=Letter to M.B. Tenney
|title=MS. Herbert Matthews Collection, Box 1 Folder 10
|url=
|location= Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, University of Texas-Austin
|publisher=
|pages=
|ref=harv }}
* {{cite book
|last=James
|first=Edwin
|author-mask=1
|date=23 Apr 1937c
|chapter=Letter to Sulzberger
|title=MS. Herbert Matthews Collection, Box 1 Folder 3
|url=
|location= Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, University of Texas-Austin
|publisher=
|pages=
|ref=harv }}
* {{cite book
|last=Knightley
|first=Phillip
|date=2004
|title=The First Casualty: The War Correspondent as Hero and Myth-Maker from the Crimea to Iraq
|url=
|location=Baltimore
|publisher=John Hopkins
|pages=
|ref=harv }}
* {{cite book
|last=Matthews
|first=Herbert
|author-mask=
|date=9 Apr 1937a
|chapter=Letter to Edwin James
|title=TS. Herbert Matthews Collection, Box 1 Folder 3
|url=
|location= Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, University of Texas-Austin
|publisher=
|pages=
|ref=harv }}
* {{cite book
|last=Matthews
|first=Herbert
|author-mask=1
|date=11 Apr 1937b
|chapter=Letter to Edwin James
|title=MS. Herbert Matthews Collection, Box 1 Folder 3
|url=
|location= Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, University of Texas-Austin
|publisher=
|pages=
|ref=harv }}
* {{cite book
|last=Matthews
|first=Herbert
|author-mask=1
|date=8 May 1937c
|chapter=Letter to Edwin James
|title=MS. Herbert Matthews Collection, Box 1 Folder 3
|url=
|location= Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, University of Texas-Austin
|publisher=
|pages=
|ref=harv }}
* {{cite book
|last=Matthews
|first=Herbert
|author-mask=1
|date=6 July 1937d
|chapter=Letter to Edwin James
|title=MS. Herbert Matthews Collection, Box 1 Folder 3
|url=
|location= Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, University of Texas-Austin
|publisher=
|pages=
|ref=harv }}
* {{cite book
|last=Matthews
|first=Herbert
|author-mask=1
|date=July 1937e
|chapter=Letter to Edwin James
|title=MS. Herbert Matthews Collection, Box 1 Folder 4
|url=
|location= Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, University of Texas-Austin
|publisher=
|pages=
|ref=harv }}
* {{cite book
|last=Matthews
|first=Herbert
|author-mask=1
|date=22 March 1939
|chapter=Letter to Sulzberger
|title=MS. Herbert Matthews Collection, Box 1 Folder 9
|url=
|location= Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, University of Texas-Austin
|publisher=
|pages=
|ref=harv }}
* {{cite book
|last=McCaw
|first=Raymond
|author-mask=
|date=20 May 1937a
|chapter=Letter to Edwin James
|title=MS. Herbert Matthews Collection, Box 1 Folder 3
|url=
|location=Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, University of Texas-Austin
|publisher=
|pages=
|ref=harv }}
* {{cite book
|last=McCaw
|first=Raymond
|author-mask=1
|date=20 Dec 1937b
|chapter=Letter to Edwin James
|title=MS. Herbert Matthews Collection, Box 1 Folder 5
|url=
|location=Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, University of Texas-Austin
|publisher=
|pages=
|ref=harv }}
* {{cite book
|last=McCaw
|first=Raymond
|author-mask=1
|date=23 Sep 1937c
|chapter=Note to Herbert Matthews
|title=MS. Herbert Matthews Collection, Box 1 Folder 4
|url=
|location= Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, University of Texas-Austin
|publisher=
|pages=
|ref=harv }}
* {{cite book
|last=Moorehead
|first=Caroline
|date=2003
|title=Gellhorn: A Twentieth-Century Life
|url=
|location=New York
|publisher=Henry Holt
|pages=
|ref=harv }}
* {{cite book
|last=Moreira
|first=Peter
|date=2006
|title=Hemingway on the China Front: His WWII Spy Mission with Martha Gellhorn
|url=
|location=Washington D.C.
|publisher=Potomac Books
|pages=
|ref=harv }}
* {{cite book
|last=NANA
|first=
|date=5 Feb 1937
|chapter=Promotion Box: Hemingway, For Immediate Release
|title=TS. Ernest Hemingway Collection
|url=
|location=John F. Kennedy Library, Boston
|publisher=
|pages=
|ref=harv }}
* {{cite book
|last=NANA
|first=
|author-mask=1
|date=4 Apr 1938
|chapter=Promotion Box: American Veterans Tell of Escaping Insurgents
|title=TS. Ernest Hemingway Collection
|url=
|location=John F. Kennedy Library, Boston
|publisher=
|pages=
|ref=harv }}
* {{cite book
|editor-last=Nelson
|editor-first=Card
|date=1994
|title=Remembering Spain: Hemingway’s Civil War Eulogy and the Veterans of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade
|url=
|location=Urbana
|publisher=U of Illinois
|pages=
|ref=harv }}
* {{cite book
|last=Reynolds
|first=Michael
|date=1989
|title=Hemingway: The Paris Years
|url=
|location=New York
|publisher=Norton
|pages=
|ref=harv }}
* {{cite book
|last=Stott
|first=William
|date=1986
|title=Documentary Expression and Thirties America
|url=
|location=Chicago
|publisher=U of Chicago P
|pages=
|ref=harv }}
* {{cite book
|last=Thomas
|first=Hugh
|date=2001
|title=The Spanish Civil War, Rev. ed.
|url=
|location=New York
|publisher=Modern Library
|pages=
|ref=harv }}
* {{cite magazine
|last=''Two Wars and More to Come''
|first=
|date=24 Jan 1938
|title=Best Sellers of the Week Here and Elsewhere
|type=Advertisement
|url=
|magazine=New York Times
|pages=
|access-date=
|ref=harv }}
* {{cite journal
|last=United States
|first=
|title=Dept. of State
|url=
|journal= Foreign Relations of the Untied States, 1937 |volume=1
|issue=General
|date=1954
|pages=
|location=Washington
|publisher=GPO
|access-date=
|ref=harv }}
* {{cite journal
|last=Watson
|first=William Braasch
|title=Hemingway’s Spanish Civil War Dispatches
|url=
|journal=The Hemingway Review |volume=7.2
|issue=
|date=1988
|pages=4-121
|access-date=
|ref=harv }}
* {{cite book
|last=Wheeler
|first=John H.
|author-mask=1
|date=10 Dec 1938
|chapter=Letter to Hemingway
|title=MS. Ernest Hemingway Collection, Box 3 Folder 14
|url=
|location=Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, University of Texas-Austin
|publisher=
|pages=
|ref=harv }}

{{refend}}
{{Review}}
{{DEFAULTSORT:Style, Politics, and Hemingway's Spanish Civil War Dispatches}}
[[Category:Articles (MR)]]

Talk:The Mailer Review/Volume 4, 2010

2025-04-20T23:03:10Z

Tbara4554:

===Article Assignments, Vol. 4===
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{| class="wikitable sortable" style="width: 100%;"
|-
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| Mailer || [[The Mailer Review/Volume 4, 2010/Postscript to the Fourth Advertisement for Myself|Postscript to the Fourth Advertisement for Myself]] || [[User:Grlucas]] || {{tick}}
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| Mailer || [[The Mailer Review/Volume 4, 2010/Hemingway Revisited|Hemingway Revisited]] || [[User:Grlucas]] || {{tick}}
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|-
| Stoneback || [[The Mailer Review/Volume 4, 2010/"Oohh Normie — You're Sooo Hemingway": Mailer Memories and Encounters|Mailer Memories and Encounters]] || [[User:Tbara4554]] || {{tick}}
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| Jacomo || [[The Mailer Review/Volume 4, 2010/Sparring with Norman|Sparing with Norman]] || [[User:Kamyers]] || {{tick}}
|-
| Gordon || [[The Mailer Review/Volume 4, 2010/Encounters with Mailer|Encounters with Mailer]] || [[User:Priley1984]] || {{tick}}
|-
| Vince || [[The Mailer Review/Volume 4, 2010/Rumors of Grace: God-Language in Hemingway and Mailer|Rumors of Grace]] || [[User:Sherrilledwards]] || {{tick}}
|-
| Apple || [[The Mailer Review/Volume 4, 2010/Inside Norman Mailer|Inside Norman Mailer]] || [[User:Chelsey.brantley]] || {{tick}}
|-
| Sinclair || [[The Mailer Review/Volume 4, 2010/Norman Mailer: An Expected Encounter in an Unexpected Place|An Expected Encounter]] || [[User:Wverna]] || {{tick}}
|-
| Klavan || [[The Mailer Review/Volume 4, 2010/On Reading Mailer Too Young|On Reading Mailer Too Young]] || [[User:Essence903m]] || {{tick}}
|-
| Miele || [[The Mailer Review/Volume 4, 2010/What Norman Mailer Taught Me about Combat|What Norman Mailer Taught Me about Combat]] || [[User:TBorel]] [[User:Flowersbloom]] [[User:Tbara4554]]|| {{tick}}
|-
| Vernon || [[The Mailer Review/Volume 4, 2010/Style, Politics, and Hemingway's Spanish Civil War Dispatches|Style, Politics, and Hemingway's Spanish Civil War Dispatches]] || [[User:MerAtticus]] || {{cross}}
|-
| Hooker || [[The Mailer Review/Volume 4, 2010/Norman Mailer: From Orgone Accumulator to Cancer Protection for Schizophrenics|From Orgone Accumulator to Cancer Protection for Schizophrenics]] || [[User:JKilchenmann]] || {{tick}}
|-
| Hinton || [[The Mailer Review/Volume 4, 2010/Advertisements for Others: The Blurbs of Norman Mailer|Advertisements for Others]] || [[User:NrmMGA5108]] || {{tick}}
|-
| Hicks || [[The Mailer Review/Volume 4, 2010/Harlot's Ghost, Bildungsroman, Masculinity and Hemingway|''Harlot’s Ghost'', ''Bildungsroman'', Masculinity and Hemingway]] || [[User:JKilchenmann]] || {{tick}}
|-
| Mercer || [[The Mailer Review/Volume 4, 2010/Automatons and the Atomic Abyss: The Naked and the Dead|Automatons and the Atomic Abyss]] || [[User:MerAtticus]] || {{tick}}
|-
| Westaway || [[The Mailer Review/Volume 4, 2010/“A Noble Pursuit”: The Armies of the Night as Outside Agitator|“A Noble Pursuit”]] || [[User:Chelsey.brantley]] || {{yellow tick}}
|-
| Fox || [[The Mailer Review/Volume 4, 2010/Norris Church Mailer|Norris Church Mailer]] || [[User:Kamyers]] || {{tick}}
|}

Talk:The Mailer Review/Volume 4, 2010

2025-04-20T22:50:54Z

Tbara4554:

===Article Assignments, Vol. 4===
You will need to request an article and user name for {{PM}}. You may click the link to your article below to begin your edits. Status indicators: {{tick}} = complete (ready for final edits and banner removal); {{yellow tick}} = in process; {{cross}} = not started.

{| class="wikitable sortable" style="width: 100%;"
|-
! Author !! Article !! Editor !! Status
|-
| Mailer || [[The Mailer Review/Volume 4, 2010/Postscript to the Fourth Advertisement for Myself|Postscript to the Fourth Advertisement for Myself]] || [[User:Grlucas]] || {{tick}}
|-
| Mailer || [[The Mailer Review/Volume 4, 2010/Hemingway Revisited|Hemingway Revisited]] || [[User:Grlucas]] || {{tick}}
|-
| Lennon || [[The Mailer Review/Volume 4, 2010/Hemingway to Mailer — A Delayed Response to The Deer Park|Hemingway to Mailer]] || [[User:Hobbitonya]] || {{tick}}
|-
| Hemingway || [[The Mailer Review/Volume 4, 2010/Norman, Ernest, and Greg|Norman, Ernest, and Greg]] || [[User:Grlucas]] || {{tick}}
|-
| Begiebing || [[The Mailer Review/Volume 4, 2010/Ernest and Norman: A Dialogue in Two Acts|Ernest and Norman]] || [[User:DSánchez]] || {{tick}}
|-
| Bufithis & Curnutt || [[The Mailer Review/Volume 4, 2010/A Dialogue Essay on Mailer and Hemingway|A Dialogue Essay on Mailer and Hemingway]] || [[User:Grlucas]] [[User:DBond007]] || {{yellow tick}}
|-
| Meredith || [[The Mailer Review/Volume 4, 2010/The American Civil War in The Naked and the Dead and Across the River and Into the Trees|The American Civil War]] || [[User:KaraCroissant]] || {{tick}}
|-
| Shuman || [[The Mailer Review/Volume 4, 2010/Norman vs. Ernest: Influence and Identity|Norman vs. Ernest]] || [[User:MSeleb]] || {{cross}}
|-
| Lowenburg || [[The Mailer Review/Volume 4, 2010/Hooking Off the Jab: Norman Mailer, Ernest Hemingway and Boxing|Hooking Off the Jab]] || [[User:ASpeed]] [[User:DBond007]]|| {{cross}}
|-
| Cirino || [[The Mailer Review/Volume 4, 2010/Norman Mailer's The Fight: Hemingway, Bullfighting, and the Lovely Metaphysics of Boxing|Norman Mailer's ''The Fight'']] || [[User:TWietstruk]] || {{tick}}
|-
| Boddy || [[The Mailer Review/Volume 4, 2010/Mailer, Hemingway, and Boxing|Mailer, Hemingway, and Boxing]] || [[User:JBrown]] || {{cross}}
|-
| Leeds || [[The Mailer Review/Volume 4, 2010/Firearms in the Works of Hemingway and Mailer|Firearms in the Works of Hemingway and Mailer]] || [[User:CVinson]] || {{tick}}
|-
| Plath || [[The Mailer Review/Volume 4, 2010/Jive-Ass Aficionado: Why Are We in Vietnam? and Hemingway's Moral Code|Jive-Ass Aficionado]] || [[User:ADear]] || {{cross}}
|-
| Cappell || [[The Mailer Review/Volume 4, 2010/Hemingway's Jewish Progeny: Roth and Goldstein in ''The Naked and the Dead''|Hemingway's Jewish Progeny]] || [[User:THarris]] || {{cross}}
|-
| Peppard || [[The Mailer Review/Volume 4, 2010/Mailer, Hemingway, and the “Reds”|Mailer, Hemingway, and the “Reds”]] || [[User:KWatson]] || {{tick}}
|-
| Kaufmann || [[The Mailer Review/Volume 4, 2010/Ernest and Norman (Exit Music)|Ernest and Norman (Exit Music)]] || [[User:Flowersbloom]] || {{tick}}
|-
| Justice || [[The Mailer Review/Volume 4, 2010/Authorship and Alienation in Death in the Afternoon and Advertisements for Myself|Authorship and Alienation]] || [[User:APKnight25]] || {{tick}}
|-
| Josephs || [[The Mailer Review/Volume 4, 2010/Mailer's "Footnote to Death in the Afternoon"|Mailer's "Footnote to Death in the Afternoon"]] || [[User:KForeman]] || {{cross}}
|-
| Hays || [[The Mailer Review/Volume 4, 2010/Battles for Regard, Writerly and Otherwise|Battles for Regard]] || [[User:ALedezma]] || {{tick}}
|-
| Gladstein || [[The Mailer Review/Volume 4, 2010/Norman, Papa, and the Autoerotic Construction of Woman|Norman, Papa, and the Autoerotic Construction of Woman]] || [[User:ALedezma]] || {{tick}}
|-
| Batchelor || [[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]] || [[User:DBond007]] || {{tick}}
|-
| Robinson || [[The Mailer Review/Volume 4, 2010/Effects of Trauma on the Narrative Structures of Across the River and Into the Trees and The Naked and the Dead|Effects of Trauma on the Narrative Structures]] ||[[User:Priley1984]] || {{cross}}
|-
| Sanders || [[The Mailer Review/Volume 4, 2010/Death, Art, and the Disturbing: Hemingway and Mailer and the Art of Writing|Death, Art, and the Disturbing]] || [[User:JBawlson]] [[User:CVinson]] || {{cross}}
|-
| Stoneback || [[The Mailer Review/Volume 4, 2010/"Oohh Normie — You're Sooo Hemingway": Mailer Memories and Encounters|Mailer Memories and Encounters]] || [[User:Tbara4554]] || {{tick}}
|-
| Jacomo || [[The Mailer Review/Volume 4, 2010/Sparring with Norman|Sparing with Norman]] || [[User:Kamyers]] || {{tick}}
|-
| Gordon || [[The Mailer Review/Volume 4, 2010/Encounters with Mailer|Encounters with Mailer]] || [[User:Priley1984]] || {{tick}}
|-
| Vince || [[The Mailer Review/Volume 4, 2010/Rumors of Grace: God-Language in Hemingway and Mailer|Rumors of Grace]] || [[User:Sherrilledwards]] || {{tick}}
|-
| Apple || [[The Mailer Review/Volume 4, 2010/Inside Norman Mailer|Inside Norman Mailer]] || [[User:Chelsey.brantley]] || {{tick}}
|-
| Sinclair || [[The Mailer Review/Volume 4, 2010/Norman Mailer: An Expected Encounter in an Unexpected Place|An Expected Encounter]] || [[User:Wverna]] || {{tick}}
|-
| Klavan || [[The Mailer Review/Volume 4, 2010/On Reading Mailer Too Young|On Reading Mailer Too Young]] || [[User:Essence903m]] || {{tick}}
|-
| Miele || [[The Mailer Review/Volume 4, 2010/What Norman Mailer Taught Me about Combat|What Norman Mailer Taught Me about Combat]] || [[User:TBorel]] [[User:Flowersbloom]][[User:Tbara4554]]|| {{cross}}
|-
| Vernon || [[The Mailer Review/Volume 4, 2010/Style, Politics, and Hemingway's Spanish Civil War Dispatches|Style, Politics, and Hemingway's Spanish Civil War Dispatches]] || [[User:MerAtticus]] || {{cross}}
|-
| Hooker || [[The Mailer Review/Volume 4, 2010/Norman Mailer: From Orgone Accumulator to Cancer Protection for Schizophrenics|From Orgone Accumulator to Cancer Protection for Schizophrenics]] || [[User:JKilchenmann]] || {{tick}}
|-
| Hinton || [[The Mailer Review/Volume 4, 2010/Advertisements for Others: The Blurbs of Norman Mailer|Advertisements for Others]] || [[User:NrmMGA5108]] || {{tick}}
|-
| Hicks || [[The Mailer Review/Volume 4, 2010/Harlot's Ghost, Bildungsroman, Masculinity and Hemingway|''Harlot’s Ghost'', ''Bildungsroman'', Masculinity and Hemingway]] || [[User:JKilchenmann]] || {{tick}}
|-
| Mercer || [[The Mailer Review/Volume 4, 2010/Automatons and the Atomic Abyss: The Naked and the Dead|Automatons and the Atomic Abyss]] || [[User:MerAtticus]] || {{tick}}
|-
| Westaway || [[The Mailer Review/Volume 4, 2010/“A Noble Pursuit”: The Armies of the Night as Outside Agitator|“A Noble Pursuit”]] || [[User:Chelsey.brantley]] || {{yellow tick}}
|-
| Fox || [[The Mailer Review/Volume 4, 2010/Norris Church Mailer|Norris Church Mailer]] || [[User:Kamyers]] || {{tick}}
|}

User talk:Grlucas

2025-04-20T22:46:03Z

Tbara4554: Added final edit request for what norman mailer taught me about combat

{{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)
::::@[[User:Grlucas|Grlucas]]. Thank you for your feedback. A review of article additions was made for source pages. [[User:ALedezma|ALedezma]] ([[User talk:ALedezma|talk]]) 20:22, 11 April 2025 (EDT)
:::::{{Reply to| ALedezma}} ok, looking good. I made some corrections. There's one final thing to do: no footnotes should appear in the notes section; use {{tl|harvtxt}} instead; I did one to show you how to use the template. Thanks. —[[User:Grlucas|Grlucas]] ([[User talk:Grlucas|talk]]) 13:39, 12 April 2025 (EDT)
::::::@[[User:Grlucas|Grlucas]] Changes were done to footnote sources. Thank you! [[User:ALedezma|ALedezma]] ([[User talk:ALedezma|talk]]) 19:59, 12 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)
::{{Reply to|Grlucas}} Final edit and no errors with some help from @NRMMGA5108, @JKilchenmann. Please mark me as complete. On to help someone else with the things I've learned
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]]) 17:52, 13 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)
:::::{{reply to| CVinson}} sorry, I'm just getting back to it. There are quite a few punctuation errors. Some left out and others appear after the {{tl|sfn}}. I'm trying to correct those I see, but you should have a look, too. Page is designated as <code>p=</code> in {{tl|sfn}}, not <code>pg=</code>; and a span of pages needs <code>pp=</code>. Again, I have tried to correct these. I removed the banner, but please have another look through. Thanks. —[[User:Grlucas|Grlucas]] ([[User talk:Grlucas|talk]]) 13:01, 12 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)
:{{Reply to| MerAtticus}} all parenthetical citations must be remediated to {{tl|sfn}}; none of yours are. Get these done, then we can worry about the errors. (Some notes on sources: any generic <code><nowiki>{{citation}}</nowiki></code> will not be correct. I see you have a book review by Marshall that has no source (I tried to find the original and cannot; this is a weird citation; I'll continue to look for it). There's also one that looks like a film that should use the [[w:Template:Cite AV media|<code>Cite AV media</code> template]].) Thanks. —[[User:Grlucas|Grlucas]] ([[User talk:Grlucas|talk]]) 13:16, 12 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)
::{{Reply to|Grlucas}}I believe I have completed these fixes, so the article is again ready for review. [[User:Sherrilledwards|Sherrilledwards]] ([[User talk:Sherrilledwards|talk]]) 15:49, 12 April 2025 (EDT)
:::{{Reply to| Sherrilledwards}} truly exceptional work—a model remediation! Marked as complete. —[[User:Grlucas|Grlucas]] ([[User talk:Grlucas|talk]]) 09:30, 13 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)
::{{Reply to| NrmMGA5108}} it looks great. I removed the banner! Thank you. —[[User:Grlucas|Grlucas]] ([[User talk:Grlucas|talk]]) 13:29, 12 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)
:{{Reply to| THarrell}} much better. Periods go inside quotations marks; I think I fixed these, but please check. Also, there are no spaces before footnotes; again, I did a find/replace, but you should check. Also, check that all titles of novels are italicized (if it's italicized in the PDF, then it has to be italicized in the remediation, including abbreviations, like ''Naked''); I fixed a couple. Also, no extra spaces; there should only be a single blank space between paragraphs. There are quite a few little details that needed (need?) fixing. I removed the banner, but please check my work. Thanks! —[[User:Grlucas|Grlucas]] ([[User talk:Grlucas|talk]]) 12:41, 12 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)
@Grlucs, per your suggestions, I've made the corrections. Please review. I look forward to your feedback. Thank you.
:{{Reply to| KForeman}} looking better. All parenthetical page numbers should be removed and added to the {{tl|sfn}}. Check your page numbers in {{tl|pg}}. Footnotes should have no spaces around them; periods and commas go ''inside'' quotation marks and before the footnotes. Thanks. —[[User:Grlucas|Grlucas]] ([[User talk:Grlucas|talk]]) 10:28, 19 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)
:::{{Reply to|DBond007}} looking better! There are still items to be seen to, like titles on novels and magazines need to appear like they do in the original: if it's italicized in the PDF, it must be italicized on the web. I added the epigram for you and corrected that pesky citation. Thanks. —[[User:Grlucas|Grlucas]] ([[User talk:Grlucas|talk]]) 08:41, 12 April 2025 (EDT)
::{{Reply to| Grlucas}}I have completed edits. I went through and took out quotes around The Time Machine, except for one instance that the author uses them. All my other titles seem to correspond to the original article. Please let me know if I missed something. Thank you for the epigram and the pesky citation correction. Best, [[User:DBond007|DBond007]] ([[User talk:DBond007|talk]]) 15:25, 17 April 2025 (EDT)
:::{{Reply to|DBond007}} received, and good work. I had to clean up the sources a bit, so you might want to have a look. Thanks! —[[User:Grlucas|Grlucas]] ([[User talk:Grlucas|talk]]) 07:42, 18 April 2025 (EDT)
::{{Reply to| Grlucas}}I went back and reviewed some of the other articles marked complete to compare and look for remaining revisions. I made one change on Works Cited and also added the page numbers to correspond to the pdf. Let's try this again. Again, I *believe I am finished with this article. Best,[[User:DBond007|DBond007]] ([[User talk:DBond007|talk]]) 10:36, 18 April 2025 (EDT)

Hopefully this works!. I'm not sure how to reply to other threads, but I was scrolling through the PDF and noticed the publisher is Iowa Pres? Just curious if it's supposed to be Iowa Press? [[User:Wverna|Wverna]] ([[User talk:Wverna|talk]]) 22:33, 18 April 2025 (EDT)
:{{Reply to| Wverna}} I'm not sure what you're talking about. Perhaps if you included a link to the article? See [[w:Help:Talk pages|Talk page guidelines]] if you don't know how to use them. Thanks. —[[User:Grlucas|Grlucas]] ([[User talk:Grlucas|talk]]) 10:33, 19 April 2025 (EDT)
Just kidding, I responded to the wrong "Bell Tolls' article. I was referring to this one: https://projectmailer.net/pm/The_Mailer_Review/Volume_5,_2011/Tolls_of_War:_Mailerian_Sub-Texts_in_For_Whom_the_Bell_Tolls sorry about that! [[User:Wverna|Wverna]] ([[User talk:Wverna|talk]]) 17:49, 19 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 articles: [http://The_Mailer_Review/Volume_4,_2010/Encounters_with_Mailer Encounters with Mailer].

&

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

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)
:{{Reply to|JHadaway}} excellent. Many thanks! —[[User:Grlucas|Grlucas]] ([[User talk:Grlucas|talk]]) 07:15, 12 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)
:{{Reply to|ADavis}} great work. Thank you! —[[User:Grlucas|Grlucas]] ([[User talk:Grlucas|talk]]) 07:26, 12 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)
:{{reply to|LogansPop22}} sorry if I missed that. [[The Mailer Review/Volume 5, 2011/Hemingway and Women at the Front: Blowing Bridges in The Fifth Column, For Whom the Bell Tolls, and Other Works|this article]], right? It's looking great, though all the parenthetical citations must be converted to footnotes using {{tl|sfn}} and some of the author names in your notes should use {{tl|harvtxt}}. I added the "citations" section for you. Thanks. —[[User:Grlucas|Grlucas]] ([[User talk:Grlucas|talk]]) 07:39, 12 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)
:{{Reply to| TPoole}} Looking really good, and this is a complicated one. A couple of things: no spaces or line breaks before or after {{tl|pg}}; I removed the spaces before {{tl|sfn}}, but you might want to check them; there are some typos, like missing spaces before some parentheses; no footnotes should appear in the notes section: use {{tl|harvtxt}} instead. And all the red errors at the bottom need to be cleared up. Great work so far! —[[User:Grlucas|Grlucas]] ([[User talk:Grlucas|talk]]) 08:00, 12 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)
:{{Reply to|MerAtticus}} getting closer. A few things: you should use <code>|author-mask=1</code> for repeated author names in your works cited; all parenthetical citations need to be replaced with footnotes using {{tl|sfn}}; must punctuation in your sources need to be removed as the templates do that for you; and you need to use {{tl|harvtxt}} for citations in your endnotes. Also, letters and films have their own templates. I did a couple of these for you as examples. Thanks! —[[User:Grlucas|Grlucas]] ([[User talk:Grlucas|talk]]) 08:14, 12 April 2025 (EDT)

== "Remembering Norris" Tribute Remediation ==

Dr. Lucas, I have finished [[The Mailer Review/Volume 5, 2011/Tributes to Norris Church Mailer/Remembering Norris|"Remembering Norris"]] by Margo Howard.—[[User:JHadaway|JHadaway]] ([[User talk:JHadaway|talk]]) 09:20, 12 April 2025 (EDT)
:{{Reply to| JHadaway}} excellent! Thank you. —[[User:Grlucas|Grlucas]] ([[User talk:Grlucas|talk]]) 09:35, 13 April 2025 (EDT)

== Norman Mailer: From Orgone Accumulator to Cancer Protection for Schizophrenics ==

Dr. Lucas,

The following article is ready for your review:
https://projectmailer.net/pm/The_Mailer_Review/Volume_4,_2010/Norman_Mailer:_From_Orgone_Accumulator_to_Cancer_Protection_for_Schizophrenics

I was unable to find the correct format for the first works cited entry under Mailer. It is a reprint of a magazine article. Thank you. [[User:JKilchenmann|JKilchenmann]] ([[User talk:JKilchenmann|talk]]) 16:28, 12 April 2025 (EDT)
:{{Reply to| JKilchenmann}} you are a master remediator! Thank you for going above and beyond. —[[User:Grlucas|Grlucas]] ([[User talk:Grlucas|talk]]) 09:44, 13 April 2025 (EDT)

==Tolls of War: Mailerian Sub-Texts in For Whom the Bell Tolls, Trust & Sparring with Norman==
Dr. Lucas, these were some of the smaller ones, so I went ahead and knocked them out. They are ready for review: [[The Mailer Review/Volume 4, 2010/Sparring with Norman|Sparring with Norman]], [[The Mailer Review/Volume 5, 2011/Trust|Trust]], and [[The Mailer Review/Volume 5, 2011/Tolls of War: Mailerian Sub-Texts in For Whom the Bell Tolls|Tolls of War: Mailerian Sub-Texts in For Whom the Bell Tolls]]. —[[User:Kamyers|Kamyers]] ([[User talk:Kamyers|talk]]) 10:27, 13 April 2025 (EDT)
:{{Reply to| Kamyers}} all excellent—above and beyond! Thanks. —[[User:Grlucas|Grlucas]] ([[User talk:Grlucas|talk]]) 10:56, 13 April 2025 (EDT)

== Remediation for ''Death, Art, and the Disturbing: Hemingway and Mailer and the Art of Writing'' ==

Hi everyone,
I am currently helping with the article, [https://projectmailer.net/pm/The_Mailer_Review/Volume_4,_2010/Death,_Art,_and_the_Disturbing:_Hemingway_and_Mailer_and_the_Art_of_Writing Death, Art, and the Disturbing: Hemingway and Mailer and the Art of Writing]. It still has a good bit to go, if anyone wants to help out.
—[[User:CVinson|CVinson]] ([[User talk:Grlucas|talk]]) 5:17 PM, 13 April 2025 (EDT)
:{{Reply to|CVinson}} thanks! I added the author info. I'm not sure many will see your request; you might want to post it on the forum. Thanks. —[[User:Grlucas|Grlucas]] ([[User talk:Grlucas|talk]]) 14:56, 14 April 2025 (EDT)
::{{Reply to|Grlucas}} Thank you for adding the author information and I have posted the request in the forum. Thank you! —[[User:CVinson|CVinson]] ([[User talk:CVinson|talk]]) 6:53 PM, 14 April 2025 (EDT)

== Mimi and Mercer ==

{{reply to|Grlucas}}
I have corrected the Mimi Gladstein [[The Mailer Review/Volume 5, 2011/Piling On: Norman Mailer’s Utilization of Marilyn Monroe]] and removed all the red errors. I also have finishe the Erin Mercer article [[The Mailer Review/Volume 4, 2010/Automatons and the Atomic Abyss: The Naked and the Dead]], except the ''The Naked and the Dead'' in the display title. An error occured.
[[User:MerAtticus|MerAtticus]] ([[User talk:MerAtticus|talk]]) 19:26, 13 April 2025 (EDT)
:{{Reply to| MerAtticus}} good work. There should be no footnotes in the endnotes, please. Since this is the only thing to correct, I have removed the banner, but please let me know when you made that final correction. Thanks! (I will respond about your second article shortly.) —[[User:Grlucas|Grlucas]] ([[User talk:Grlucas|talk]]) 14:59, 14 April 2025 (EDT)
:{{Reply to| MerAtticus}} your second article looks good. Could you use the [[w:Template:Cite interview|Template:Cite interview]] for interviews. I did one for you. Thanks! —[[User:Grlucas|Grlucas]] ([[User talk:Grlucas|talk]]) 16:33, 14 April 2025 (EDT)

== Through the Lens of the Beatniks Remediation ==

Hello, Dr. Lucas! I've completed the remediation of [[The_Mailer_Review/Volume_5,_2011/Through_the_Lens_of_the_Beatniks:_Norman_Mailer_and_Modern_American_Man’s_Quest_for_Self-Realization#CITEREFNaked1992|Through the Lens of the Beatniks]]. I wasn't able to get the letter citations exactly how I thought they should be. If there's anything I'm missing, please let me know! Thanks! [[User:Maggiemrogers|Maggiemrogers]] ([[User talk:Maggiemrogers|talk]]) 10:09, 14 April 2025 (EDT)
:{{Reply to| Maggiemrogers}} got it! It looks great. I made some format changes, but you did a great job! —[[User:Grlucas|Grlucas]] ([[User talk:Grlucas|talk]]) 15:58, 14 April 2025 (EDT)

== Finish Mimi ==

{{reply to|Grlucas}}

I have made the final edit to Mimi and removed the footnotes from the endnotes. [[The_Mailer_Review/Volume_5,_2011/Piling_On:_Norman_Mailer’s_Utilization_of_Marilyn_Monroe]] [[User:MerAtticus|MerAtticus]] ([[User talk:MerAtticus|talk]]) 15:50, 14 April 2025 (EDT)
:{{Reply to| MerAtticus}} you removed all the citations. Only '''footnotes''' need to be removed, but citations need to stay. I did the first note for you (now erased, but you can see it in the history) so you could see how it was done. You can also see [[The Mailer Review/Volume 4, 2010/Rumors of Grace: God-Language in Hemingway and Mailer|this one]]. Thanks. —[[User:Grlucas|Grlucas]] ([[User talk:Grlucas|talk]]) 16:52, 14 April 2025 (EDT)

== Completed? All You Need is Glove ==

Hi Dr. Lucas, I believe the book review, [[The_Mailer_Review/Volume_4,_2010/All_You_Need_is_Glove|All You Need is Glove]] is done and ready for review! [[User:Hobbitonya|Hobbitonya]] ([[User talk:Hobbitonya|talk]]) 19:10, 14 April 2025 (EDT)
:{{Reply to| Hobbitonya}} awesome work! Banner removed, and many thanks! —[[User:Grlucas|Grlucas]] ([[User talk:Grlucas|talk]]) 09:08, 16 April 2025 (EDT)

== Harv and Sfn no-target ==

{{reply to|Grlucas}}
I changed the citations in the article to interview and I tried a few things to get rid of the Harv and Sfn no-target with little luck. [[The_Mailer_Review/Volume_4,_2010/Automatons_and_the_Atomic_Abyss:_The_Naked_and_the_Dead]]
[[User:MerAtticus|MerAtticus]] ([[User talk:MerAtticus|talk]]) 21:04, 14 April 2025 (EDT)
:{{Reply to| MerAtticus}} this was because your interviews had no dates. Most are from Lennon's book, published in 1988. I added the dates to the citations, but the sfn footnotes need to be fixed to correspond with those. Thanks! —[[User:Grlucas|Grlucas]] ([[User talk:Grlucas|talk]]) 09:24, 16 April 2025 (EDT)
::{{Reply to| MerAtticus}} OK, between your fixes and my little tweaks, this one is finished! Thanks. —[[User:Grlucas|Grlucas]] ([[User talk:Grlucas|talk]]) 09:50, 17 April 2025 (EDT)

== Erros fixed ==

{{reply to|Grlucas}}
I have fixed all citation errors in both articles and added the harvtxt. Atomic Abyss still has the Pages using duplicate arguments in template calls error.
[[The_Mailer_Review/Volume_4,_2010/Automatons_and_the_Atomic_Abyss:_The_Naked_and_the_Dead]]
:{{Reply to|MerAtticus}} see above. These still need fixing. —[[User:Grlucas|Grlucas]] ([[User talk:Grlucas|talk]]) 09:35, 16 April 2025 (EDT)

[[The_Mailer_Review/Volume_5,_2011/Piling_On:_Norman_Mailer’s_Utilization_of_Marilyn_Monroe]]
:{{Reply to|MerAtticus}} this one looks great! Thanks! —[[User:Grlucas|Grlucas]] ([[User talk:Grlucas|talk]]) 09:35, 16 April 2025 (EDT)

[[User:MerAtticus|MerAtticus]] ([[User talk:MerAtticus|talk]]) 08:23, 15 April 2025 (EDT)

== completed: Advertisements for Others ==

Thanks to some classmates helping with the finishing touches, my second article should be ready. [[The_Mailer_Review/Volume_4,_2010/Advertisements_for_Others:_The_Blurbs_of_Norman_Mailer|Advertisements for Others.]]
--[[User:NrmMGA5108|NrmMGA5108]] ([[User talk:NrmMGA5108|talk]]) 19:24, 17 April 2025 (EDT)
:{{reply to| NrmMGA5108}} received, and thank you! —[[User:Grlucas|Grlucas]] ([[User talk:Grlucas|talk]]) 08:15, 18 April 2025 (EDT)

== Two Poems Vol 4 Ready? ==

Hi Dr. Lucas! I think these two poems are ready for review: [[The Mailer Review/Volume 4, 2010/The Boxer in the Park|The Boxer in the Park]] and Norman Mailer and [[The_Mailer_Review/Volume_4,_2010/Norman_Mailer_and_Ernest_Hemingway_Do_Not_Box_in_Heaven|Ernest Hemingway Do Not Box in Heaven]]. The second on says the display title is wrong, but again, I don't know what I am missing there. Thank you![[User:Hobbitonya|Hobbitonya]] ([[User talk:Hobbitonya|talk]]) 09:05, 18 April 2025 (EDT)
:{{Reply to| Hobbitonya}} excellent! Thank you. —[[User:Grlucas|Grlucas]] ([[User talk:Grlucas|talk]]) 10:56, 18 April 2025 (EDT)

== A Dialogue Essay on Mailer and Hemingway ==

Hey,

I see that [[The Mailer Review/Volume 4, 2010/A Dialogue Essay on Mailer and Hemingway|A Dialogue Essay on Mailer and Hemingway]] is missing text. Can you email me a copy or link it as a reply, so I can remediate this article. [[User:APKnight25|APKnight25]] ([[User talk:APKnight25|talk]]) 09:44, 18 April 2025 (EDT)
:{{Reply to| APKnight25}} you may download both volumes’ PDFs on the [https://forum.grlucas.net/t/project-mailer-assignments-remediation-project/88/3?u=grlucas forum]. Thanks! —[[User:Grlucas|Grlucas]] ([[User talk:Grlucas|talk]]) 10:40, 18 April 2025 (EDT)

== Almost complete ==

@grlucas
I've made a ton of progress.
The only thing I have left is going through all of the links to do away with harvtxt and sfn target error and an error for extra text in the author section. I fixed the error about using an "en" dash between years.
I'll still be working on it until tomorrow night, but please take a look: https://projectmailer.net/pm/The_Mailer_Review/Volume_5,_2011/Hemingway_and_Women_at_the_Front:_Blowing_Bridges_in_The_Fifth_Column,_For_Whom_the_Bell_Tolls,_and_Other_Works

@grlucas
I’ve gotten rid of the second of three error messages. Still looking for the harvtxt sfn target error.
[[User:LogansPop22|LogansPop22]] ([[User talk:LogansPop22|talk]]) 14:45, 20 April 2025 (EDT)

== Articles complete ==

@grlucas
I have also made a lot of progress with my articles and luckily received a last minute assit from a few of my class mates. I beleive both volumes to be complete: Vol 4: https://projectmailer.net/pm/The_Mailer_Review/Volume_4,_2010/Mailer,_Hemingway,_and_the_%E2%80%9CReds%E2%80%9D (Which I believe has already been submitted) and 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 (I just received the final error correction from a fellow student.

I also started working on this Vol 4 article once I got back into the system: https://projectmailer.net/pm/The_Mailer_Review/Volume_4,_2010/Style,_Politics,_and_Hemingway%27s_Spanish_Civil_War_Dispatches in my sandbox https://projectmailer.net/pm/User:KWatson/sandbox but another user has already completed it.

Please review my articles and advise what else is needed from me. Thank you [[User:KWatson|KWatson]] ([[User talk:KWatson|talk]]) 15:37, 19 April 2025 (EDT)
:{{Reply to| KWatson}} OK, I already checked the [[The Mailer Review/Volume 4, 2010/Mailer, Hemingway, and the “Reds”|Peppard article]]. For [[The Mailer Review/Volume 5, 2011/Making Masculinity and Unmaking Jewishness: Norman Mailer’s Voice in Wild 90 and Beyond the Law|the Cohen]], the notes are still not quite right. Citations must be logically inserted. Instead of <blockquote>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.” {{harvtxt|Dearborn|1999|p=14}}</blockquote> it should be <blockquote>Mary V. {{harvtxt|Dearborn|1999|p=14}} 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.” </blockquote> See the difference? Please be meticulous on these. Thanks. —[[User:Grlucas|Grlucas]] ([[User talk:Grlucas|talk]]) 09:57, 20 April 2025 (EDT)

== Additional edits ==

Hello! I reformatted all in text citations, did some editing, and added page numbers to [[The Mailer Review/Volume 4, 2010/Mailer, Hemingway, and Boxing|Mailer, Hemingway, and Boxing]]- could you please take a look at the updated page and see if there's anything additional that it needs?

I was also wondering: on this page, I had also recieved confirmation from you that my [[The Mailer Review/Volume 4, 2010/The American Civil War in The Naked and the Dead and Across the River and Into the Trees|originally assigned article]] was complete, and the banner could be removed. However, it is still showing as an X on the page, and I am unable to find the comment from you! Could you please clarify if anything needs to be fixed? Thanks so much!
[[User:KaraCroissant|KaraCroissant]] ([[User talk:KaraCroissant|talk]]) 16:25, 19 April 2025 (EDT)
:{{Reply to| KaraCroissant}} good! I was making quite a few corrections on “[[The Mailer Review/Volume 4, 2010/Mailer, Hemingway, and Boxing|Mailer, Hemingway, and Boxing]],” but I stopped, figuring you might want to finish it. Put footnotes directly after the quotations, not all at the end of sentences. No spaces or line breaks before or after {{tl|pg}}. Use <code>|author-mask=1</code> with repeated author names in works cited entries, titles of books must be italicized like they are in the original text, etc. Thanks. After a few fixes, I removed the banner for the [[The Mailer Review/Volume 4, 2010/The American Civil War in The Naked and the Dead and Across the River and Into the Trees|Meredith article]]. Well done. —[[User:Grlucas|Grlucas]] ([[User talk:Grlucas|talk]]) 10:20, 20 April 2025 (EDT)

== Civil War..Dispatched. ==

{{reply to|Grlucas}}

I believe the Hemingway's Spanish Civil War is complete except the harvtext were not working. [[The_Mailer_Review/Volume_4,_2010/Style,_Politics,_and_Hemingway's_Spanish_Civil_War_Dispatches]]
[[User:MerAtticus|MerAtticus]] ([[User talk:MerAtticus|talk]]) 17:37, 19 April 2025 (EDT)
:{{Reply to| MerAtticus}} I made many small corrections. Please view them in the history and continue in the same way. This one just needs a bit more attention. Thanks! —[[User:Grlucas|Grlucas]] ([[User talk:Grlucas|talk]]) 10:33, 20 April 2025 (EDT)

== Remediation, Vol. 4 & 5 ==

For your review,

https://projectmailer.net/pm/The_Mailer_Review/Volume_4,_2010/Norris_Church_Mailer:_An_Artist_from_Arkansas

https://projectmailer.net/pm/The_Mailer_Review/Volume_5,_2011/Imagining_Evil:_The_Sardonic_Narrator_of_Mailer%E2%80%99s_Last_Novel (Wasn't sure whether or not to add the dinkus)

[[User:Wverna|Wverna]] ([[User talk:Wverna|talk]]) 11:15, 20 April 2025 (EDT)

== Hemingway ==

{{reply to|Grlucas}} I revised early this morning and I have gone back through it this afternoon. Hopefully it looks okay. Any ciations in the notes at this point is beyond my understanding of the topic. [[The_Mailer_Review/Volume_4,_2010/Style,_Politics,_and_Hemingway's_Spanish_Civil_War_Dispatches]]

[[User:MerAtticus|MerAtticus]] ([[User talk:MerAtticus|talk]]) 14:11, 20 April 2025 (EDT)

== Combat ==
Hello
For your review [https://projectmailer.net/pm/The_Mailer_Review/Volume_4,_2010/What_Norman_Mailer_Taught_Me_about_Combat|What Norman Mailer Taught Me about Combat].
Completed by me and @Flowersbloom
[[User:Tbara4554|Tbara4554]] ([[User talk:Tbara4554|talk]]) 18:45, 20 April 2025 (EDT)

The Mailer Review/Volume 4, 2010/What Norman Mailer Taught Me about Combat

2025-04-20T22:38:51Z

Tbara4554: fixed category

{{DISPLAYTITLE:{{BASEPAGENAME}}/{{SUBPAGENAME}}}}
{{Working}}

{{MR04}} 

{{byline|last=Miele|first=Erin |url=https://projectmailer.net/pm/Erin_Miele |abstract= A memoir of an encounter with Norman Mailer in the 1980s.}}

{{dc|dc=N|orman Mailer owes me one.}} This statement rings worthy of Mailer’s own limitless chutzpah, but I figure I have a right. I base this calculation on a brief encounter I had with him at long-ago dinner party. Despite Mailer’s reputation as a fighter and scoundrel, I sensed a simple, masculine justice to his character: That is, I hit you, you hit me back, so we’re even, and now we can be friends. I could be wrong, but I think that he, a former boxer and soldier, appreciated a fair fight.

I didn’t meet this hell-raising literary standout on a social basis. As a
chronically broke student, I supplemented my scholarship with a variety of
temporary jobs—working as an ''au pair'', a library clerk, a Chinese food delivery
person, a tutor, and once as a model for a hair styling magazine. While some students at the expensive school I attended lived off trust funds and their parents’ credit cards, most of my friends held part-time jobs. I was excited one weekend to snag a well-paying, Saturday night waitressing gig through my college’s jobs’ board. The listing described a need for a server for an “exclusive dinner party ''cum'' political discussion with several well-known novelists in attendance.”

It was the promise of meeting real writers that attracted me to the position.
I anticipated a modern version of the ''salon'', those elegant affairs so crucial
to nineteenth century culture. I looked forward to eavesdropping on the
conversation, which was bound to be brilliant, witty, and profound. Perhaps
those assembled might even include me in their conversations, while from my part I might find an opportunity to quote off-handedly a Shakespearean quatrain or a few trenchant lines from Yeats. “It’s obvious you have a gift for{{pg|420|421}}language,” one of the distinguished guests would say. “You must send me something you have written.”

In short, I was that creature most dreaded by established authors, an aspiring writer, green as lettuce. I probably deserved what happened.

In high school, I had written my first two short stories, which subsequently won two first prizes in ''Scholastic Magazine''‘s fiction contest. That unexpected coupled to a full scholarship to Barnard in New York City. I had grown up in rural Pennsylvania with my parents and twelve brothers and sisters. In the Upper West Side Manhattan, during the Koch years, we faced a fairly drastic change of pace.

At college, many professors encouraged my ambitions. “You have a depth to your writing that many older writers would envy,” one teacher told me.
Another professor, no slouch of a writer herself, praised my “genius for description.” When my philosophy professor (author of the standard introductory textbook on the subject), handed back our first papers, he announced that there was only one philosopher in the class and only one promising writer. On my paper he’d scrawled, “This isn’t philosophy but you can write. Best of luck”

On the other hand, some people were far less enthusiastic about my creations.
With carefully shielded pride, I showed a story to a teacher whose seminar I hoped to join. As a child I had read and admired, in a ''Reader’s Digest'' condensed volume, this woman’s saga of her Armenian relatives, owners of a restaurant in Queens. She scanned the first pages, then remarked that only James Joyce was allowed to write in the stream-of-consciousness style. Cringing dog that I was, I found myself agreeing with her completely.

It didn’t help matters that I suffered in my youth from what is now labeled a “social anxiety disorder,” coupled with masochistic tendencies. I was so thin-skinned as to be nearly transparent, so shy that I wrote lists of interesting conversational topics before leaving my dorm room. Just as praise for my work could elate me to a dangerous degree, criticism too easily flustered me and made me doubt myself.

During one writing class, a professor distributed, without naming the author, a piece that I had written. Her private opinion of the work was favorable, but she allowed my peers to offer their feedback first. Looking back, I have a memory of my fellow English majors at my all-girls college, an irritable group at best, eviscerating the story. One girl, whose t-shirt slogan instructed Pope John Paul to keep his rosaries off her ovaries, took particular{{pg|421|422}}umbrage. “Invalid, stultifying negation of “herstory”...obviously derived from patriarchal white-male, so-called “classical” literature, were some of the gentler phrases she used. Another student, who, within ten years, would marry a cardiologist and settle in Scarsdale, damned the anonymous writer both for being an undercover male and a reactionary. I mounted a feeble defense of certain passages I knew were decently written, but by the end of the class, I found myself if not agreeing with, at least not objecting to, the general condemnation.

It took me years to learn how to distinguish objective, helpful criticism from personal bias, years to develop enough calluses to survive a writer’s life, and by that time, I had pretty much stopped writing.

That Saturday night dinner party, back in the 1980s, when Norman Mailer was in his rascally prime, was held at the spacious Central Park West apartment of a political writer known for his unapologetic Marxist views. The host was gathering a trio of famous authors—Bernard Malamud, Kurt Vonnegut, and Mailer—along with their wives to discuss how best to achieve worldwide nuclear disarmament. In the giddy pre-party moments, as I set the table and tried to calm myself down after hearing Malamud’s name, the hostess, a well-upholstered, fortyish brunette, spoke warmly to me about the evening ahead. “So you’re at ''Bar''-nard, how ''wonderful''... and an aspiring writer yourself, excellent...well, we have some very important people coming in tonight, I’ll be sure to introduce you.”

But when the illustrious guests showed up, my hostess’ tone turned a little snappish, and her promise of personal introductions did not materialize. In fact, she suddenly misplaced my name and began referring to me as “you,” as in “I’d ''so'' appreciate it if you’d hang up the wraps a bit more carefully,” and “Would you mind hurrying with those drinks?”

The evening progressed, although not quite as planned. Malamud, whose luminescent stories still captivate me, seemed something of a fusspot, several times complaining of a stomachache. Supervised by an anxious Mrs. Malamud, he suffered through his meal, declining most of the food and all of the alcohol offered to him. The other attendees, however, more than made up for his abstention. A gloomy Vonnegut gulped Scotch while lighting the tip of one Pall Mall from another, pinching the butts out on his Havilland plate. By the end of the soup course, those in attendance appeared to have abandoned any thoughts of collaborating on an anti-nuclear treatise. The conversation had drifted to other, less global concerns. I recall a few malicious tidbits{{pg|422|423}}involving mutual enemies and some personal chat about families. I hadn’t yet lost hope that the writers would start providing me with fresh insight into Proust, or elaborating on the major themes of Russian literature in the last century.

Norman Mailer, possibly out of boredom, perhaps to exhibit solidarity with the working class, abruptly stood up, picked up his soup bowl, and followed me out of the dining room. Norman’s wife rolled her beautiful eyes. “Oh Norman, don’t bother, the girl can handle that,” protested the hostess as we exited.

In the kitchen, where the chef was plating the fish course, I thanked Mailer for his help, and he politely introduced himself. He then asked me my name, and when I told him “Erin Bridget Kelley,” his face brightened and he squared off in front of me, asking in an atrocious brogue, “Hey, Erin, do ye happen to know what an oxymoron is?”

I was about to tell him that of course I did, that I was an English/classics major, who could explicate ''The Good Morrow'' and had translated ''The Symposium'' from the Greek. But before I could answer, the literary lion burst out, grinning like a bratty ten-year-old boy. “A sober Irishman! That’s an oxymoron for you!”

I was too startled to reply and instead blushed to the parting in my hair, a vexing physiological reaction that had plagued me since eighth grade. The man seemed disappointed when I wouldn’t insult him back in kind. A couple of times during the rest of the evening, Mailer tried to catch my eye and include me in the conversation, but I, stiff-necked and ashamed to be looked on as a servant by these people, celebrated novelists or not, refused to look in his direction.

In those days, I was reticent about speaking my mind, prone to what the French call ''l’esprit d’escalier'',” or “staircase wit.” To me, the phrase connoted the quick, cutting reply, the clever argument dreamed up on the subway ride home after a party, all the words that I ought to have said. While climbing the stairs to my room, I’d regret not having had the perfect comeback to silence the know-it-all, the bully or the Nosey Parker. I should have jousted with Mailer in kind, countered his insult with a “Hey, wise guy, is ‘a well-mannered Norman Mailer’ an oxymoron, too?”

I’d like to think that Mailer could take it as well as he could dish it out. But it would take me years to learn to speak my mind, to respond quickly to{{pg|423|424}}verbal challenges. That night, I was way too young, way too touchy and self-conscious.

Still, in time I realized that Norman Mailer had taught me some things through our little exchange. First, I learned to avoid meeting icons in person, as they are bound to disappoint you. Second, whatever my opinion of Mailer’s many crusades, I had to admire his blunt and outspoken style, the great faith in himself he had to produce not only a new kind of literature in ''The Executioner’s Song'', but also works stunning for their epic length—almost fifteen hundred pages on the CIA, almost a thousand on ancient Egypt. Whatever Mailer did or didn’t do, he did one thing consistently right and that was to take his talent as a writer seriously. I can’t imagine him ever letting anyone sneer at his work.

After graduation from college, I started off determined to write. For a year, I lived alone aboard a Chris-Craft on the Potomac in Washington, DC. I supported myself with temporary office jobs, writing at night in the boat’s galley. At that time, my work-in-progress was a lengthy “fictional” account of two young girls, one of them a double for my younger sister Lizzie. The older girl, Molly, bore striking similarities to me. Coincidentally, the children were members of a large, Irish-Catholic family, and were growing up in the Pennsylvania countryside. The girls enjoyed visiting their lovable old coot of a neighbor, Mr. Welliver, who warmed his dentures in a jar that he set on the old-fashioned coal stove. The old man was notable for the multitude of feral cats living under his back porch. The story kept going on and on, stretching to more than one hundred pages, and I hadn’t even managed to lure the children from Mr. Welliver’s yard. The girls alternated between fashioning bouquets of Queen’s Anne’s lace, whose flowers reminded Molly of “the chaplet her mother wore to Mass,” and chasing the increasingly frenzied kittens around the property. Meanwhile, that quaint old dear, Mr. Welliver, had fallen asleep on page twenty-seven, while watching a Phillies game. By page one hundred and twelve, I could have gladly killed off both my main characters in as gruesome a manner as was credible. Fortunately, this particular manuscript has been lost to time.

When I got the chance to join a six-week scientific expedition to Maine aboard a Smithsonian research vessel, I took it. It seemed like a writerly thing to do. Eventually, I moved back to New York and began working in the textbook division of Harper & Row. Soon enough, I set sail again, this time to Ireland for a year, having enrolled in courses in Anglo-Irish literature. I had{{pg|424|425}}a great time tramping the same streets as the characters in ''Dubliners''. and visiting Stephen Daedelus’s tower in Dunlaoghaire. ''Ulysses'' finally made sense to me, thanks to the Trinity lectures, but I ran out of tuition money, and finished up the year working at a pub.

When I returned stateside, I moved in with my brother Michael in Boston. I was accepted into Boston University’s M.F.A. program, but chose instead to move to Maine and get married. For the next several years, I kept writing, kept holding on to the idea that writing was my true vocation. At that point, I believed that with steady, honest work and some luck, recognition for my work would come. In the spring of 1993, I was deep into a work of fiction that I believed to be the best that I had done. I had recently received a friendly, handwritten note from the managing editor at ''The Atlantic Monthly'', rejecting a story I had sent in, while encouraging me to send him more work. I was thirty-three, my wanderlust at last satisfied. I was grateful for my marriage, and my beautiful sons, confident that I would fulfill my writer’s destiny, and eventually get on paper what I needed to say. Yet I couldn’t seem to carry out these plans when the boys were small.

A few years ago, I taught myself to paint in oils, hoping that creating art in another medium might somehow lead me back to writing. Instead, I found I loved painting. Where my writing seemed more effective when it was sad, my best canvases were happy and high-keyed in tone. I’ve exhibited in solo and group shows, and sold a respectable number of paintings. This year, I was awarded a grant from the Pennsylvania Partners in the Arts, through the Scranton Foundation, to create a series of portraits.

Although I have since run into other well-known people, among them Tolstoy’s grandnephew, Maud Gonne’s son Sean MacBride, and George Steinbrenner (bizarre bedfellows, I admit), I retain a fondness for the memory of my quick exchange with Norman Mailer. Out of all those big shots at that dinner party, he had looked me in the eye and spoken to me as if I were a real human being. Maybe he could sense that I, like him, didn’t appreciate being bossed around, even though I had signed up for the job and had only myself to blame.

I hadn’t thought about that chance meeting in years. Last week, I attended the Wilkes University Graduate information session, which was presented by a young playwright, who mentioned that he was research assistant for a professor who was writing a biography of Mailer. The mention of Mailer’s name recalled to me that distant, almost forgotten memory.

{{pg|425|426}}

Suddenly, present and past converged. It was as if Mailer were challenging me again. Maybe I have an answer for him now. I’m Irish enough to recognize portents. I’m enough of a believer in the spirit world that I might think it just possible that that bellicose genius, that fearless s.o.b., Norman Kingsley Mailer, might be giving me a shout out from wherever he is now. His exaggerated life, sprawling across nine decades, seems too enormous, too gaudy and messy, to be completely contained by death. I’d prefer to think there’s a chance that he’s signaling me to show some gumption, to answer back for once. Art itself is the only real response to a ruthless world. Call it hubris, but could Mailer’s ghost be prodding me to follow his hyperbolic example, to write down what I have to say before it is too late, before the party ends, the whole battle’s done, and it’s all over for me? After all, Mr. Mailer does owe me a chance to answer him back.

{{Review}}

{{DEFAULTSORT: What Norman Mailer Taught Me About Combat}}
[[Category:Articles (MR)]]

The Mailer Review/Volume 4, 2010/What Norman Mailer Taught Me about Combat

2025-04-20T22:37:55Z

Tbara4554: added spacing to abstract

The Mailer Review/Volume 4, 2010/What Norman Mailer Taught Me about Combat

2025-04-20T05:50:48Z

Tbara4554: removed excess page number

{{DISPLAYTITLE:{{BASEPAGENAME}}/{{SUBPAGENAME}}}}
{{Working}}

{{MR04}} 

{{byline|last=Miele|first=Erin |url=https://projectmailer.net/pm/Erin_Miele |abstract=}}

{{dc|dc=N|orman Mailer owes me one.}} This statement rings worthy of Mailer’s own limitless chutzpah, but I figure I have a right. I base this calculation on a brief encounter I had with him at long-ago dinner party. Despite Mailer’s reputation as a fighter and scoundrel, I sensed a simple, masculine justice to his character: That is, I hit you, you hit me back, so we’re even, and now we can be friends. I could be wrong, but I think that he, a former boxer and soldier, appreciated a fair fight.

I didn’t meet this hell-raising literary standout on a social basis. As a
chronically broke student, I supplemented my scholarship with a variety of
temporary jobs—working as an ''au pair'', a library clerk, a Chinese food delivery
person, a tutor, and once as a model for a hair styling magazine. While some students at the expensive school I attended lived off trust funds and their parents’ credit cards, most of my friends held part-time jobs. I was excited one weekend to snag a well-paying, Saturday night waitressing gig through my college’s jobs’ board. The listing described a need for a server for an “exclusive dinner party ''cum'' political discussion with several well-known novelists in attendance.”

It was the promise of meeting real writers that attracted me to the position.
I anticipated a modern version of the ''salon'', those elegant affairs so crucial
to nineteenth century culture. I looked forward to eavesdropping on the
conversation, which was bound to be brilliant, witty, and profound. Perhaps
those assembled might even include me in their conversations, while from my part I might find an opportunity to quote off-handedly a Shakespearean quatrain or a few trenchant lines from Yeats. “It’s obvious you have a gift for{{pg|420|421}}language,” one of the distinguished guests would say. “You must send me something you have written.”

In short, I was that creature most dreaded by established authors, an aspiring writer, green as lettuce. I probably deserved what happened.

In high school, I had written my first two short stories, which subsequently won two first prizes in ''Scholastic Magazine''‘s fiction contest. That unexpected coupled to a full scholarship to Barnard in New York City. I had grown up in rural Pennsylvania with my parents and twelve brothers and sisters. In the Upper West Side Manhattan, during the Koch years, we faced a fairly drastic change of pace.

At college, many professors encouraged my ambitions. “You have a depth to your writing that many older writers would envy,” one teacher told me.
Another professor, no slouch of a writer herself, praised my “genius for description.” When my philosophy professor (author of the standard introductory textbook on the subject), handed back our first papers, he announced that there was only one philosopher in the class and only one promising writer. On my paper he’d scrawled, “This isn’t philosophy but you can write. Best of luck”

On the other hand, some people were far less enthusiastic about my creations.
With carefully shielded pride, I showed a story to a teacher whose seminar I hoped to join. As a child I had read and admired, in a ''Reader’s Digest'' condensed volume, this woman’s saga of her Armenian relatives, owners of a restaurant in Queens. She scanned the first pages, then remarked that only James Joyce was allowed to write in the stream-of-consciousness style. Cringing dog that I was, I found myself agreeing with her completely.

It didn’t help matters that I suffered in my youth from what is now labeled a “social anxiety disorder,” coupled with masochistic tendencies. I was so thin-skinned as to be nearly transparent, so shy that I wrote lists of interesting conversational topics before leaving my dorm room. Just as praise for my work could elate me to a dangerous degree, criticism too easily flustered me and made me doubt myself.

During one writing class, a professor distributed, without naming the author, a piece that I had written. Her private opinion of the work was favorable, but she allowed my peers to offer their feedback first. Looking back, I have a memory of my fellow English majors at my all-girls college, an irritable group at best, eviscerating the story. One girl, whose t-shirt slogan instructed Pope John Paul to keep his rosaries off her ovaries, took particular{{pg|421|422}}umbrage. “Invalid, stultifying negation of “herstory”...obviously derived from patriarchal white-male, so-called “classical” literature, were some of the gentler phrases she used. Another student, who, within ten years, would marry a cardiologist and settle in Scarsdale, damned the anonymous writer both for being an undercover male and a reactionary. I mounted a feeble defense of certain passages I knew were decently written, but by the end of the class, I found myself if not agreeing with, at least not objecting to, the general condemnation.

It took me years to learn how to distinguish objective, helpful criticism from personal bias, years to develop enough calluses to survive a writer’s life, and by that time, I had pretty much stopped writing.

That Saturday night dinner party, back in the 1980s, when Norman Mailer was in his rascally prime, was held at the spacious Central Park West apartment of a political writer known for his unapologetic Marxist views. The host was gathering a trio of famous authors—Bernard Malamud, Kurt Vonnegut, and Mailer—along with their wives to discuss how best to achieve worldwide nuclear disarmament. In the giddy pre-party moments, as I set the table and tried to calm myself down after hearing Malamud’s name, the hostess, a well-upholstered, fortyish brunette, spoke warmly to me about the evening ahead. “So you’re at ''Bar''-nard, how ''wonderful''... and an aspiring writer yourself, excellent...well, we have some very important people coming in tonight, I’ll be sure to introduce you.”

But when the illustrious guests showed up, my hostess’ tone turned a little snappish, and her promise of personal introductions did not materialize. In fact, she suddenly misplaced my name and began referring to me as “you,” as in “I’d ''so'' appreciate it if you’d hang up the wraps a bit more carefully,” and “Would you mind hurrying with those drinks?”

The evening progressed, although not quite as planned. Malamud, whose luminescent stories still captivate me, seemed something of a fusspot, several times complaining of a stomachache. Supervised by an anxious Mrs. Malamud, he suffered through his meal, declining most of the food and all of the alcohol offered to him. The other attendees, however, more than made up for his abstention. A gloomy Vonnegut gulped Scotch while lighting the tip of one Pall Mall from another, pinching the butts out on his Havilland plate. By the end of the soup course, those in attendance appeared to have abandoned any thoughts of collaborating on an anti-nuclear treatise. The conversation had drifted to other, less global concerns. I recall a few malicious tidbits{{pg|422|423}}involving mutual enemies and some personal chat about families. I hadn’t yet lost hope that the writers would start providing me with fresh insight into Proust, or elaborating on the major themes of Russian literature in the last century.

Norman Mailer, possibly out of boredom, perhaps to exhibit solidarity with the working class, abruptly stood up, picked up his soup bowl, and followed me out of the dining room. Norman’s wife rolled her beautiful eyes. “Oh Norman, don’t bother, the girl can handle that,” protested the hostess as we exited.

In the kitchen, where the chef was plating the fish course, I thanked Mailer for his help, and he politely introduced himself. He then asked me my name, and when I told him “Erin Bridget Kelley,” his face brightened and he squared off in front of me, asking in an atrocious brogue, “Hey, Erin, do ye happen to know what an oxymoron is?”

I was about to tell him that of course I did, that I was an English/classics major, who could explicate ''The Good Morrow'' and had translated ''The Symposium'' from the Greek. But before I could answer, the literary lion burst out, grinning like a bratty ten-year-old boy. “A sober Irishman! That’s an oxymoron for you!”

I was too startled to reply and instead blushed to the parting in my hair, a vexing physiological reaction that had plagued me since eighth grade. The man seemed disappointed when I wouldn’t insult him back in kind. A couple of times during the rest of the evening, Mailer tried to catch my eye and include me in the conversation, but I, stiff-necked and ashamed to be looked on as a servant by these people, celebrated novelists or not, refused to look in his direction.

In those days, I was reticent about speaking my mind, prone to what the French call ''l’esprit d’escalier'',” or “staircase wit.” To me, the phrase connoted the quick, cutting reply, the clever argument dreamed up on the subway ride home after a party, all the words that I ought to have said. While climbing the stairs to my room, I’d regret not having had the perfect comeback to silence the know-it-all, the bully or the Nosey Parker. I should have jousted with Mailer in kind, countered his insult with a “Hey, wise guy, is ‘a well-mannered Norman Mailer’ an oxymoron, too?”

I’d like to think that Mailer could take it as well as he could dish it out. But it would take me years to learn to speak my mind, to respond quickly to{{pg|423|424}}verbal challenges. That night, I was way too young, way too touchy and self-conscious.

Still, in time I realized that Norman Mailer had taught me some things through our little exchange. First, I learned to avoid meeting icons in person, as they are bound to disappoint you. Second, whatever my opinion of Mailer’s many crusades, I had to admire his blunt and outspoken style, the great faith in himself he had to produce not only a new kind of literature in ''The Executioner’s Song'', but also works stunning for their epic length—almost fifteen hundred pages on the CIA, almost a thousand on ancient Egypt. Whatever Mailer did or didn’t do, he did one thing consistently right and that was to take his talent as a writer seriously. I can’t imagine him ever letting anyone sneer at his work.

After graduation from college, I started off determined to write. For a year, I lived alone aboard a Chris-Craft on the Potomac in Washington, DC. I supported myself with temporary office jobs, writing at night in the boat’s galley. At that time, my work-in-progress was a lengthy “fictional” account of two young girls, one of them a double for my younger sister Lizzie. The older girl, Molly, bore striking similarities to me. Coincidentally, the children were members of a large, Irish-Catholic family, and were growing up in the Pennsylvania countryside. The girls enjoyed visiting their lovable old coot of a neighbor, Mr. Welliver, who warmed his dentures in a jar that he set on the old-fashioned coal stove. The old man was notable for the multitude of feral cats living under his back porch. The story kept going on and on, stretching to more than one hundred pages, and I hadn’t even managed to lure the children from Mr. Welliver’s yard. The girls alternated between fashioning bouquets of Queen’s Anne’s lace, whose flowers reminded Molly of “the chaplet her mother wore to Mass,” and chasing the increasingly frenzied kittens around the property. Meanwhile, that quaint old dear, Mr. Welliver, had fallen asleep on page twenty-seven, while watching a Phillies game. By page one hundred and twelve, I could have gladly killed off both my main characters in as gruesome a manner as was credible. Fortunately, this particular manuscript has been lost to time.

When I got the chance to join a six-week scientific expedition to Maine aboard a Smithsonian research vessel, I took it. It seemed like a writerly thing to do. Eventually, I moved back to New York and began working in the textbook division of Harper & Row. Soon enough, I set sail again, this time to Ireland for a year, having enrolled in courses in Anglo-Irish literature. I had{{pg|424|425}}a great time tramping the same streets as the characters in ''Dubliners''. and visiting Stephen Daedelus’s tower in Dunlaoghaire. ''Ulysses'' finally made sense to me, thanks to the Trinity lectures, but I ran out of tuition money, and finished up the year working at a pub.

When I returned stateside, I moved in with my brother Michael in Boston. I was accepted into Boston University’s M.F.A. program, but chose instead to move to Maine and get married. For the next several years, I kept writing, kept holding on to the idea that writing was my true vocation. At that point, I believed that with steady, honest work and some luck, recognition for my work would come. In the spring of 1993, I was deep into a work of fiction that I believed to be the best that I had done. I had recently received a friendly, handwritten note from the managing editor at ''The Atlantic Monthly'', rejecting a story I had sent in, while encouraging me to send him more work. I was thirty-three, my wanderlust at last satisfied. I was grateful for my marriage, and my beautiful sons, confident that I would fulfill my writer’s destiny, and eventually get on paper what I needed to say. Yet I couldn’t seem to carry out these plans when the boys were small.

A few years ago, I taught myself to paint in oils, hoping that creating art in another medium might somehow lead me back to writing. Instead, I found I loved painting. Where my writing seemed more effective when it was sad, my best canvases were happy and high-keyed in tone. I’ve exhibited in solo and group shows, and sold a respectable number of paintings. This year, I was awarded a grant from the Pennsylvania Partners in the Arts, through the Scranton Foundation, to create a series of portraits.

Although I have since run into other well-known people, among them Tolstoy’s grandnephew, Maud Gonne’s son Sean MacBride, and George Steinbrenner (bizarre bedfellows, I admit), I retain a fondness for the memory of my quick exchange with Norman Mailer. Out of all those big shots at that dinner party, he had looked me in the eye and spoken to me as if I were a real human being. Maybe he could sense that I, like him, didn’t appreciate being bossed around, even though I had signed up for the job and had only myself to blame.

I hadn’t thought about that chance meeting in years. Last week, I attended the Wilkes University Graduate information session, which was presented by a young playwright, who mentioned that he was research assistant for a professor who was writing a biography of Mailer. The mention of Mailer’s name recalled to me that distant, almost forgotten memory.

{{pg|425|426}}

Suddenly, present and past converged. It was as if Mailer were challenging me again. Maybe I have an answer for him now. I’m Irish enough to recognize portents. I’m enough of a believer in the spirit world that I might think it just possible that that bellicose genius, that fearless s.o.b., Norman Kingsley Mailer, might be giving me a shout out from wherever he is now. His exaggerated life, sprawling across nine decades, seems too enormous, too gaudy and messy, to be completely contained by death. I’d prefer to think there’s a chance that he’s signaling me to show some gumption, to answer back for once. Art itself is the only real response to a ruthless world. Call it hubris, but could Mailer’s ghost be prodding me to follow his hyperbolic example, to write down what I have to say before it is too late, before the party ends, the whole battle’s done, and it’s all over for me? After all, Mr. Mailer does owe me a chance to answer him back.

The Mailer Review/Volume 4, 2010/What Norman Mailer Taught Me about Combat

2025-04-20T05:49:39Z

Tbara4554: fixed issues with words having - in the middle and formatted some words that should have been italized

{{DISPLAYTITLE:{{BASEPAGENAME}}/{{SUBPAGENAME}}}}
{{Working}}

{{MR04}} 

{{byline|last=Miele|first=Erin |url=https://projectmailer.net/pm/Erin_Miele |abstract=}}

{{dc|dc=N|orman Mailer owes me one.}} This statement rings worthy of Mailer’s own limitless chutzpah, but I figure I have a right. I base this calculation on a brief encounter I had with him at long-ago dinner party. Despite Mailer’s reputation as a fighter and scoundrel, I sensed a simple, masculine justice to his character: That is, I hit you, you hit me back, so we’re even, and now we can be friends. I could be wrong, but I think that he, a former boxer and soldier, appreciated a fair fight.

I didn’t meet this hell-raising literary standout on a social basis. As a
chronically broke student, I supplemented my scholarship with a variety of
temporary jobs—working as an ''au pair'', a library clerk, a Chinese food delivery
person, a tutor, and once as a model for a hair styling magazine. While some students at the expensive school I attended lived off trust funds and their parents’ credit cards, most of my friends held part-time jobs. I was excited one weekend to snag a well-paying, Saturday night waitressing gig through my college’s jobs’ board. The listing described a need for a server for an “exclusive dinner party ''cum'' political discussion with several well-known novelists in attendance.”

It was the promise of meeting real writers that attracted me to the position.
I anticipated a modern version of the ''salon'', those elegant affairs so crucial
to nineteenth century culture. I looked forward to eavesdropping on the
conversation, which was bound to be brilliant, witty, and profound. Perhaps
those assembled might even include me in their conversations, while from my part I might find an opportunity to quote off-handedly a Shakespearean quatrain or a few trenchant lines from Yeats. “It’s obvious you have a gift for{{pg|420|421}}language,” one of the distinguished guests would say. “You must send me something you have written.”

In short, I was that creature most dreaded by established authors, an aspiring writer, green as lettuce. I probably deserved what happened.

In high school, I had written my first two short stories, which subsequently won two first prizes in ''Scholastic Magazine''‘s fiction contest. That unexpected coupled to a full scholarship to Barnard in New York City. I had grown up in rural Pennsylvania with my parents and twelve brothers and sisters. In the Upper West Side Manhattan, during the Koch years, we faced a fairly drastic change of pace.

At college, many professors encouraged my ambitions. “You have a depth to your writing that many older writers would envy,” one teacher told me.
Another professor, no slouch of a writer herself, praised my “genius for description.” When my philosophy professor (author of the standard introductory textbook on the subject), handed back our first papers, he announced that there was only one philosopher in the class and only one promising writer. On my paper he’d scrawled, “This isn’t philosophy but you can write. Best of luck”

On the other hand, some people were far less enthusiastic about my creations.
With carefully shielded pride, I showed a story to a teacher whose seminar I hoped to join. As a child I had read and admired, in a ''Reader’s Digest'' condensed volume, this woman’s saga of her Armenian relatives, owners of a restaurant in Queens. She scanned the first pages, then remarked that only James Joyce was allowed to write in the stream-of-consciousness style. Cringing dog that I was, I found myself agreeing with her completely.

It didn’t help matters that I suffered in my youth from what is now labeled a “social anxiety disorder,” coupled with masochistic tendencies. I was so thin-skinned as to be nearly transparent, so shy that I wrote lists of interesting conversational topics before leaving my dorm room. Just as praise for my work could elate me to a dangerous degree, criticism too easily flustered me and made me doubt myself.

During one writing class, a professor distributed, without naming the author, a piece that I had written. Her private opinion of the work was favorable, but she allowed my peers to offer their feedback first. Looking back, I have a memory of my fellow English majors at my all-girls college, an irritable group at best, eviscerating the story. One girl, whose t-shirt slogan instructed Pope John Paul to keep his rosaries off her ovaries, took particular{{pg|421|422}}umbrage. “Invalid, stultifying negation of “herstory”...obviously derived from patriarchal white-male, so-called “classical” literature, were some of the gentler phrases she used. Another student, who, within ten years, would marry a cardiologist and settle in Scarsdale, damned the anonymous writer both for being an undercover male and a reactionary. I mounted a feeble defense of certain passages I knew were decently written, but by the end of the class, I found myself if not agreeing with, at least not objecting to, the general condemnation.

It took me years to learn how to distinguish objective, helpful criticism from personal bias, years to develop enough calluses to survive a writer’s life, and by that time, I had pretty much stopped writing.

That Saturday night dinner party, back in the 1980s, when Norman Mailer was in his rascally prime, was held at the spacious Central Park West apartment of a political writer known for his unapologetic Marxist views. The host was gathering a trio of famous authors—Bernard Malamud, Kurt Vonnegut, and Mailer—along with their wives to discuss how best to achieve worldwide nuclear disarmament. In the giddy pre-party moments, as I set the table and tried to calm myself down after hearing Malamud’s name, the hostess, a well-upholstered, fortyish brunette, spoke warmly to me about the evening ahead. “So you’re at ''Bar''-nard, how ''wonderful''... and an aspiring writer yourself, excellent...well, we have some very important people coming in tonight, I’ll be sure to introduce you.”

But when the illustrious guests showed up, my hostess’ tone turned a little snappish, and her promise of personal introductions did not materialize. In fact, she suddenly misplaced my name and began referring to me as “you,” as in “I’d ''so'' appreciate it if you’d hang up the wraps a bit more carefully,” and “Would you mind hurrying with those drinks?”

The evening progressed, although not quite as planned. Malamud, whose luminescent stories still captivate me, seemed something of a fusspot, several times complaining of a stomachache. Supervised by an anxious Mrs. Malamud, he suffered through his meal, declining most of the food and all of the alcohol offered to him. The other attendees, however, more than made up for his abstention. A gloomy Vonnegut gulped Scotch while lighting the tip of one Pall Mall from another, pinching the butts out on his Havilland plate. By the end of the soup course, those in attendance appeared to have abandoned any thoughts of collaborating on an anti-nuclear treatise. The conversation had drifted to other, less global concerns. I recall a few malicious tidbits{{pg|422|423}}involving mutual enemies and some personal chat about families. I hadn’t yet lost hope that the writers would start providing me with fresh insight into Proust, or elaborating on the major themes of Russian literature in the last century.

Norman Mailer, possibly out of boredom, perhaps to exhibit solidarity with the working class, abruptly stood up, picked up his soup bowl, and followed me out of the dining room. Norman’s wife rolled her beautiful eyes. “Oh Norman, don’t bother, the girl can handle that,” protested the hostess as we exited.

In the kitchen, where the chef was plating the fish course, I thanked Mailer for his help, and he politely introduced himself. He then asked me my name, and when I told him “Erin Bridget Kelley,” his face brightened and he squared off in front of me, asking in an atrocious brogue, “Hey, Erin, do ye happen to know what an oxymoron is?”

I was about to tell him that of course I did, that I was an English/classics major, who could explicate ''The Good Morrow'' and had translated ''The Symposium'' from the Greek. But before I could answer, the literary lion burst out, grinning like a bratty ten-year-old boy. “A sober Irishman! That’s an oxymoron for you!”

I was too startled to reply and instead blushed to the parting in my hair, a vexing physiological reaction that had plagued me since eighth grade. The man seemed disappointed when I wouldn’t insult him back in kind. A couple of times during the rest of the evening, Mailer tried to catch my eye and include me in the conversation, but I, stiff-necked and ashamed to be looked on as a servant by these people, celebrated novelists or not, refused to look in his direction.

In those days, I was reticent about speaking my mind, prone to what the French call ''l’esprit d’escalier'',” or “staircase wit.” To me, the phrase connoted the quick, cutting reply, the clever argument dreamed up on the subway ride home after a party, all the words that I ought to have said. While climbing the stairs to my room, I’d regret not having had the perfect comeback to silence the know-it-all, the bully or the Nosey Parker. I should have jousted with Mailer in kind, countered his insult with a “Hey, wise guy, is ‘a well-mannered Norman Mailer’ an oxymoron, too?”

I’d like to think that Mailer could take it as well as he could dish it out. But it would take me years to learn to speak my mind, to respond quickly to{{pg|423|424}}verbal challenges. That night, I was way too young, way too touchy and self-conscious.

Still, in time I realized that Norman Mailer had taught me some things through our little exchange. First, I learned to avoid meeting icons in person, as they are bound to disappoint you. Second, whatever my opinion of Mailer’s many crusades, I had to admire his blunt and outspoken style, the great faith in himself he had to produce not only a new kind of literature in ''The Executioner’s Song'', but also works stunning for their epic length—almost fifteen hundred pages on the CIA, almost a thousand on ancient Egypt. Whatever Mailer did or didn’t do, he did one thing consistently right and that was to take his talent as a writer seriously. I can’t imagine him ever letting anyone sneer at his work.

After graduation from college, I started off determined to write. For a year, I lived alone aboard a Chris-Craft on the Potomac in Washington, DC. I supported myself with temporary office jobs, writing at night in the boat’s galley. At that time, my work-in-progress was a lengthy “fictional” account of two young girls, one of them a double for my younger sister Lizzie. The older girl, Molly, bore striking similarities to me. Coincidentally, the children were members of a large, Irish-Catholic family, and were growing up in the Pennsylvania countryside. The girls enjoyed visiting their lovable old coot of a neighbor, Mr. Welliver, who warmed his dentures in a jar that he set on the old-fashioned coal stove. The old man was notable for the multitude of feral cats living under his back porch. The story kept going on and on, stretching to more than one hundred pages, and I hadn’t even managed to lure the children from Mr. Welliver’s yard. The girls alternated between fashioning bouquets of Queen’s Anne’s lace, whose flowers reminded Molly of “the chaplet her mother wore to Mass,” and chasing the increasingly frenzied kittens around the property. Meanwhile, that quaint old dear, Mr. Welliver, had fallen asleep on page twenty-seven, while watching a Phillies game. By page one hundred and twelve, I could have gladly killed off both my main characters in as gruesome a manner as was credible. Fortunately, this particular manuscript has been lost to time.

When I got the chance to join a six-week scientific expedition to Maine aboard a Smithsonian research vessel, I took it. It seemed like a writerly thing to do. Eventually, I moved back to New York and began working in the textbook division of Harper & Row. Soon enough, I set sail again, this time to Ireland for a year, having enrolled in courses in Anglo-Irish literature. I had{{pg|424|425}}a great time tramping the same streets as the characters in ''Dubliners''. and visiting Stephen Daedelus’s tower in Dunlaoghaire. ''Ulysses'' finally made sense to me, thanks to the Trinity lectures, but I ran out of tuition money, and finished up the year working at a pub.

When I returned stateside, I moved in with my brother Michael in Boston. I was accepted into Boston University’s M.F.A. program, but chose instead to move to Maine and get married. For the next several years, I kept writing, kept holding on to the idea that writing was my true vocation. At that point, I believed that with steady, honest work and some luck, recognition for my work would come. In the spring of 1993, I was deep into a work of fiction that I believed to be the best that I had done. I had recently received a friendly, handwritten note from the managing editor at ''The Atlantic Monthly'', rejecting a story I had sent in, while encouraging me to send him more work. I was thirty-three, my wanderlust at last satisfied. I was grateful for my marriage, and my beautiful sons, confident that I would fulfill my writer’s destiny, and eventually get on paper what I needed to say. Yet I couldn’t seem to carry out these plans when the boys were small.

A few years ago, I taught myself to paint in oils, hoping that creating art in another medium might somehow lead me back to writing. Instead, I found I loved painting. Where my writing seemed more effective when it was sad, my best canvases were happy and high-keyed in tone. I’ve exhibited in solo and group shows, and sold a respectable number of paintings. This year, I was awarded a grant from the Pennsylvania Partners in the Arts, through the Scranton Foundation, to create a series of portraits.

Although I have since run into other well-known people, among them Tolstoy’s grandnephew, Maud Gonne’s son Sean MacBride, and George Steinbrenner (bizarre bedfellows, I admit), I retain a fondness for the memory of my quick exchange with Norman Mailer. Out of all those big shots at that dinner party, he had looked me in the eye and spoken to me as if I were a real human being. Maybe he could sense that I, like him, didn’t appreciate being bossed around, even though I had signed up for the job and had only myself to blame.

I hadn’t thought about that chance meeting in years. Last week, I attended the Wilkes University Graduate information session, which was presented by a young playwright, who mentioned that he was research assistant for a professor who was writing a biography of Mailer. The mention of Mailer’s name recalled to me that distant, almost forgotten memory.

{{pg|425|426}}

Suddenly, present and past converged. It was as if Mailer were challenging me again. Maybe I have an answer for him now. I’m Irish enough to recognize portents. I’m enough of a believer in the spirit world that I might think it just possible that that bellicose genius, that fearless s.o.b., Norman Kingsley Mailer, might be giving me a shout out from wherever he is now. His exaggerated life, sprawling across nine decades, seems too enormous, too gaudy and messy, to be completely contained by death. I’d prefer to think there’s a chance that he’s signaling me to show some gumption, to answer back for once. Art itself is the only real response to a ruthless world. Call it hubris, but could Mailer’s ghost be prodding me to follow his hyperbolic example, to write down what I have to say before it is too late, before the party ends, the whole battle’s done, and it’s all over for me? After all, Mr. Mailer does owe me a chance to answer him back.

{{pg|426}}

The Mailer Review/Volume 4, 2010/What Norman Mailer Taught Me about Combat

2025-04-20T05:25:07Z

Tbara4554: added link to byline and fixed formatting on first sentence

{{DISPLAYTITLE:{{BASEPAGENAME}}/{{SUBPAGENAME}}}}
{{Working}}

{{MR04}} 

{{byline|last=Miele|first=Erin |url=https://projectmailer.net/pm/Erin_Miele |abstract=}}

{{dc|dc=N|orman Mailer owes me one.}} This statement rings worthy of Mailer’s own limitless chutzpah, but I figure I have a right. I base this calculation on a brief encounter I had with him at long-ago dinner party. Despite Mailer’s reputation as a fighter and scoundrel, I sensed a simple, masculine justice to his character: That is, I hit you, you hit me back, so we’re even, and now we can be friends. I could be wrong, but I think that he, a former boxer and soldier, appreciated a fair fight.

I didn’t meet this hell-raising literary standout on a social basis. As a
chronically broke student, I supplemented my scholarship with a variety of
temporary jobs—working as an ''au pair'', a library clerk, a Chinese food delivery
person, a tutor, and once as a model for a hair styling magazine. While some students at the expensive school I attended lived off trust funds and their parents’ credit cards, most of my friends held part-time jobs. I was excited one weekend to snag a well-paying, Saturday night waitressing gig through my college’s jobs’ board. The listing described a need for a server for an “exclusive dinner party ''cum'' political discussion with several well-known novelists in attendance.”

It was the promise of meeting real writers that attracted me to the position.
I anticipated a modern version of the ''salon'', those elegant affairs so crucial
to nineteenth century culture. I looked forward to eavesdropping on the
conversation, which was bound to be brilliant, witty, and profound. Perhaps
those assembled might even include me in their conversations, while from my part I might find an opportunity to quote off-handedly a Shakespearean quatrain or a few trenchant lines from Yeats. “It’s obvious you have a gift for

{{pg|420|421}}

language,” one of the distinguished guests would say. “You must send me something you have written.”

In short, I was that creature most dreaded by established authors, an aspiring writer, green as lettuce. I probably deserved what happened. In high school, I had written my first two short stories, which subsequently won two first prizes in ''Scholastic Magazine''‘s fiction contest. That unexpected coupled to a full scholarship to Barnard in New York City. I had grown up in rural Pennsylvania with my parents and twelve brothers and sisters. In the Upper West Side Manhattan, during the Koch years, we faced a fairly drastic change of pace.

At college, many professors encouraged my ambitions.“You have a depth to your writing that many older writers would envy,” one teacher told me.
Another professor, no slouch of a writer herself, praised my “genius for description.” When my philosophy professor (author of the standard introductory textbook on the subject), handed back our first papers, he announced that there was only one philosopher in the class and only one promising writer. On my paper he’d scrawled, “This isn’t philosophy but you can write. Best of luck”

On the other hand, some people were far less enthusiastic about my creations.
With carefully shielded pride, I showed a story to a teacher whose seminar I hoped to join. As a child I had read and admired, in a ''Reader’s Di-gest'' condensed volume, this woman’s saga of her Armenian relatives, owners of a restaurant in Queens. She scanned the first pages, then remarked that only James Joyce was allowed to write in the stream-of-consciousness style. Cringing dog that I was, I found myself agreeing with her completely

It didn’t help matters that I suffered in my youth from what is now labeled a “social anxiety disorder,” coupled with masochistic tendencies. I was so thinskinned as to be nearly transparent, so shy that I wrote lists of interesting conversational topics before leaving my dorm room. Just as praise for my work could elate me to a dangerous degree, criticism too easily flustered me and made me doubt myself.

During one writing class, a professor distributed, without naming the author,
a piece that I had written. Her private opinion of the work was favorable,
but she allowed my peers to offer their feedback first. Looking back, I have a memory of my fellow English majors at my all-girls college, an irritable group at best, eviscerating the story. One girl, whose t-shirt slogan instructed Pope John Paul to keep his rosaries off her ovaries, took particular

{{pg|421|422}}

umbrage. “Invalid, stultifying negation of “herstory”...obviously derived from patriarchal white-male, so-called “classical” literature, were some of
the gentler phrases she used. Another student, who, within ten years, would
marry a cardiologist and settle in Scarsdale, damned the anonymous writer
both for being an undercovermale and a reactionary. I mounted a feeble defense
of certain passages I knew were decently written, but by the end of the class, I found myself if not agreeing with, at least not objecting to, the general condemnation.

It took me years to learn how to distinguish objective, helpful criticism from personal bias, years to develop enough calluses to survive a writer’s life, and by that time, I had pretty much stopped writing.

That Saturday night dinner party, back in the 1980s, when Norman Mailer was in his rascally prime, was held at the spacious Central Park West apartment of a political writer known for his unapologetic Marxist views. The host was gathering a trio of famous authors—Bernard Malamud, Kurt Vonnegut, and Mailer—along with their wives to discuss how best to achieve worldwide nuclear disarmament. In the giddy pre-party moments, as I set the table and tried to calm myself down after hearing Malamud’s name, the hostess, a well-upholstered, fortyish brunette, spoke warmly to me about the evening ahead. “So you’re at ''Bar''-nard, how ''wonderful''... and an aspiring writer yourself, excellent...well, we have some very important people coming in tonight, I’ll be sure to introduce you.”

But when the illustrious guests showed up, my hostess’ tone turned a little snappish, and her promise of personal introductions did not materialize. In fact, she suddenly misplaced my name and began referring to me as “you,” as in “I’d so appreciate it if you’d hang up the wraps a bit more carefully,” and “Would you mind hurrying with those drinks?”

The evening progressed, although not quite as planned. Malamud, whose luminescent stories still captivate me, seemed something of a fusspot, several times complaining of a stomachache. Supervised by an anxious Mrs.Malamud, he suffered through his meal, declining most of the food and all of the alcohol offered to him. The other attendees, however, more than made up for his abstention. A gloomy Vonnegut gulped Scotch while lighting the tip of one PallMall fromanother, pinching the butts out on hisHavilland plate. By the end of the soup course, those in attendance appeared to have abandoned any thoughts of collaborating on an anti-nuclear treatise. The conversation
had drifted to other, less global concerns. I recall a few malicious tidbits

{{pg|422|423}}

involving mutual enemies and some personal chat about families. I hadn’t yet lost hope that the writers would start providing me with fresh insight into Proust, or elaborating on the major themes of Russian literature in the last century.

Norman Mailer, possibly out of boredom, perhaps to exhibit solidarity with the working class, abruptly stood up, picked up his soup bowl, and followed me out of the dining room. Norman’s wife rolled her beautiful eyes. “Oh Norman, don’t bother, the girl can handle that,” protested the hostess as we exited.

In the kitchen, where the chef was plating the fish course, I thanked Mailer for his help, and he politely introduced himself. He then asked me my name, and when I told him “Erin Bridget Kelley,” his face brightened and he squared off in front of me, asking in an atrocious brogue, “Hey, Erin, do ye happen to know what an oxymoron is?”

I was about to tell him that of course I did, that I was an English/classics major, who could explicate ''The Good Morrow'' and had translated ''The Sym-posium'' from the
Greek. But before I could answer, the literary lion burst out, grinning like a bratty ten-year-old boy. “A sober Irishman! That’s an oxymoron for you!”

I was too startled to reply and instead blushed to the parting in my hair,
a vexing physiological reaction that had plagued me since eighth grade. The man seemed disappointed when I wouldn’t insult him back in kind. A couple of times during the rest of the evening, Mailer tried to catch my eye and include me in the conversation, but I, stiff-necked and ashamed to be looked on as a servant by these people, celebrated novelists or not, refused to look in his direction.

In those days, I was reticent about speaking my mind, prone to what the French call ''l’esprit d’escalier'',” or “staircase wit.” To me, the phrase connoted the quick, cutting reply, the clever argument dreamed up on the subway ride home after a party, all the words that I ought to have said.While climbing the stairs to my room, I’d regret not having had the perfect comeback to silence the know-it-all, the bully or the Nosey Parker. I should have jousted with Mailer in kind, countered his insult with a “Hey, wise guy, is ‘a well mannered Norman Mailer’ an oxymoron, too?”

I’d like to think that Mailer could take it as well as he could dish it out. But it would take me years to learn to speak my mind, to respond quickly to

{{pg|423|424}}

verbal challenges. That night, I was way too young, way too touchy and self-conscious.

Still, in time I realized that Norman Mailer had taught me some things through our little exchange. First, I learned to avoid meeting icons in person, as they are bound to disappoint you. Second, whatever my opinion of Mailer’s many crusades, I had to admire his blunt and outspoken style, the great faith in himself he had to produce not only a new kind of literature in ''The Executioner’s Song'', but also works stunning for their epic length—almost fifteen hundred pages on the CIA, almost a thousand on ancient Egypt. Whatever Mailer did or didn’t do, he did one thing consistently right and that was to take his talent as a writer seriously. I can’t imagine him ever letting anyone sneer at his work.

After graduation from college, I started off determined to write. For a year, I lived alone aboard a Chris-Craft on the Potomac in Washington, DC. I supported myself with temporary office jobs, writing at night in the boat’s galley. At that time, my work-in-progress was a lengthy “fictional” account of two young girls, one of them a double for my younger sister Lizzie. The older girl, Molly, bore striking similarities to me. Coincidentally, the children were members of a large, Irish-Catholic family, and were growing up in the Pennsylvania countryside. The girls enjoyed visiting their lovable old coot of a neighbor, Mr.Welliver, who warmed his dentures in a jar that he set on the old-fashioned coal stove. The old man was notable for the multitude of feral cats living under his back porch. The story kept going on and on, stretching to more than one hundred pages, and I hadn’t even managed to lure the children from Mr.Welliver’s yard. The girls alternated between fashioning bouquets of Queen’s Anne’s lace, whose flowers reminded Molly of “the chaplet her mother wore to Mass,” and chasing the increasingly frenzied kittens around the property. Meanwhile, that quaint old dear, Mr Welliver, had fallen asleep on page twenty-seven, while watching a Phillies game. By page one hundred and twelve, I could have gladly killed off both my main characters in as gruesome a manner as was credible. Fortunately, this particular manuscript has been lost to time.

When I got the chance to join a six-week scientific expedition to Maine aboard a Smithsonian research vessel, I took it. It seemed like a writerly thing to do. Eventually, I moved back to New York and began working in the textbook division of Harper & Row. Soon enough, I set sail again, this time to Ireland for a year, having enrolled in courses in Anglo-Irish literature. I had

{{pg|424|425}}

a great time tramping the same streets as the characters in ''Dubliners''. and visiting Stephen Daedelus’s tower in Dunlaoghaire. ''Ulysses'' finally made sense to me, thanks to the Trinity lectures, but I ran out of tuition money, and finished up the year working at a pub.

When I returned stateside, I moved in with my brother Michael in Boston. I was accepted into Boston University’s M.F.A. program, but chose instead to move to Maine and get married. For the next several years, I kept writing, kept holding on to the idea that writing was my true vocation At that point, I believed that with steady, honest work and some luck, recognition for my work would come. In the spring of 1993, I was deep into a work of fiction that I believed to be the best that I had done. I had recently received a friendly, handwritten note from the managing editor at The ''Atlantic Monthly'', reject-ing a story I had sent in, while encouraging me to send him more work. I was thirty-three, my wanderlust at last satisfied. I was grateful for my marriage, and my beautiful sons, confident that I would fulfill my writer’s destiny, and eventually get on paper what I needed to say. Yet I couldn’t seem to carry out these plans when the boys were small.

A few years ago, I taught myself to paint in oils, hoping that creating art in another medium might somehow lead me back to writing. Instead, I found I loved painting. Where my writing seemed more effective when it was sad, my best canvases were happy and high-keyed in tone. I’ve exhibited in solo and group shows, and sold a respectable number of paintings. This year, I was awarded a grant from the Pennsylvania Partners in the Arts, through the Scranton Foundation, to create a series of portraits.

Although I have since run into other well-known people, among them Tolstoy’s grandnephew, Maud Gonne’s son Sean MacBride, and George Steinbrenner (bizarre bedfellows, I admit), I retain a fondness for the memory of my quick exchange with Norman Mailer. Out of all those big shots at that dinner party, he had looked me in the eye and spoken to me as if I were a real human being. Maybe he could sense that I, like him, didn’t appreciate being bossed around, even though I had signed up for the job and had only myself to blame.

I hadn’t thought about that chance meeting in years. Last week, I attended the Wilkes University Graduate information session, which was presented by a young playwright, who mentioned that he was research assistant for a professor who was writing a biography of Mailer. The mention of Mailer’s name recalled to me that distant, almost forgotten memory.

{{pg|425|426}}

Suddenly, present and past converged. It was as if Mailer were challenging me again. Maybe I have an answer for him now. I’m Irish enough to recognize portents. I’m enough of a believer in the spirit world that I might think it just possible that that bellicose genius, that fearless s.o.b., Norman Kingsley Mailer, might be giving me a shout out from wherever he is now. His exaggerated life, sprawling across nine decades, seems too enormous, too gaudy and messy, to be completely contained by death. I’d prefer to think there’s a chance that he’s signaling me to show some gumption, to answer back for once. Art itself is the only real response to a ruthless world. Call it hubris, but could Mailer’s ghost be prodding me to follow his hyperbolic example, to write down what I have to say before it is too late, before the party ends, the whole battle’s done, and it’s all over for me? After all, Mr. Mailer does owe me a chance to answer him back.

{{pg|426}}

The Mailer Review/Volume 4, 2010/“Oohh Normie—You’re Sooo Hemingway”: Mailer Memories and Encounters

2025-04-09T01:51:28Z

Tbara4554: fixed nd on 42nd

{{DISPLAYTITLE:{{BASEPAGENAME}}/{{SUBPAGENAME}}}}
{{MR04}}
{{Byline|last=Stoneback|first=H. R. |url=http://prmlr.us/mr04sto |abstract=A longtime friend recounts his memories of Norman Mailer over the past
half century. }}
{{dc|dc=L|ooking back now, over more than half a century}}, it seems Norman was always there. He was there, closer to the center of my cultural and literary formation and experience than I had remembered; and there, too, through the encounters I had with him over the years. And, in one way or another, Hemingway was involved in all of my “Mailer moments.” Yet, after my early twenties, I was seldom consciously aware of Mailer’s presence. And I have not finished any of his works published since the early 1970s, which was the last time I taught Mailer in my college classes. I hold no brief as a Mailer scholar, or even as an enthusiast of Mailer’s complete ''oeuvre''. Thus, when the editor of this journal invited me to submit a piece on Mailer and Hemingway, I begged off, saying I had not done my Mailer homework in decades and I could provide nothing more than anecdotal reminiscences of my encounters with Mailer. Our sage editor persisted, so I have written these remarks. In the course of mining history and inviting my memory to speak clearly, I have come to believe that a book, several rich and nuanced books, should be written on the subject of Mailer and Hemingway. Surely the special Hemingway-Mailer issue of this journal will constitute a significant step in the direction of that necessary goal. But all I have to offer here is anecdote. Not literary memoir—this is not the place to recount my conversations about Mailer with Mary Hemingway and Gregory Hemingway and Valerie Hemingway. Just personal anecdotes involving Mailer. And if this is taken as a sign that I am approaching my ''anecdotage'', so be it.

I first read ''The Naked and the Dead'' when I was fourteen years old. I was{{pg|371|372}}in the ninth grade then, in 1955, and my pantheon of great artists at that moment included Ernest Hemingway, Thomas Wolfe, Lord Byron, Hank Williams, Elvis Presley, and Fats Domino. We did not read ''The Naked and the Dead'' in school, but I read it at the same time that we were reading ''A Tale of Two Cities'' in my ninth-grade English class. I think I may have ranked Mailer higher than Dickens in my ninth-grade literary pronouncements. And I read Mailer immediately after the summer vacation when I read ''For Whom the Bell Tolls'' and ''The Old Man and the Sea'' in my grandmother’s attic in our summer place near Atlantic City. I do not remember whether I preferred Hemingway over Mailer then but I do remember the smell of my grandmother’s bookcases and the unpainted tongue-and-groove wainscoting of that attic, and the smell of the row-house outside Philadelphia—especially the basement where my father had to keep his copy of ''The Naked and the Dead''. And the feeling that reading both Hemingway and Mailer evoked is all mixed up with the scents of that season of reading. My father had to keep Mailer in the basement with certain other books next to his collection of 10,000 jazz records (78s of course) because my mother did not approve of Mailer and certain other authors having a place in the glass-fronted barrister’s bookcases in our dining room. Only one Hemingway—''The Old Man and the Sea''—was allowed in those bookcases with the complete works of Cooper, Irving, Scott and other classics, a generous assortment of Bibles and scriptural commentaries, and inscribed copies of books by a famous young evangelist named Billy Graham, who was my mother’s personal friend.

The next writing by Mailer that I remember reading was his celebrated and controversial essay, “The White Negro.” I was with my father in a used book and record shop when he purchased a soiled copy of the summer issue of Dissent for a nickel. Although my father was a factory worker then, in the fall of 1957, he had been in the 1920s and 1930s a publishing poet and jazz pianist of some reputation; he had been, for example, the only white musician and sideman on some “race records” vintage 1930. Thus he was interested in what Mailer had to say in “The White Negro.” And since I had long since announced (in the third grade) that I was going to be a writer and a singer, a novelist and a singer-songwriter, and I had long thought of myself as an outsider and a rebel, and I too was interested. By the end of 1957 I was reading ''The Village Voice'' whenever I could get hold of a copy and I had made my first hitchhiking trip to Greenwich Village to sing in coffeehouses. By the time I read and reread ''Advertisements for Myself'' in late 1959 I had hitchhiked to{{pg|372|373}}Greenwich Village several times and spent some time singing in the streets and in whatever places would give me ten or fifteen minutes on stage. I also sang with all the other folksingers in the famous gatherings in Washington Square. In spite of all the time I spent singing and playing guitar and writing songs in those high school years, I still thought of myself as primarily and primordially a writer; so I was well aware all during that time of how frequently Mailer’s name was linked with Hemingway’s—by English teachers, by the press, by anyone near my age who pretended to be a writer and to know something about the contemporary literary situation.

At the small church college I attended from 1959–1961 in Kentucky—first because I had fallen in love with the Kentucky River and then because I thought I was in love with a girl at that college—Mailer was not present on the list of authors who were talked about openly. His books were not in the college library. By the time I went to New York during the Christmas season of 1960 I had heard that Mailer had stabbed his wife, had spent some time at Bellevue, and had only managed to avoid prison time because his wife would not press charges. Some people that I talked to then held Mailer up as the prime example of a great talent laid waste by drink and drugs. I did not know if this were true. I was in Brooklyn for the Christmas season to sing with the Salvation Army on the streets, and to dress up as Santa Claus and ring the bell for donations. I couldn’t find any other Christmas break employment and the Sallies offered room and board. And I wanted to be in New York City. When my Santa Claus gig ended I moved from Brooklyn to Greenwich Village where I slept wherever I could find folks hospitable to young folksingers and would-be writers. There was so much hospitality that I had to get away from it for a few days, so I stayed at the old run-down Broadway Central Hotel because I’d read that Thomas Wolfe stayed there.It was so cold that winter that there wasn’t any singing outdoors in Washington Square, but I sang in some coffeehouses, the ''Café Wha?'', the ''Gaslight'' and other joints, and I sang at the Monday night hootenanny at ''Gerde’s Folk City''. At those hoots, we all got our fifteen minutes on stage. Even a kid named Robert Zimmerman, who was already calling himself Bob Dylan, although his name meant nothing at the time, only got fifteen minutes on stage in those days. The Village coffeehouses swarmed with winos and leftover Beats and some good kid-singers and older jazzmen and Uptown folks slumming and I suppose I saw many well-known writers that I did not recognize. I did not really care about meeting any writers although it would have been nice{{pg|373|374}}to see Kenneth Patchen who was, in my book then, in a league by himself. But I knew he could not be there in his wheelchair. One night somebody pointed out Allan Ginsberg to me. I liked ''Howl'' when I read it in the tenth grade, the year it came out. People said that they sometimes saw Mailer in the jazz and folk joints in the Village but if I ever saw him there I did not know it. But it was due to my momentary spell of infatuation with folksinging in Greenwich Village that I first saw Norman Mailer.

Because of the girl back in Kentucky that everybody but me thought of as my intended, I went back belatedly to attend the college winter quarter. Then, either during spring break or on one of my week-long hitchhiking trips AWOL from college, I was in the Village again in early April. The cops were harassing folksingers in the streets and tension was building over the singing in Washington Square. We sang “We Shall Not Be Moved” and made up words about Mayor Wagner and other city officials. I was lucky not to be in the Square the day the cops cracked down on the folksingers and hauled wagonloads away to jail. I was in the Library up on 42nd Street trying to read all the way through Hemingway’s ''Across the River and into the Trees''. Word of the crackdown and assault spread like wildfire and I was still in town a few days later when the protests and right-to-sing meetings started. I went to a few of these gatherings including one that was a kind of protest party in somebody’s place near the Judson Memorial Church.

At that event, more party than protest, there were many Village luminaries present, standing around talking in little circles with drinks in their hands, doing what I then regarded disdainfully as their dismal Prufrockian dance. A few of us proudly ''authentic'' kid-folksingers were singing in a far corner of that large warehouse-like room. During a break between songs, a tweedy, pipe-smoking professorial-looking older man that I talked to about being a writer said: “That’s Norman Mailer over there.” He gestured with his pipe toward the far side of the crowded room. “Mailer thinks he’s Hemingway but he doesn’t really know who Hemingway is, and he doesn’t write anything like him. And besides, Hemingway’s very sick now.” I remember staring at his lizard-lidded eyes behind thick black rectangular glasses and thinking ''what do you really know about Mailer and Hemingway'' but I said nothing. I put down my guitar to head over and introduce myself to Norman Mailer. I knew it was Mailer from all the pictures I’d seen. On my way across the large room I stopped at the outer fringe of one circle of talkers, the circle where Moe Asch—head of Folkways Records—held forth. He was the{{pg|374|375}}real reason I had come to that gathering, having heard he’d be there. More than anything, I wanted Moe Asch to offer me a recording contract with Folkways. Just like every other kid-folksinger in the room, in the Village, in the entire country—that’s what I wanted then. (Years later, I had a chance to make a Folkways album with Asch but I was too busy writing about Faulkner and Hemingway to take time off from my promotion-and-tenure quest.) That night in 1961 I listened to Asch talk about the record business for a few minutes, and when I turned to make my way through the crowd toward Mailer I saw his shoulders and the back of his head going through the door, leaving the gathering. I was a little disappointed I didn’t get to talk to him but I wasn’t going to chase him down the steps and into the street. So that was when I first ''saw'' Mailer. I went back to the singing corner and played guitar and sang some more. That night some girl gave me a copy of ''The Old Man and the Sea'', inscribed to me and my “future great writings.”

The next day I hitchhiked back to Kentucky, where I put my new copy of ''The Old Man and the Sea'' on my dorm room bookshelf next to my well-thumbed copy of ''Advertisements for Myself''. My Kentucky girl didn’t approve of Mailer but she thought Hemingway was OK. And even though she was from Patchen-Country she wouldn’t even look at his work. As for my writing I think she liked best the stuff that sounded like bad Byron or Keats or Whitman or Wordsworth that I’d written in the eighth grade. Sometime in May I heard from a country singer hitchhiking through Lexington that Mayor Wagner had just lifted the ban on folksinging in Washington Square. That was in a bar in Lexington where the rules of my college forbade me to be and Hank Williams was playing loud on the jukebox and I had just learned that my girlfriend was pregnant. There wasn’t any way we could get married and in those days in that place nobody even thought about abortion. When that term of college ended I was informed that I was expelled from college due to “accumulated demerits,” excessive absence from class and required chapel, and “general bad attitude.” Maybe I was a better student of Mailer than I realized.

Sometime after I’d heard about the lifted ban on folksinging, I had read about it in the newspapers in the college library. I was happy for my folksinging buddies in the Village but by then I already knew I wasn’t going back there. I’d had enough of the Village. So I’d just have to wait to talk to Norman Mailer. I cleaned out my dorm room and threw whatever possessions I had in a duffel bag and slung my guitar over my back, hitting the road,{{pg|375|376}}hitchhiking from Kentucky to Northern Michigan. The toughest decision I had to make was which books to give away and which to carry with me on the road. The choice was generally determined by weight but still I packed ''Advertisements for Myself'' with ''The Old Man'' and a few other books along with my notebooks filled with poems and stories in the burlap feed-sack that I tied on to my guitar with baling twine. I had a job for the summer up in Hemingway-Country at a resort not far from Petoskey. My job title was Assistant Social Director, and my duties included singing every night, organizing shows and entertainment, playing guitar at square dances (sometimes even doing the calling, under the tutelage of the regular 70-year-old caller), and generally keeping the tourists—maybe 70% women—happy.

It was mostly a good summer there in Hemingway-Country. That’s not the way I thought about Northern Michigan then and even though I was fishing and canoeing his streams and hanging out in places where he had lived and written I rarely thought about Hemingway at all. Until that day came in early July and the news of Hemingway’s death filled the airwaves, the newspapers, and all the conversations at the resort and in the nearby towns. Regardless of what the initial press releases said, everybody in that country said from the first that it was suicide.

I remember a heated discussion that lasted for hours one night at El Rancho—the name of the resort where I worked—that occurred a few days after Hemingway’s death. One of the debaters was my co-worker, a six-foot-four man who weighed about 400 pounds and everybody called “Tiny,” who was a big fan of both Mailer and Hemingway. He had borrowed my copy of ''Advertisements for Myself'' and was reading and rereading it all summer. I had borrowed his copy of ''The Deer Park'' but I was having trouble getting through it, partly because there wasn’t much time to read and partly because I hadn’t liked any writing about Hollywood since I read Nathanael West’s ''The Day of the Locust'' a few summers before. The other debaters were tourists or visitors to the ranch. I was mostly a silent listener, in a rare act of deference to my elders. When Tiny repeatedly asserted that up until then the twentieth century, in a literary sense, had belonged to Hemingway, but now Mailer was Hemingway’s only true heir and the rest of the century belonged to Mailer, one of the ranch visitors vehemently disagreed. He maintained that Mailer was nothing like Hemingway, that he had no clue regarding Hemingway’s code or vision. And Mailer’s sentences, his form, were nothing like Hemingway’s. Some of the tourists in the bar that night, the majority of them, agreed with{{pg|376|377}}him. His argument was compelling, citing chapter and verse from the works of both writers. He also said that the worst thing about Mailer was he had no compassion. I was very young, just a kid-folksinger who wanted to be a writer, so I wasn’t sure what I thought about the argument that night. I was just happy that it occurred, that people were taking writers and writing seriously, that they argued for hours about Mailer and Hemingway instead of about movie stars or sports or politics. But I did say, during a lull in the heated debate, that the very act of writing was itself an act of compassion. I had believed that for a long time and I had a deep respect for ''all'' writers, for anyone who was truly driven to write. When the girl from North Dakota was through working in the kitchen and came into the bar, I went off with her and we canoed across the lake. We could hear their voices, still arguing, echo across the lake. Although she was a big Hemingway fan she had never heard of Mailer. But we did not talk about writers and writing. Not that night.

The next morning I learned that Tiny’s debate opponent was a journalist from a major newspaper in Detroit or Chicago—I don’t remember his name or home base or newspaper—but he was on assignment at the ranch to do a feature story for the travel section on the phenomenon of square dancing ''in'' the lake that was a regular occurrence at the ranch that summer. He interviewed me over lunch, since he had discovered that I was the inventor of water-square-dancing. In one of my more Edisonian moments as Assistant Social Director, I had realized that for those who didn’t want to go horseback riding there wasn’t much to do in the afternoon, so I organized square dancing ''in'' the water as a regular afternoon event. When I said that the water slowed down the dancer’s moves, introduced a kind of artistic suspension into the motion that made it like ballet, the reporter wrote that down in his notebook. I had never seen a ballet then and I really just invented water-square-dancing to get myself free from leading trail rides and the dreaded archery instruction that were part of my time-filling assignments in the afternoons. I didn’t tell him that. In the course of our interview I mentioned that aside from being a singer-songwriter, I wanted to be a writer. He said he also wrote fiction. He looked like he was about fifty but he hadn’t published a novel yet. That afternoon he was down at the edge of the lake studying our water-square-dancing session like a bemused anthropologist investigating a strange lost tribe. His photographer took many pictures of the dancers doing their dosey-do’s and promenades in knee-deep and waist-deep water, and photos of me calling the dance and playing the{{pg|377|378}}guitar in knee-deep water, backed up by another guitar player and a fiddler who did not like fiddling in the water.

That night, after my evening performance, he came up to me and said he’d enjoyed meeting me but he had to leave for the Upper Peninsula—he had to get to Seney to do a story on the country of Hemingway’s “Big Two-Hearted River.” He referred to the great Hemingway-Mailer debate of the night before and counseled me firmly against following Mailer, told me to ''eschew the Maileresque path of self-involvement and self-advertisement'' if I wanted to be a writer. I knew what ''eschew'' meant, of course—at least since I had spelled it correctly in the fifth grade spelling bee. But I had never heard anybody say it in the course of a normal conversation and I did not like hearing the word. People who said words like ''eschew'' must live in another world, I thought. Then he said: “If you want to be a real writer, you must learn compassion.” I didn’t think that you could study and ''learn'' compassion, you either had it or you didn’t, and if you didn’t you wouldn’t write at all. If you had it, it probably came to you in an epiphanic flash, as it did to me as a teenager, and he was right that you had to have it to be a real writer. But I figured that Mailer had it, like all real writers, and also that this journalist was probably missing some wit and irony in Mailer’s deployment of his self-advertisement motif. But I didn’t say that to him. I just thanked him for his advice. He reminded me of other older failed writers who were intent on advising young would-be writers like me how to avoid failure. I’d noticed this syndrome before, but had never seen it so clearly. He was really an all right guy and I hope he got his novel written and published.

There were other “Hemingway-Mailer moments” at that Michigan ranch in the summer of 1961 but I will limit my account here to just this one, which does seem to me to be a token, a sign, a charged moment in the oral history of literary reputation. So, too, was the fact that when I finished my duties at the ranch, I left with no less than five books given to me by girls and women, inscribed with love and great hopes for my future writing. All of the books were by Hemingway.

{{* * *}}

That September, after some more hitchhiking-singing-on-the-road escapades, I went off to Parris Island to become a Marine. I offer this sidelight on the literary history of the Marine Corps: Marine privates, who were said{{pg|378|379}}in those days to be joining up either because they were running from the law or from a girl, did in fact ''read''. My platoon at Parris Island and Camp Lejeune was in fact a remarkably literate group, many of us college dropouts, and most of us dropouts were English ''majors''. We devoured war books and all of us preferred ''For Whom the Bell Tolls'' and ''The Naked and the Dead'' over Jones and ''From Here to Eternity'', over Styron’s ''The Long March'', over Remarque’s ''All Quiet on the Western Front'' and all the other World War One books by Aldington, Cummings, Dos Passos and the rest. The fact that Hemingway and Mailer received the Good Marine Seal of Approval—in my platoon—must mean at least as much as a good or bad review in the ''New York Times''.

Although I am enjoying this informal survey of literary history, I fear my readers may by now be mumbling ''mere anecdotage'' so I will truncate these memories. It’s OK to look back, as the slogan goes, just don’t ''stare''. And I offer my assurance that these remarks contain none of that unearned emotion known as nostalgia, not even ''la nostalgie de la boue'', for there is no homesickness here for the fundamentally hungry wretched life of the kid-folksinger on the road.

When my active duty in the Marine Corps ended in 1962, I was based in Kentucky and drove a truck for awhile before I quit and hitchhiked to New Orleans. From my first days in New Orleans, I lost forever any homesickness I might have had for Greenwich Village. The French Quarter became the new capitol of my Bohemian universe and erased almost all memory of an attraction to the Village. After a road-trip to Mexico, I went back to Kentucky and my new girl friend and we ran away to get married and build a log cabin in Alabama. My new wife was a great reader and she had read more Hemingway than I had but she did not like Mailer. While she worked in a café to earn money to pay the rent on our attic apartment, I worked in the deep woods from dawn to dusk, building a log-cabin the old way—no chainsaw, felling all the trees with my ax, skinning all the logs with a draw-knife, notching everything into place. Remarkably, a legendary character and landowner there in east-central Alabama had given me the rights to forty acres of his land for exactly ''one penny''. Things like that still happened in the America of 1962. I didn’t read much during those long months of deep satisfaction in the singularity of intense physical labor, at least twelve hours every day, and Mailer and the literary life of the Village, all literary life, began{{pg|379|380}}to recede to the far corners of my consciousness. Mailer didn’t go well with log cabins in the wilderness; neither did Hemingway.

My wife and I were now singing (sometimes on the local radio station, sometimes in country churches, occasionally in the rare southern coffeehouses which were nothing like the coffeehouses of New York and the Northeast), more classic country and gospel than folk, and Hank Williams and Jimmie Rodgers and Johnny Cash didn’t seem to have much to do with Mailer—his American Dream seemed far distant from mine. But then, maybe, Cash and Mailer and Williams were more kindred spirits than they could recognize. And the American Dream—all of our American dreams—were much closer in spirit and substance than any of us could see then or maybe even now.

Somehow I ended up back in New Orleans by mid-1963, largely from the need to earn money so that I could complete my cabin in Alabama. This time I landed a regular gig singing in a club on Bourbon Street. I became a kind of local ''star'', and people came to my club to hear me sing my own songs, which felt nothing like the songs I’d been writing in the Village two years before. I was hired to sing at private parties, on Mississippi river-boats, at Tulane sorority parties and I even had my own day-time television show. I knew everybody in the French Quarter, including legendary old jazz musicians who played at Dixieland Hall (then more important than Preservation Hall). I also knew all the literary types in the Quarter and none of them admired Mailer. One of the few who even mentioned him—a would-be writer, who had been a would-be writer much longer than I’d been one—said that ''Advertisements for Myself'' was very passé, that Mailer seemed like a 1930s Old Left character who had discovered drugs, an old Leftie who couldn’t even sing.

When the price of living my entertainer’s Bohemian life in the French Quarter began to seem too high, I decided to go back to college. It seemed like a way to give shape to time. I was twenty-three and I hadn’t written much of anything except songs for several years. If I was going to be a writer, I knew I had to know more writers. My decision to get a B.A. was in fact my decision to get a Ph.D. and read everything I had not yet read. So I went to Rutgers, where neither Hemingway nor Mailer played any role in my coursework or indeed in any of the courses offered. By 1964 the anti-Hemingway reaction that so characterized the later ‘60s and after had set in; and, if you were in the grip of a thoroughly wrong-headed assessment of Hemingway,{{pg|380|381}}how could you accurately gauge Hemingway-Mailer connections? At the level of literary ''conversation'' (not coursework), you still heard talk in Rutgers circles about Mailer as the heir to the Hemingway legacy. But now this was understood to be a negative thing—a tainted and unfortunate legacy, macho, violent, and solipsist, claimed by a confused heir. Confusion was rampant on all sides. As escape from what I felt to be the dead-end imperatives of contemporary American writing, I invested most of my time and passion in exploration of the Russians and the French, and even considered doing my Ph.D. in French literature.

As usual when I needed money my only sure fallback position was entertainment. So my wife and I, with some student partners, opened a coffeehouse, which immediately became ''the'' place to go for Rutgers students and many locals. We did all the cooking and we sang almost every night of the week. Sometimes, we put on stage the folksingers passing through town—although there were not as many kid-folksingers on the road as there had been just a few years before. We had a hootenanny night (“Open Mike” in today’s terminology) for mostly locals, with the predictable mixed results. Something had changed in the folk music world: audiences were more receptive to our stage repertoire—mostly deep old country, authentic traditional (and non-politicized) folksongs, gospel, and some of our own songs. By then, too, Dylan songs were ''de rigueur''. Some things about our coffeehouse carried on what I then felt to be the old-fashioned late 1950s Greenwich Village traditions—jazz records that customers could choose from and play until live show times. And chessboards.

The best chess player was an older black man, an artist and a fine painter who had been Ezra Pound’s attendant when he was incarcerated at St. Elizabeth’s Hospital. Gregory—that was the only name we knew him by and the way he signed all his paintings—was a regular. I never saw him lose a game of chess. I talked many hours and days with him about the kind of man Ezra Pound was—Gregory loved him deeply, but preferred to talk about the ''Cantos'', with which I had then only a passing and superficial acquaintance. We had several shelves of books for our customers to peruse in the quiet hours. One day I tried to give Gregory my now-ancient and much-traveled copy of ''Advertisements for Myself'', which had been on the coffeehouse bookshelves since we opened. He held the book in his hand with a certain world-weary look while he talked about Mailer. Gregory had been a ''hipster'' in the late 1940s sense and a regular at New York jazz clubs from the 1940s into the{{pg|381|382}}1950s. He said he had often seen Mailer in the jazz clubs and talked to him a few times. Said he was a nice guy but Gregory didn’t like Mailer’s work. He had particular words of disdain for “The White Negro.” He said it was an all too familiar case of ''la nostalgie de la boue'' (it was from Gregory that I first heard that seminal phrase), the kind of ''romanticized slumming''—Gregory spoke this sentence very slowly and firmly—''that you might expect from a rich Ivy League Jewish boy''. He said he could no longer read Mailer, and, anyway, he much preferred Pound. He liked Hemingway, too, and thought that nobody had really understood Hemingway yet and how he was Pound’s best student. Gregory declined my gift of ''Advertisements for Myself''. A few weeks later I gave it to a fellow student who, shortly thereafter, drove his Harley—stoned—over a cliff at 120 MPH.

I finished my B.A. at Rutgers quickly; in spite of having been expelled years before from that college in Kentucky I spent only three-and-a-half years total earning the degree. I already knew that I wanted to get my Ph.D. at Vanderbilt, so the location of my M.A. degree didn’t matter a great deal to me. When the University of Hawaii offered me a Teaching Assistantship, complete with travel pay from the East Coast, I packed my bags. I earned my M.A. there in nine months of intense coursework that did not, however, include any Hemingway or Mailer. It was 1966 and dismissal of Hemingway and Mailer was pervasive. In Hawaii, of all places, I first truly discovered Faulkner, read twice everything he wrote, and wrote my M.A. thesis on Faulkner’s folk usages. Hawaii was as far as you could get from Greenwich Village, from Mailer and the New York literary life. There were no coffeehouses but we sang occasionally in some local joints and even learned some Hawaiian folksongs from Big Island cowboys. But they really preferred Hank Williams to their own folksongs. If there was a jazz scene in Hawaii, we never saw it. We lived in the apartment in the old Jungle of Waikiki that Kui Lee, the legendary Hawaiian songwriter-poet, had just vacated. His songs were scrawled on the wooden walls of that shack. And Frank Zappa played the guitar up in a tree at a party in my front yard. But no Mailer, no Hemingway—not in those islands.

I accepted a Ph.D. fellowship at Vanderbilt and in the fall of 1966 I moved to Nashville. Mailer and Hemingway were not read in any of the courses at Vanderbilt then, and if their names came up at all it was only in a negative sense in passing disdainful remarks. There we lived, to be sure, in what was regarded as the capitol of the Southern Renascence, and the long shadow of{{pg|382|383}}Fugitive-Agrarianism was a palpable daily presence. We took literary criticism courses with Allen Tate and special seminars with Cleanth Brooks, down from Yale for a week. I got to know Robert Penn Warren and, immersed as I was by then in southern lit, I started thinking of Red as my literary father. The literary life of New York and the East Coast, if it were granted existence at all, was something from another planet. There was only one other doctoral candidate who read ''Why Are We in Vietnam?'' and ''The Armies of the Night'' at the same time as I did. He was also the only other graduate student who sang and played music in clubs when he needed money. There weren’t any coffeehouses in Nashville and the folksongs that were sung in the Village were not sung there. But there were plenty of juke-joints and country music places where I sang what I thought of by then as ''authentic'' folksongs, along with the songs I was writing and trying to pitch to the likes of Johnny Cash. My only Maileresque moment in Nashville was when we set up a temporary coffeehouse at the headquarters of Eugene McCarthy’s brief quixotic presidential campaign. I sang some of the old Village songs there, and some new ones, but I had nothing to do with the place being named EUGENE, surely the worst name ever for a coffeehouse. After three years at Vanderbilt, with my newly minted Ph.D. in hand, I accepted a job teaching graduate studies in Faulkner and southern lit, as well as undergraduate and graduate folksong courses, at a place I had never heard of—SUNY-New Paltz, an hour and a half north of Manhattan. It seemed like a good place to be for a few years. I am still there, still teaching, forty-one years later. It is still one of the good places. Inevitably, as a function of landscape or place or location, I was drawn back into the literary life of New York City.

The first night I saw Mailer face-to-face and shook hands with him was at ''The Lion’s Head'' in the Village in the early 1970s. It was perhaps the most famous literary saloon in New York City and, as I would learn, one of Mailer’s favorite hangouts. But I did not go there to meet Mailer. I’d heard on the street that the Clancy Brothers might be singing there that night, informally, as they often did. And I knew that other singer-songwriters often performed there. In the late 1960s, Jerry Jeff Walker’s greatest hit “Bo Jangles” had its debut there at ''The Lion’s Head'' as did perhaps another of his early greatest hits, “Stoney” (a song, I confess, that is about me). I don’t know if my old road-buddy Jerry Jeff knew Mailer at all, but the next time we talk I’ll ask him. Just the other day, as I was composing this essay, I was at the Guthrie Center in the Berkshires for a concert by Tom Paxton, one of the most{{pg|383|384}}celebrated folksingers and songwriters of the ‘60s. Talking to Tom after the show, he confirmed that he regularly saw Mailer at ''The Lion’s Head'' for a number of years; Norman had his own roundtable there where he held forth, and “he was a good guy.” I forgot to ask Paxton if Mailer liked folk music. Maybe he did. In any case, I went to ''The Lion’s Head'' for the folk music the first night I shook hands with Mailer. He was not at his roundtable; he was standing at the bar talking with Pete Hamill, Jimmy Breslin, and some other regulars, a loud raucous conversation about New York politics and personalities. I was drawn into the conversation and eventually introduced myself and shook hands with them. I liked them all and it was the good real old talking and I wanted to stay but I had to get up to Grand Central and catch the last train to Poughkeepsie. I had to teach ''The Naked and the Dead'' the next morning. It was the first (and last) time I taught Mailer. That course was called Contemporary Literature (contemporary then meant everything after 1945). The professor who usually taught the course was hospitalized for the rest of the term and I’d been asked to take over the course, called up from the Southern League. It was also the first (but not the last) time I taught Hemingway.

The next few times I was in the Village I stopped in at ''The Lion’s Head'' but I did not see Mailer there. I did hear some good folksinging. Then I went off for a year’s stint as Visiting Professor at the University of Paris (Faulkner & Southern Lit of course), and I lived in the Latin Quarter and Montparnasse. Just as New Orleans and the French Quarter had erased my early love of the Village, Paris now became my magical palimpsest. Nobody in Paris that year (1973–74), French or American, talked about Mailer as Hemingway’s heir. Nobody talked about Mailer at all, except James Jones at one memorable long lunch we had on the Boulevard Raspail. Discretion may be the better part of memoir, so it must suffice to say here that Jones thought ''From Here to Eternity'' was a far, far better book than ''The Naked and the Dead''.

By the 1980s nobody at my university, nobody that I knew around the country, was teaching Mailer. When I did a senior Fulbright year in China— now hired to teach both Faulkner ''and'' Hemingway—at Peking University, I was much involved in translation projects initiated by Chinese scholars and translators who wanted to get all of the best twentieth-century American fiction rendered into Chinese. On several occasions, I was formally consulted on this matter, and once I was asked to comment on a very long list of writers and works that were under consideration. Mailer’s name was not on the{{pg|384|385}}list. I suggested that they should add his name. I do not know if they did or if he was ever translated into Chinese. One translator, roughly my age, who knew the names of many lesser American writers, said he had never heard of Mailer. But then he had never heard of Elvis Presley either.

{{* * *}}

And that brings me to my most important encounter with Mailer—at the legendary 1986 PEN meeting in New York. My original intent here was simply to record that encounter. I had hoped to locate the careful notes I took at all the meetings and sessions where Mailer presided, but they seem hopelessly lost among the trunks and closets full of pre-computer writing in my vast wreck of a house. Still, it is a story worth telling, and to tell it properly I have felt it necessary here to record my long involvement at the periphery of Mailer’s life and work. So I offer this anecdote, this record of my newfound admiration for Mailer, as a kind of atonement for my own long neglect.

The 48th Congress of International PEN in January 1986, when the nation’s and the world’s leading writers came to New York at the invitation of Norman Mailer, president of PEN’s American Center, to discuss the theme of the gathering—“The Writer’s Imagination and the Imagination of the State”—was the most extraordinary literary event I have witnessed in a lifetime of participation in remarkable literary conferences and parliaments worldwide. Only Mailer could have created and presided over such a happening. I was not an invited participant, just a bystander, an observer who was present at most of the events as I stayed at the St. Moritz Hotel on Central Park South for the duration of the Congress. For a week I sat next to and rode the hotel elevator with and exchanged passing remarks with the likes of Brodsky, Coetzee, Gordimer, Grass, Milosz, Oz, Rushdie, Soyinka, Vargas Llosa, and of course the Americans such as Bellow, Carver, Doctorow, Morrison, Sontag, Styron, Updike, Vonnegut and many others I had seen or met or talked with at previous literary occasions. It is hard to believe that a detailed account of the event does not exist in print, but if it does I am not aware of it. I have heard, in conversation, the event referred to as “Mailer’s Disgrace.” But I prefer to think of it as “Mailer’s Triumph.” Since I have been unable to locate my detailed contemporaneous notes taken at the meetings, I can only sketch here a few of the most memorable moments.{{pg|385|386}}
I remember the grand opening event at the Library, for which Mailer had arranged the star speaker George Schultz, Reagan’s Secretary of State. I remember the protests made by many writers, the denunciations to the effect that Mailer was making all of the assembled writers appear to be Reagan stooges. That seemed laughable to me, since the occasion seemed to exemplify one of Mailer’s finest traits, his taste for free and open debate, at the highest level. Besides, I rather liked Schultz—the man—ever since I’d talked to him at some length during Reagan’s state visit to China in 1984. I talked with him both at the State Dinner and at a private cocktail party, and it seemed extraordinary that he actually knew who I was—''a leading young Hemingway scholar'' he called me. He knew that I was the Senior Fulbright Scholar at Peking University, China’s most prestigious institution, and without any clue from me, he said it was a very good thing that I was teaching Hemingway to China’s future leaders. That earned him some credit with me and not just because he was a man who did his homework and actually read advance briefings. (Conversation with Schultz was certainly more focused and illuminating than the interview I did with Diane Sawyer on network news later that week.) In any case, amidst all the protests, I approved of Mailer’s choice of Schultz as speaker, and I made a point of telling him this after the occasion. He seemed very pleased, as if no one else had expressed approval.

I remember the confrontation between Günter Grass and Saul Bellow, and how Bellow handled the situation with poise and grace. I remember the denunciations of Bruno Kreisky, the Chancellor of Austria, and how he came across as the exemplar of graceful lucidity. I remember many readings by so many fine writers, including Updike’s near mystical celebration of mailboxes as a medium of the free and open movement of thought and feeling. And I remember, of course, the women’s protests over the lack of women on the various session panels. They had a point, but it was probably Susan Sontag (not a part of the rebellion) who had the last word on that score: “Literature is not an equal opportunity employer."

It was after the major session of the women’s revolt that I had my most memorable Mailer moment. With Mailer presiding, many women occupied the front rows of the auditorium and proceeded to interrupt him persistently with hisses, catcalls, and other audible forms of disapproval and disorder. Many in the audience clearly felt a sense of chagrin, a deep embarrassment over the way things were going. I was sitting next to Günter{{pg|386|387}}Grass and Salman Rushdie and their sense of discomfiture was evident. Behind me a writer I did not recognize said in heavily accented English: “This is shameful. It does not matter what he has said and done and written about women in the past—this is about this moment, this occasion, and they must cease their rudeness.” But the hissing and interruption continued; although it seemed that most in the audience were appalled, no one, as I remember things, rose to the floor in defense of Mailer. I thought—and many others agreed—that Mailer handled an impossible situation well, mostly with even-tempered wit. On the elevator that night, crowded in with Bellow and Amos Oz and other writers, I recall that someone said: “Norman handled that mess with poise and uncharacteristic grace.” But that was later.

Right after the heated session I was walking through the crowded lobby next to Mailer. We were squeezed in tight by the crowd, hardly able to move. I had just told him that I thought he’d handled the difficulties like some tough field commander conducting a battle against terrible odds. The PEN events, especially the protests, had captured the attention of the media, and there were reporters asking questions on all sides and television news cameras pointed in our faces. I remember thinking ''isn’t it nice that literature is news''. Then, as the TV cameramen backed away from Mailer and me and the crowd around us, clearing a space in front of us to improve camera angles, a young man pushed into that open space, got in Mailer’s face and said: “You’re such a tough guy Mr. Mailer. May I have this dance?” He was either flamboyantly gay or pretending to be. With Mailer’s left arm pressed against me by the crowd, I could feel him tensing up. Then the young man said: “Oohh Normie—you’re sooo Hemingway.” Immediately, I felt Mailer’s left arm tense and saw his fist then his tight left uppercut started toward the young man’s chin. I put my right hand firmly on Mailer’s wrist and said: “It’s not worth it.” I do not know whether I stopped the uppercut or he pulled his punch but the cameras were rolling and I was later told that there was a sound bite, a brief sequence of this moment on the 11 o’clock news that night and I could be heard clearly saying “It’s not worth it.” They told me that the TV clip—I never saw it—ended with the young man on the floor in front of Mailer, apparently out cold. Simultaneous with the stopped punch, the young man fell to the floor and seemed to be unconscious for a few seconds. All of us, including Mailer, pushed the crowd back to give him more breathing room and summoned emergency aid. When the cops showed up{{pg|387|388}}immediately, the young man got up and ran the other way, and with a high shrieking laugh he disappeared in the crowd.

The incident of the fake fainting spell, the pulled or stopped or phantom punch, has haunted me off and on over the years. Was it the “sooo Hemingway” remark hissed in his face, after all the hissing at the women’s revolt session just before, that made Mailer seem to lose his composure for a second? Or was it the “Oohh Normie”? Maybe both. Or maybe he didn’t lose his composure at all, and the near-deed was the sure sign of a cool equanimity. I remember standing there, as the cops cleared the crowd away, seeing Doctorow sitting at the bar across the lobby and the expression on his face, and then as the cops escorted Mailer toward the Central Park South sidewalk his turning back and looking at me and saying “Thanks.” The whole sequence of events, I stood there thinking, seemed to signify some terrible primordial cultural misappropriation of both Hemingway and Mailer, calamitously emblematic of the deep confusions of our culture.

After that night in 1986 I saw Mailer on several other occasions. He gave the keynote address at the 1990 International Hemingway Conference at the Kennedy Library in Boston. I remember that I defended some things Mailer had said against the objections of my Hemingway colleagues. I do not remember what those things were since I do not have a copy of that speech, necessary as a corrective to what Mailer had said about Hemingway over the years. After the speech I spoke with Mailer, who was sitting with Jackie Onassis. He was jovial and relaxed and he made some coded humorous reference to the 1986 PEN encounter in the lobby. Something about Cassius Clay and Sonny Liston and a phantom punch. Both Mailer and Jackie Onassis were pleasant and charming that night.

Sometime in April 1991 I drove up to Albany for the “Telling the Truth Symposium” put on by the New York State Writers Institute. I particularly wanted to see Gay Talese again and to hear the “Is Fiction Truer than Truth?” panel with Mailer, Mary Gordon, and William Kennedy. I knew all three of them and it seemed like a fine mix for some fireworks or at least lively discussion, with Gordon and Mailer, and Kennedy’s ''politesse'' between them. It wasn’t exactly fireworks, but after Gordon held forth at length on the Catholic novel, it was Mailer’s turn to say something about the Jewish novel. When Mary kept interrupting Norman, even on the subject of Jewishness, he said what he said. Suffice it to say that Mailer won the debate, scoring top points in the categories of literary acuity and wit. When I talked to Mailer{{pg|388|389}}after the program, he again made a reference to the phantom PEN-punch at the St. Moritz.

One last encounter germane to my Hemingway-Mailer motif here was a night at the Lotos Club in the early 1990s that stands sharply at attention in memory. The Lotos Club, in New York off Fifth Avenue in the East 60s, is one of America’s oldest and most elegant private literary clubs. Mark Twain was a member, as were many other literary and arts luminaries—a long list. And I have been a member for over thirty years; in the period when Bill Kennedy chaired the Club Literary Committee I went to nearly all the literary evenings he organized at the club—for example, the occasion that Kennedy writes about in his piece, “Norman Mailer: An Eavesdropper at the Lotos Club” (in ''Riding the Yellow Trolley Car''). But the night I am remembering here was a different occasion (if I remember rightly) in the early 1990s when William Styron was being honored, not long after the publication of ''Darkness Visible''. After the program I went downstairs to the famous Grill Room with Kennedy, Mailer, and Styron, where a fascinating literary conversation ensued, crystallizing certain key points regarding the state of twentieth-century American literature.

It started out genially enough in the almost deserted Lotos Grill Room, in the company of the famous nudes hanging on the walls around us. Kennedy and Mailer discussed other writers, and I talked with Styron about Robert Penn Warren. He had died a few years before, and we both said how much we loved and missed Red. I mentioned that Warren had been my sponsor for Lotos membership in 1978. We then talked about how Eleanor and the children were doing. At some point, I mentioned that my other sponsor for Lotos membership was Mary Hemingway. Mary and I had been friends for several years and I was pleased that the first woman member in the long history of the Lotos had been my co-sponsor with Warren. At this point, Styron made some crack about Hemingway—I don’t remember precisely everything he said but it had to do with how vastly over-rated Hemingway was and how his work “was inimical”—this I recall exactly because I always remember when somebody uses words like ''inimical'' or ''eschew''—“to good writing by all the writers who followed after him.” I remember thinking ''uh-oh I hope Norman didn’t hear that'' but he did and immediately abandoned his other conversation and entered what instantly became the fray. It did seem rather graceless for Styron to say such a thing in the presence of Mailer. But{{pg|389|390}}Styron looked very frail that night, his visage showing signs of fragility from his recent illness, so I gave him a pass. At first.

Styron insisted on Faulkner’s primacy and Hemingway’s insignificance. It seemed odd for him to do so, since he had so long borne the Faulkner-acolyte label, ever since the ''derivative-Faulknerian'' charges that were made against his early work. It also seemed odd since Styron’s close friend Warren always said, as he often did to me, that Faulkner and Hemingway were the two indispensable writers, and we all must write in their joint commingled shadow. At any rate, Styron and Mailer went at it: Hemingway’s famous understatement was a cover for what he didn’t know, Faulkner in saying too much said nothing; Hemingway’s sentences were sometimes baby-talk, Faulkner’s sentences were often over-stuffed verbosity; and so forth. At first Kennedy, always in my experience a calmly reasonable gentleman, said little. I also mostly listened at first. I was then, as far as I could tell, one of two or three Hemingway scholars in the country who was also a Faulkner scholar and firmly believed that we needed to know and love both of them. Most Faulknerians I knew were either ignorant or disdainful of Hemingway; and vice-versa. And I think that is the peace-making position that both Kennedy and I cultivated—we needed both Faulkner and Hemingway. But at some moments, when Styron said some of his harder things against Hemingway, it was clearly three against one. Mailer’s voice got louder when he said things like “Bill, I can’t allow that to go unchallenged” and Styron’s voice got softer and smaller. I was a little worried about him. But it was all just good tough literary talk among people who knew many things about writing. We eventually said goodnight amicably. It was the last time I saw Mailer. And Styron.

Since I thought it had been an evening of the best of all talking, I was very surprised when sometime later a fellow Lotos member, who had been in the corner of the Grill Room drinking alone that night, mentioned to me what he called Mailer’s ungentlemanly conduct. “Rude, loud and offensive,” he said.“Boorish and pugnacious as always.” I reckon that was just one of those labels that you can’t get unstuck. I disagreed genially and said maybe we should call a panel of Great Lotos Members who knew about good literary talk to sit in judgment—chaired by Mark Twain maybe. But I did wonder as I composed this essay if I had given Mailer a pass based on my newfound PEN-based personal fondness. So I recently asked the only other witness to that conversation if he thought Mailer was rude and unpleasant and pugnacious that night. He is a scientist and thus presumably a somewhat{{pg|390|391}}detached observer of the occasion. Now, almost two decades later, he remembered the occasion as invigorating literary debate, intense and informed argumentation, some of the best literary talk he ever heard. And he thought Mailer was gracious and civilized. That’s how I remember it, too.

All that has been recorded here may be a useful chapter in the history of Mailer’s reputation according to ''oral tradition''. It is also a reminder to me that we all have our literary sins of omission to atone for. I think I will now go back and finish ''Harlot’s Ghost'', take it off the shelf where it has been ignored for eighteen years with the bookmark on page 133, where I stopped reading in 1992. I might get a new copy of ''Advertisements for Myself'' and reread it, bringing full circle this exercise in ''temps perdu'' and ''temps retrouvé''. I might even teach ''The Naked and the Dead'' again. This Mailer prelude and postlude has made me aware, far more so than I realized when I agreed to write this piece, that Norman has always been there, at the center of ''my'' literary life, just as he was—as Tiny insisted long ago in Michigan—at the center of American literary life. I salute Norman Mailer: the writer for his work, and the man for his wit and for, on those occasions when I was in his presence, his decency and graciousness. And I miss him.

{{Review}}
[[Category:Articles (MR)]]

The Mailer Review/Volume 4, 2010/“Oohh Normie—You’re Sooo Hemingway”: Mailer Memories and Encounters

2025-04-07T07:21:32Z

Tbara4554: corrected a missing space

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{{Byline|last=Stoneback|first=H. R. |url=http://prmlr.us/mr04sto |abstract=A longtime friend recounts his memories of Norman Mailer over the past
half century. }}
{{dc|dc=L|ooking back now, over more than half a century}}, it seems Norman was always there. He was there, closer to the center of my cultural and literary formation and experience than I had remembered; and there, too, through the encounters I had with him over the years. And, in one way or another, Hemingway was involved in all of my “Mailer moments.” Yet, after my early twenties, I was seldom consciously aware of Mailer’s presence. And I have not finished any of his works published since the early 1970s, which was the last time I taught Mailer in my college classes. I hold no brief as a Mailer scholar, or even as an enthusiast of Mailer’s complete ''oeuvre''. Thus, when the editor of this journal invited me to submit a piece on Mailer and Hemingway, I begged off, saying I had not done my Mailer homework in decades and I could provide nothing more than anecdotal reminiscences of my encounters with Mailer. Our sage editor persisted, so I have written these remarks. In the course of mining history and inviting my memory to speak clearly, I have come to believe that a book, several rich and nuanced books, should be written on the subject of Mailer and Hemingway. Surely the special Hemingway-Mailer issue of this journal will constitute a significant step in the direction of that necessary goal. But all I have to offer here is anecdote. Not literary memoir—this is not the place to recount my conversations about Mailer with Mary Hemingway and Gregory Hemingway and Valerie Hemingway. Just personal anecdotes involving Mailer. And if this is taken as a sign that I am approaching my ''anecdotage'', so be it.

I first read ''The Naked and the Dead'' when I was fourteen years old. I was{{pg|371|372}}in the ninth grade then, in 1955, and my pantheon of great artists at that moment included Ernest Hemingway, Thomas Wolfe, Lord Byron, Hank Williams, Elvis Presley, and Fats Domino. We did not read ''The Naked and the Dead'' in school, but I read it at the same time that we were reading ''A Tale of Two Cities'' in my ninth-grade English class. I think I may have ranked Mailer higher than Dickens in my ninth-grade literary pronouncements. And I read Mailer immediately after the summer vacation when I read ''For Whom the Bell Tolls'' and ''The Old Man and the Sea'' in my grandmother’s attic in our summer place near Atlantic City. I do not remember whether I preferred Hemingway over Mailer then but I do remember the smell of my grandmother’s bookcases and the unpainted tongue-and-groove wainscoting of that attic, and the smell of the row-house outside Philadelphia—especially the basement where my father had to keep his copy of ''The Naked and the Dead''. And the feeling that reading both Hemingway and Mailer evoked is all mixed up with the scents of that season of reading. My father had to keep Mailer in the basement with certain other books next to his collection of 10,000 jazz records (78s of course) because my mother did not approve of Mailer and certain other authors having a place in the glass-fronted barrister’s bookcases in our dining room. Only one Hemingway—''The Old Man and the Sea''—was allowed in those bookcases with the complete works of Cooper, Irving, Scott and other classics, a generous assortment of Bibles and scriptural commentaries, and inscribed copies of books by a famous young evangelist named Billy Graham, who was my mother’s personal friend.

The next writing by Mailer that I remember reading was his celebrated and controversial essay, “The White Negro.” I was with my father in a used book and record shop when he purchased a soiled copy of the summer issue of Dissent for a nickel. Although my father was a factory worker then, in the fall of 1957, he had been in the 1920s and 1930s a publishing poet and jazz pianist of some reputation; he had been, for example, the only white musician and sideman on some “race records” vintage 1930. Thus he was interested in what Mailer had to say in “The White Negro.” And since I had long since announced (in the third grade) that I was going to be a writer and a singer, a novelist and a singer-songwriter, and I had long thought of myself as an outsider and a rebel, and I too was interested. By the end of 1957 I was reading ''The Village Voice'' whenever I could get hold of a copy and I had made my first hitchhiking trip to Greenwich Village to sing in coffeehouses. By the time I read and reread ''Advertisements for Myself'' in late 1959 I had hitchhiked to{{pg|372|373}}Greenwich Village several times and spent some time singing in the streets and in whatever places would give me ten or fifteen minutes on stage. I also sang with all the other folksingers in the famous gatherings in Washington Square. In spite of all the time I spent singing and playing guitar and writing songs in those high school years, I still thought of myself as primarily and primordially a writer; so I was well aware all during that time of how frequently Mailer’s name was linked with Hemingway’s—by English teachers, by the press, by anyone near my age who pretended to be a writer and to know something about the contemporary literary situation.

At the small church college I attended from 1959–1961 in Kentucky—first because I had fallen in love with the Kentucky River and then because I thought I was in love with a girl at that college—Mailer was not present on the list of authors who were talked about openly. His books were not in the college library. By the time I went to New York during the Christmas season of 1960 I had heard that Mailer had stabbed his wife, had spent some time at Bellevue, and had only managed to avoid prison time because his wife would not press charges. Some people that I talked to then held Mailer up as the prime example of a great talent laid waste by drink and drugs. I did not know if this were true. I was in Brooklyn for the Christmas season to sing with the Salvation Army on the streets, and to dress up as Santa Claus and ring the bell for donations. I couldn’t find any other Christmas break employment and the Sallies offered room and board. And I wanted to be in New York City. When my Santa Claus gig ended I moved from Brooklyn to Greenwich Village where I slept wherever I could find folks hospitable to young folksingers and would-be writers. There was so much hospitality that I had to get away from it for a few days, so I stayed at the old run-down Broadway Central Hotel because I’d read that Thomas Wolfe stayed there.It was so cold that winter that there wasn’t any singing outdoors in Washington Square, but I sang in some coffeehouses, the ''Café Wha?'', the ''Gaslight'' and other joints, and I sang at the Monday night hootenanny at ''Gerde’s Folk City''. At those hoots, we all got our fifteen minutes on stage. Even a kid named Robert Zimmerman, who was already calling himself Bob Dylan, although his name meant nothing at the time, only got fifteen minutes on stage in those days. The Village coffeehouses swarmed with winos and leftover Beats and some good kid-singers and older jazzmen and Uptown folks slumming and I suppose I saw many well-known writers that I did not recognize. I did not really care about meeting any writers although it would have been nice{{pg|373|374}}to see Kenneth Patchen who was, in my book then, in a league by himself. But I knew he could not be there in his wheelchair. One night somebody pointed out Allan Ginsberg to me. I liked ''Howl'' when I read it in the tenth grade, the year it came out. People said that they sometimes saw Mailer in the jazz and folk joints in the Village but if I ever saw him there I did not know it. But it was due to my momentary spell of infatuation with folksinging in Greenwich Village that I first saw Norman Mailer.

Because of the girl back in Kentucky that everybody but me thought of as my intended, I went back belatedly to attend the college winter quarter. Then, either during spring break or on one of my week-long hitchhiking trips AWOL from college, I was in the Village again in early April. The cops were harassing folksingers in the streets and tension was building over the singing in Washington Square. We sang “We Shall Not Be Moved” and made up words about Mayor Wagner and other city officials. I was lucky not to be in the Square the day the cops cracked down on the folksingers and hauled wagonloads away to jail. I was in the Library up on 42nd Street trying to read all the way through Hemingway’s ''Across the River and into the Trees''. Word of the crackdown and assault spread like wildfire and I was still in town a few days later when the protests and right-to-sing meetings started. I went to a few of these gatherings including one that was a kind of protest party in somebody’s place near the Judson Memorial Church.

At that event, more party than protest, there were many Village luminaries present, standing around talking in little circles with drinks in their hands, doing what I then regarded disdainfully as their dismal Prufrockian dance. A few of us proudly ''authentic'' kid-folksingers were singing in a far corner of that large warehouse-like room. During a break between songs, a tweedy, pipe-smoking professorial-looking older man that I talked to about being a writer said: “That’s Norman Mailer over there.” He gestured with his pipe toward the far side of the crowded room. “Mailer thinks he’s Hemingway but he doesn’t really know who Hemingway is, and he doesn’t write anything like him. And besides, Hemingway’s very sick now.” I remember staring at his lizard-lidded eyes behind thick black rectangular glasses and thinking ''what do you really know about Mailer and Hemingway'' but I said nothing. I put down my guitar to head over and introduce myself to Norman Mailer. I knew it was Mailer from all the pictures I’d seen. On my way across the large room I stopped at the outer fringe of one circle of talkers, the circle where Moe Asch—head of Folkways Records—held forth. He was the{{pg|374|375}}real reason I had come to that gathering, having heard he’d be there. More than anything, I wanted Moe Asch to offer me a recording contract with Folkways. Just like every other kid-folksinger in the room, in the Village, in the entire country—that’s what I wanted then. (Years later, I had a chance to make a Folkways album with Asch but I was too busy writing about Faulkner and Hemingway to take time off from my promotion-and-tenure quest.) That night in 1961 I listened to Asch talk about the record business for a few minutes, and when I turned to make my way through the crowd toward Mailer I saw his shoulders and the back of his head going through the door, leaving the gathering. I was a little disappointed I didn’t get to talk to him but I wasn’t going to chase him down the steps and into the street. So that was when I first ''saw'' Mailer. I went back to the singing corner and played guitar and sang some more. That night some girl gave me a copy of ''The Old Man and the Sea'', inscribed to me and my “future great writings.”

The next day I hitchhiked back to Kentucky, where I put my new copy of ''The Old Man and the Sea'' on my dorm room bookshelf next to my well-thumbed copy of ''Advertisements for Myself''. My Kentucky girl didn’t approve of Mailer but she thought Hemingway was OK. And even though she was from Patchen-Country she wouldn’t even look at his work. As for my writing I think she liked best the stuff that sounded like bad Byron or Keats or Whitman or Wordsworth that I’d written in the eighth grade. Sometime in May I heard from a country singer hitchhiking through Lexington that Mayor Wagner had just lifted the ban on folksinging in Washington Square. That was in a bar in Lexington where the rules of my college forbade me to be and Hank Williams was playing loud on the jukebox and I had just learned that my girlfriend was pregnant. There wasn’t any way we could get married and in those days in that place nobody even thought about abortion. When that term of college ended I was informed that I was expelled from college due to “accumulated demerits,” excessive absence from class and required chapel, and “general bad attitude.” Maybe I was a better student of Mailer than I realized.

Sometime after I’d heard about the lifted ban on folksinging, I had read about it in the newspapers in the college library. I was happy for my folksinging buddies in the Village but by then I already knew I wasn’t going back there. I’d had enough of the Village. So I’d just have to wait to talk to Norman Mailer. I cleaned out my dorm room and threw whatever possessions I had in a duffel bag and slung my guitar over my back, hitting the road,{{pg|375|376}}hitchhiking from Kentucky to Northern Michigan. The toughest decision I had to make was which books to give away and which to carry with me on the road. The choice was generally determined by weight but still I packed ''Advertisements for Myself'' with ''The Old Man'' and a few other books along with my notebooks filled with poems and stories in the burlap feed-sack that I tied on to my guitar with baling twine. I had a job for the summer up in Hemingway-Country at a resort not far from Petoskey. My job title was Assistant Social Director, and my duties included singing every night, organizing shows and entertainment, playing guitar at square dances (sometimes even doing the calling, under the tutelage of the regular 70-year-old caller), and generally keeping the tourists—maybe 70% women—happy.

It was mostly a good summer there in Hemingway-Country. That’s not the way I thought about Northern Michigan then and even though I was fishing and canoeing his streams and hanging out in places where he had lived and written I rarely thought about Hemingway at all. Until that day came in early July and the news of Hemingway’s death filled the airwaves, the newspapers, and all the conversations at the resort and in the nearby towns. Regardless of what the initial press releases said, everybody in that country said from the first that it was suicide.

I remember a heated discussion that lasted for hours one night at El Rancho—the name of the resort where I worked—that occurred a few days after Hemingway’s death. One of the debaters was my co-worker, a six-foot-four man who weighed about 400 pounds and everybody called “Tiny,” who was a big fan of both Mailer and Hemingway. He had borrowed my copy of ''Advertisements for Myself'' and was reading and rereading it all summer. I had borrowed his copy of ''The Deer Park'' but I was having trouble getting through it, partly because there wasn’t much time to read and partly because I hadn’t liked any writing about Hollywood since I read Nathanael West’s ''The Day of the Locust'' a few summers before. The other debaters were tourists or visitors to the ranch. I was mostly a silent listener, in a rare act of deference to my elders. When Tiny repeatedly asserted that up until then the twentieth century, in a literary sense, had belonged to Hemingway, but now Mailer was Hemingway’s only true heir and the rest of the century belonged to Mailer, one of the ranch visitors vehemently disagreed. He maintained that Mailer was nothing like Hemingway, that he had no clue regarding Hemingway’s code or vision. And Mailer’s sentences, his form, were nothing like Hemingway’s. Some of the tourists in the bar that night, the majority of them, agreed with{{pg|376|377}}him. His argument was compelling, citing chapter and verse from the works of both writers. He also said that the worst thing about Mailer was he had no compassion. I was very young, just a kid-folksinger who wanted to be a writer, so I wasn’t sure what I thought about the argument that night. I was just happy that it occurred, that people were taking writers and writing seriously, that they argued for hours about Mailer and Hemingway instead of about movie stars or sports or politics. But I did say, during a lull in the heated debate, that the very act of writing was itself an act of compassion. I had believed that for a long time and I had a deep respect for ''all'' writers, for anyone who was truly driven to write. When the girl from North Dakota was through working in the kitchen and came into the bar, I went off with her and we canoed across the lake. We could hear their voices, still arguing, echo across the lake. Although she was a big Hemingway fan she had never heard of Mailer. But we did not talk about writers and writing. Not that night.

The next morning I learned that Tiny’s debate opponent was a journalist from a major newspaper in Detroit or Chicago—I don’t remember his name or home base or newspaper—but he was on assignment at the ranch to do a feature story for the travel section on the phenomenon of square dancing ''in'' the lake that was a regular occurrence at the ranch that summer. He interviewed me over lunch, since he had discovered that I was the inventor of water-square-dancing. In one of my more Edisonian moments as Assistant Social Director, I had realized that for those who didn’t want to go horseback riding there wasn’t much to do in the afternoon, so I organized square dancing ''in'' the water as a regular afternoon event. When I said that the water slowed down the dancer’s moves, introduced a kind of artistic suspension into the motion that made it like ballet, the reporter wrote that down in his notebook. I had never seen a ballet then and I really just invented water-square-dancing to get myself free from leading trail rides and the dreaded archery instruction that were part of my time-filling assignments in the afternoons. I didn’t tell him that. In the course of our interview I mentioned that aside from being a singer-songwriter, I wanted to be a writer. He said he also wrote fiction. He looked like he was about fifty but he hadn’t published a novel yet. That afternoon he was down at the edge of the lake studying our water-square-dancing session like a bemused anthropologist investigating a strange lost tribe. His photographer took many pictures of the dancers doing their dosey-do’s and promenades in knee-deep and waist-deep water, and photos of me calling the dance and playing the{{pg|377|378}}guitar in knee-deep water, backed up by another guitar player and a fiddler who did not like fiddling in the water.

That night, after my evening performance, he came up to me and said he’d enjoyed meeting me but he had to leave for the Upper Peninsula—he had to get to Seney to do a story on the country of Hemingway’s “Big Two-Hearted River.” He referred to the great Hemingway-Mailer debate of the night before and counseled me firmly against following Mailer, told me to ''eschew the Maileresque path of self-involvement and self-advertisement'' if I wanted to be a writer. I knew what ''eschew'' meant, of course—at least since I had spelled it correctly in the fifth grade spelling bee. But I had never heard anybody say it in the course of a normal conversation and I did not like hearing the word. People who said words like ''eschew'' must live in another world, I thought. Then he said: “If you want to be a real writer, you must learn compassion.” I didn’t think that you could study and ''learn'' compassion, you either had it or you didn’t, and if you didn’t you wouldn’t write at all. If you had it, it probably came to you in an epiphanic flash, as it did to me as a teenager, and he was right that you had to have it to be a real writer. But I figured that Mailer had it, like all real writers, and also that this journalist was probably missing some wit and irony in Mailer’s deployment of his self-advertisement motif. But I didn’t say that to him. I just thanked him for his advice. He reminded me of other older failed writers who were intent on advising young would-be writers like me how to avoid failure. I’d noticed this syndrome before, but had never seen it so clearly. He was really an all right guy and I hope he got his novel written and published.

There were other “Hemingway-Mailer moments” at that Michigan ranch in the summer of 1961 but I will limit my account here to just this one, which does seem to me to be a token, a sign, a charged moment in the oral history of literary reputation. So, too, was the fact that when I finished my duties at the ranch, I left with no less than five books given to me by girls and women, inscribed with love and great hopes for my future writing. All of the books were by Hemingway.

{{* * *}}

That September, after some more hitchhiking-singing-on-the-road escapades, I went off to Parris Island to become a Marine. I offer this sidelight on the literary history of the Marine Corps: Marine privates, who were said{{pg|378|379}}in those days to be joining up either because they were running from the law or from a girl, did in fact ''read''. My platoon at Parris Island and Camp Lejeune was in fact a remarkably literate group, many of us college dropouts, and most of us dropouts were English ''majors''. We devoured war books and all of us preferred ''For Whom the Bell Tolls'' and ''The Naked and the Dead'' over Jones and ''From Here to Eternity'', over Styron’s ''The Long March'', over Remarque’s ''All Quiet on the Western Front'' and all the other World War One books by Aldington, Cummings, Dos Passos and the rest. The fact that Hemingway and Mailer received the Good Marine Seal of Approval—in my platoon—must mean at least as much as a good or bad review in the ''New York Times''.

Although I am enjoying this informal survey of literary history, I fear my readers may by now be mumbling ''mere anecdotage'' so I will truncate these memories. It’s OK to look back, as the slogan goes, just don’t ''stare''. And I offer my assurance that these remarks contain none of that unearned emotion known as nostalgia, not even ''la nostalgie de la boue'', for there is no homesickness here for the fundamentally hungry wretched life of the kid-folksinger on the road.

When my active duty in the Marine Corps ended in 1962, I was based in Kentucky and drove a truck for awhile before I quit and hitchhiked to New Orleans. From my first days in New Orleans, I lost forever any homesickness I might have had for Greenwich Village. The French Quarter became the new capitol of my Bohemian universe and erased almost all memory of an attraction to the Village. After a road-trip to Mexico, I went back to Kentucky and my new girl friend and we ran away to get married and build a log cabin in Alabama. My new wife was a great reader and she had read more Hemingway than I had but she did not like Mailer. While she worked in a café to earn money to pay the rent on our attic apartment, I worked in the deep woods from dawn to dusk, building a log-cabin the old way—no chainsaw, felling all the trees with my ax, skinning all the logs with a draw-knife, notching everything into place. Remarkably, a legendary character and landowner there in east-central Alabama had given me the rights to forty acres of his land for exactly ''one penny''. Things like that still happened in the America of 1962. I didn’t read much during those long months of deep satisfaction in the singularity of intense physical labor, at least twelve hours every day, and Mailer and the literary life of the Village, all literary life, began{{pg|379|380}}to recede to the far corners of my consciousness. Mailer didn’t go well with log cabins in the wilderness; neither did Hemingway.

My wife and I were now singing (sometimes on the local radio station, sometimes in country churches, occasionally in the rare southern coffeehouses which were nothing like the coffeehouses of New York and the Northeast), more classic country and gospel than folk, and Hank Williams and Jimmie Rodgers and Johnny Cash didn’t seem to have much to do with Mailer—his American Dream seemed far distant from mine. But then, maybe, Cash and Mailer and Williams were more kindred spirits than they could recognize. And the American Dream—all of our American dreams—were much closer in spirit and substance than any of us could see then or maybe even now.

Somehow I ended up back in New Orleans by mid-1963, largely from the need to earn money so that I could complete my cabin in Alabama. This time I landed a regular gig singing in a club on Bourbon Street. I became a kind of local ''star'', and people came to my club to hear me sing my own songs, which felt nothing like the songs I’d been writing in the Village two years before. I was hired to sing at private parties, on Mississippi river-boats, at Tulane sorority parties and I even had my own day-time television show. I knew everybody in the French Quarter, including legendary old jazz musicians who played at Dixieland Hall (then more important than Preservation Hall). I also knew all the literary types in the Quarter and none of them admired Mailer. One of the few who even mentioned him—a would-be writer, who had been a would-be writer much longer than I’d been one—said that ''Advertisements for Myself'' was very passé, that Mailer seemed like a 1930s Old Left character who had discovered drugs, an old Leftie who couldn’t even sing.

When the price of living my entertainer’s Bohemian life in the French Quarter began to seem too high, I decided to go back to college. It seemed like a way to give shape to time. I was twenty-three and I hadn’t written much of anything except songs for several years. If I was going to be a writer, I knew I had to know more writers. My decision to get a B.A. was in fact my decision to get a Ph.D. and read everything I had not yet read. So I went to Rutgers, where neither Hemingway nor Mailer played any role in my coursework or indeed in any of the courses offered. By 1964 the anti-Hemingway reaction that so characterized the later ‘60s and after had set in; and, if you were in the grip of a thoroughly wrong-headed assessment of Hemingway,{{pg|380|381}}how could you accurately gauge Hemingway-Mailer connections? At the level of literary ''conversation'' (not coursework), you still heard talk in Rutgers circles about Mailer as the heir to the Hemingway legacy. But now this was understood to be a negative thing—a tainted and unfortunate legacy, macho, violent, and solipsist, claimed by a confused heir. Confusion was rampant on all sides. As escape from what I felt to be the dead-end imperatives of contemporary American writing, I invested most of my time and passion in exploration of the Russians and the French, and even considered doing my Ph.D. in French literature.

As usual when I needed money my only sure fallback position was entertainment. So my wife and I, with some student partners, opened a coffeehouse, which immediately became ''the'' place to go for Rutgers students and many locals. We did all the cooking and we sang almost every night of the week. Sometimes, we put on stage the folksingers passing through town—although there were not as many kid-folksingers on the road as there had been just a few years before. We had a hootenanny night (“Open Mike” in today’s terminology) for mostly locals, with the predictable mixed results. Something had changed in the folk music world: audiences were more receptive to our stage repertoire—mostly deep old country, authentic traditional (and non-politicized) folksongs, gospel, and some of our own songs. By then, too, Dylan songs were ''de rigueur''. Some things about our coffeehouse carried on what I then felt to be the old-fashioned late 1950s Greenwich Village traditions—jazz records that customers could choose from and play until live show times. And chessboards.

The best chess player was an older black man, an artist and a fine painter who had been Ezra Pound’s attendant when he was incarcerated at St. Elizabeth’s Hospital. Gregory—that was the only name we knew him by and the way he signed all his paintings—was a regular. I never saw him lose a game of chess. I talked many hours and days with him about the kind of man Ezra Pound was—Gregory loved him deeply, but preferred to talk about the ''Cantos'', with which I had then only a passing and superficial acquaintance. We had several shelves of books for our customers to peruse in the quiet hours. One day I tried to give Gregory my now-ancient and much-traveled copy of ''Advertisements for Myself'', which had been on the coffeehouse bookshelves since we opened. He held the book in his hand with a certain world-weary look while he talked about Mailer. Gregory had been a ''hipster'' in the late 1940s sense and a regular at New York jazz clubs from the 1940s into the{{pg|381|382}}1950s. He said he had often seen Mailer in the jazz clubs and talked to him a few times. Said he was a nice guy but Gregory didn’t like Mailer’s work. He had particular words of disdain for “The White Negro.” He said it was an all too familiar case of ''la nostalgie de la boue'' (it was from Gregory that I first heard that seminal phrase), the kind of ''romanticized slumming''—Gregory spoke this sentence very slowly and firmly—''that you might expect from a rich Ivy League Jewish boy''. He said he could no longer read Mailer, and, anyway, he much preferred Pound. He liked Hemingway, too, and thought that nobody had really understood Hemingway yet and how he was Pound’s best student. Gregory declined my gift of ''Advertisements for Myself''. A few weeks later I gave it to a fellow student who, shortly thereafter, drove his Harley—stoned—over a cliff at 120 MPH.

I finished my B.A. at Rutgers quickly; in spite of having been expelled years before from that college in Kentucky I spent only three-and-a-half years total earning the degree. I already knew that I wanted to get my Ph.D. at Vanderbilt, so the location of my M.A. degree didn’t matter a great deal to me. When the University of Hawaii offered me a Teaching Assistantship, complete with travel pay from the East Coast, I packed my bags. I earned my M.A. there in nine months of intense coursework that did not, however, include any Hemingway or Mailer. It was 1966 and dismissal of Hemingway and Mailer was pervasive. In Hawaii, of all places, I first truly discovered Faulkner, read twice everything he wrote, and wrote my M.A. thesis on Faulkner’s folk usages. Hawaii was as far as you could get from Greenwich Village, from Mailer and the New York literary life. There were no coffeehouses but we sang occasionally in some local joints and even learned some Hawaiian folksongs from Big Island cowboys. But they really preferred Hank Williams to their own folksongs. If there was a jazz scene in Hawaii, we never saw it. We lived in the apartment in the old Jungle of Waikiki that Kui Lee, the legendary Hawaiian songwriter-poet, had just vacated. His songs were scrawled on the wooden walls of that shack. And Frank Zappa played the guitar up in a tree at a party in my front yard. But no Mailer, no Hemingway—not in those islands.

I accepted a Ph.D. fellowship at Vanderbilt and in the fall of 1966 I moved to Nashville. Mailer and Hemingway were not read in any of the courses at Vanderbilt then, and if their names came up at all it was only in a negative sense in passing disdainful remarks. There we lived, to be sure, in what was regarded as the capitol of the Southern Renascence, and the long shadow of{{pg|382|383}}Fugitive-Agrarianism was a palpable daily presence. We took literary criticism courses with Allen Tate and special seminars with Cleanth Brooks, down from Yale for a week. I got to know Robert Penn Warren and, immersed as I was by then in southern lit, I started thinking of Red as my literary father. The literary life of New York and the East Coast, if it were granted existence at all, was something from another planet. There was only one other doctoral candidate who read ''Why Are We in Vietnam?'' and ''The Armies of the Night'' at the same time as I did. He was also the only other graduate student who sang and played music in clubs when he needed money. There weren’t any coffeehouses in Nashville and the folksongs that were sung in the Village were not sung there. But there were plenty of juke-joints and country music places where I sang what I thought of by then as ''authentic'' folksongs, along with the songs I was writing and trying to pitch to the likes of Johnny Cash. My only Maileresque moment in Nashville was when we set up a temporary coffeehouse at the headquarters of Eugene McCarthy’s brief quixotic presidential campaign. I sang some of the old Village songs there, and some new ones, but I had nothing to do with the place being named EUGENE, surely the worst name ever for a coffeehouse. After three years at Vanderbilt, with my newly minted Ph.D. in hand, I accepted a job teaching graduate studies in Faulkner and southern lit, as well as undergraduate and graduate folksong courses, at a place I had never heard of—SUNY-New Paltz, an hour and a half north of Manhattan. It seemed like a good place to be for a few years. I am still there, still teaching, forty-one years later. It is still one of the good places. Inevitably, as a function of landscape or place or location, I was drawn back into the literary life of New York City.

The first night I saw Mailer face-to-face and shook hands with him was at ''The Lion’s Head'' in the Village in the early 1970s. It was perhaps the most famous literary saloon in New York City and, as I would learn, one of Mailer’s favorite hangouts. But I did not go there to meet Mailer. I’d heard on the street that the Clancy Brothers might be singing there that night, informally, as they often did. And I knew that other singer-songwriters often performed there. In the late 1960s, Jerry Jeff Walker’s greatest hit “Bo Jangles” had its debut there at ''The Lion’s Head'' as did perhaps another of his early greatest hits, “Stoney” (a song, I confess, that is about me). I don’t know if my old road-buddy Jerry Jeff knew Mailer at all, but the next time we talk I’ll ask him. Just the other day, as I was composing this essay, I was at the Guthrie Center in the Berkshires for a concert by Tom Paxton, one of the most{{pg|383|384}}celebrated folksingers and songwriters of the ‘60s. Talking to Tom after the show, he confirmed that he regularly saw Mailer at ''The Lion’s Head'' for a number of years; Norman had his own roundtable there where he held forth, and “he was a good guy.” I forgot to ask Paxton if Mailer liked folk music. Maybe he did. In any case, I went to ''The Lion’s Head'' for the folk music the first night I shook hands with Mailer. He was not at his roundtable; he was standing at the bar talking with Pete Hamill, Jimmy Breslin, and some other regulars, a loud raucous conversation about New York politics and personalities. I was drawn into the conversation and eventually introduced myself and shook hands with them. I liked them all and it was the good real old talking and I wanted to stay but I had to get up to Grand Central and catch the last train to Poughkeepsie. I had to teach ''The Naked and the Dead'' the next morning. It was the first (and last) time I taught Mailer. That course was called Contemporary Literature (contemporary then meant everything after 1945). The professor who usually taught the course was hospitalized for the rest of the term and I’d been asked to take over the course, called up from the Southern League. It was also the first (but not the last) time I taught Hemingway.

The next few times I was in the Village I stopped in at ''The Lion’s Head'' but I did not see Mailer there. I did hear some good folksinging. Then I went off for a year’s stint as Visiting Professor at the University of Paris (Faulkner & Southern Lit of course), and I lived in the Latin Quarter and Montparnasse. Just as New Orleans and the French Quarter had erased my early love of the Village, Paris now became my magical palimpsest. Nobody in Paris that year (1973–74), French or American, talked about Mailer as Hemingway’s heir. Nobody talked about Mailer at all, except James Jones at one memorable long lunch we had on the Boulevard Raspail. Discretion may be the better part of memoir, so it must suffice to say here that Jones thought ''From Here to Eternity'' was a far, far better book than ''The Naked and the Dead''.

By the 1980s nobody at my university, nobody that I knew around the country, was teaching Mailer. When I did a senior Fulbright year in China— now hired to teach both Faulkner ''and'' Hemingway—at Peking University, I was much involved in translation projects initiated by Chinese scholars and translators who wanted to get all of the best twentieth-century American fiction rendered into Chinese. On several occasions, I was formally consulted on this matter, and once I was asked to comment on a very long list of writers and works that were under consideration. Mailer’s name was not on the{{pg|384|385}}list. I suggested that they should add his name. I do not know if they did or if he was ever translated into Chinese. One translator, roughly my age, who knew the names of many lesser American writers, said he had never heard of Mailer. But then he had never heard of Elvis Presley either.

{{* * *}}

And that brings me to my most important encounter with Mailer—at the legendary 1986 PEN meeting in New York. My original intent here was simply to record that encounter. I had hoped to locate the careful notes I took at all the meetings and sessions where Mailer presided, but they seem hopelessly lost among the trunks and closets full of pre-computer writing in my vast wreck of a house. Still, it is a story worth telling, and to tell it properly I have felt it necessary here to record my long involvement at the periphery of Mailer’s life and work. So I offer this anecdote, this record of my newfound admiration for Mailer, as a kind of atonement for my own long neglect.

The 48th Congress of International PEN in January 1986, when the nation’s and the world’s leading writers came to New York at the invitation of Norman Mailer, president of PEN’s American Center, to discuss the theme of the gathering—“The Writer’s Imagination and the Imagination of the State”—was the most extraordinary literary event I have witnessed in a lifetime of participation in remarkable literary conferences and parliaments worldwide. Only Mailer could have created and presided over such a happening. I was not an invited participant, just a bystander, an observer who was present at most of the events as I stayed at the St. Moritz Hotel on Central Park South for the duration of the Congress. For a week I sat next to and rode the hotel elevator with and exchanged passing remarks with the likes of Brodsky, Coetzee, Gordimer, Grass, Milosz, Oz, Rushdie, Soyinka, Vargas Llosa, and of course the Americans such as Bellow, Carver, Doctorow, Morrison, Sontag, Styron, Updike, Vonnegut and many others I had seen or met or talked with at previous literary occasions. It is hard to believe that a detailed account of the event does not exist in print, but if it does I am not aware of it. I have heard, in conversation, the event referred to as “Mailer’s Disgrace.” But I prefer to think of it as “Mailer’s Triumph.” Since I have been unable to locate my detailed contemporaneous notes taken at the meetings, I can only sketch here a few of the most memorable moments.{{pg|385|386}}
I remember the grand opening event at the Library, for which Mailer had arranged the star speaker George Schultz, Reagan’s Secretary of State. I remember the protests made by many writers, the denunciations to the effect that Mailer was making all of the assembled writers appear to be Reagan stooges. That seemed laughable to me, since the occasion seemed to exemplify one of Mailer’s finest traits, his taste for free and open debate, at the highest level. Besides, I rather liked Schultz—the man—ever since I’d talked to him at some length during Reagan’s state visit to China in 1984. I talked with him both at the State Dinner and at a private cocktail party, and it seemed extraordinary that he actually knew who I was—''a leading young Hemingway scholar'' he called me. He knew that I was the Senior Fulbright Scholar at Peking University, China’s most prestigious institution, and without any clue from me, he said it was a very good thing that I was teaching Hemingway to China’s future leaders. That earned him some credit with me and not just because he was a man who did his homework and actually read advance briefings. (Conversation with Schultz was certainly more focused and illuminating than the interview I did with Diane Sawyer on network news later that week.) In any case, amidst all the protests, I approved of Mailer’s choice of Schultz as speaker, and I made a point of telling him this after the occasion. He seemed very pleased, as if no one else had expressed approval.

I remember the confrontation between Günter Grass and Saul Bellow, and how Bellow handled the situation with poise and grace. I remember the denunciations of Bruno Kreisky, the Chancellor of Austria, and how he came across as the exemplar of graceful lucidity. I remember many readings by so many fine writers, including Updike’s near mystical celebration of mailboxes as a medium of the free and open movement of thought and feeling. And I remember, of course, the women’s protests over the lack of women on the various session panels. They had a point, but it was probably Susan Sontag (not a part of the rebellion) who had the last word on that score: “Literature is not an equal opportunity employer."

It was after the major session of the women’s revolt that I had my most memorable Mailer moment. With Mailer presiding, many women occupied the front rows of the auditorium and proceeded to interrupt him persistently with hisses, catcalls, and other audible forms of disapproval and disorder. Many in the audience clearly felt a sense of chagrin, a deep embarrassment over the way things were going. I was sitting next to Günter{{pg|386|387}}Grass and Salman Rushdie and their sense of discomfiture was evident. Behind me a writer I did not recognize said in heavily accented English: “This is shameful. It does not matter what he has said and done and written about women in the past—this is about this moment, this occasion, and they must cease their rudeness.” But the hissing and interruption continued; although it seemed that most in the audience were appalled, no one, as I remember things, rose to the floor in defense of Mailer. I thought—and many others agreed—that Mailer handled an impossible situation well, mostly with even-tempered wit. On the elevator that night, crowded in with Bellow and Amos Oz and other writers, I recall that someone said: “Norman handled that mess with poise and uncharacteristic grace.” But that was later.

Right after the heated session I was walking through the crowded lobby next to Mailer. We were squeezed in tight by the crowd, hardly able to move. I had just told him that I thought he’d handled the difficulties like some tough field commander conducting a battle against terrible odds. The PEN events, especially the protests, had captured the attention of the media, and there were reporters asking questions on all sides and television news cameras pointed in our faces. I remember thinking ''isn’t it nice that literature is news''. Then, as the TV cameramen backed away from Mailer and me and the crowd around us, clearing a space in front of us to improve camera angles, a young man pushed into that open space, got in Mailer’s face and said: “You’re such a tough guy Mr. Mailer. May I have this dance?” He was either flamboyantly gay or pretending to be. With Mailer’s left arm pressed against me by the crowd, I could feel him tensing up. Then the young man said: “Oohh Normie—you’re sooo Hemingway.” Immediately, I felt Mailer’s left arm tense and saw his fist then his tight left uppercut started toward the young man’s chin. I put my right hand firmly on Mailer’s wrist and said: “It’s not worth it.” I do not know whether I stopped the uppercut or he pulled his punch but the cameras were rolling and I was later told that there was a sound bite, a brief sequence of this moment on the 11 o’clock news that night and I could be heard clearly saying “It’s not worth it.” They told me that the TV clip—I never saw it—ended with the young man on the floor in front of Mailer, apparently out cold. Simultaneous with the stopped punch, the young man fell to the floor and seemed to be unconscious for a few seconds. All of us, including Mailer, pushed the crowd back to give him more breathing room and summoned emergency aid. When the cops showed up{{pg|387|388}}immediately, the young man got up and ran the other way, and with a high shrieking laugh he disappeared in the crowd.

The incident of the fake fainting spell, the pulled or stopped or phantom punch, has haunted me off and on over the years. Was it the “sooo Hemingway” remark hissed in his face, after all the hissing at the women’s revolt session just before, that made Mailer seem to lose his composure for a second? Or was it the “Oohh Normie”? Maybe both. Or maybe he didn’t lose his composure at all, and the near-deed was the sure sign of a cool equanimity. I remember standing there, as the cops cleared the crowd away, seeing Doctorow sitting at the bar across the lobby and the expression on his face, and then as the cops escorted Mailer toward the Central Park South sidewalk his turning back and looking at me and saying “Thanks.” The whole sequence of events, I stood there thinking, seemed to signify some terrible primordial cultural misappropriation of both Hemingway and Mailer, calamitously emblematic of the deep confusions of our culture.

After that night in 1986 I saw Mailer on several other occasions. He gave the keynote address at the 1990 International Hemingway Conference at the Kennedy Library in Boston. I remember that I defended some things Mailer had said against the objections of my Hemingway colleagues. I do not remember what those things were since I do not have a copy of that speech, necessary as a corrective to what Mailer had said about Hemingway over the years. After the speech I spoke with Mailer, who was sitting with Jackie Onassis. He was jovial and relaxed and he made some coded humorous reference to the 1986 PEN encounter in the lobby. Something about Cassius Clay and Sonny Liston and a phantom punch. Both Mailer and Jackie Onassis were pleasant and charming that night.

Sometime in April 1991 I drove up to Albany for the “Telling the Truth Symposium” put on by the New York State Writers Institute. I particularly wanted to see Gay Talese again and to hear the “Is Fiction Truer than Truth?” panel with Mailer, Mary Gordon, and William Kennedy. I knew all three of them and it seemed like a fine mix for some fireworks or at least lively discussion, with Gordon and Mailer, and Kennedy’s ''politesse'' between them. It wasn’t exactly fireworks, but after Gordon held forth at length on the Catholic novel, it was Mailer’s turn to say something about the Jewish novel. When Mary kept interrupting Norman, even on the subject of Jewishness, he said what he said. Suffice it to say that Mailer won the debate, scoring top points in the categories of literary acuity and wit. When I talked to Mailer{{pg|388|389}}after the program, he again made a reference to the phantom PEN-punch at the St. Moritz.

One last encounter germane to my Hemingway-Mailer motif here was a night at the Lotos Club in the early 1990s that stands sharply at attention in memory. The Lotos Club, in New York off Fifth Avenue in the East 60s, is one of America’s oldest and most elegant private literary clubs. Mark Twain was a member, as were many other literary and arts luminaries—a long list. And I have been a member for over thirty years; in the period when Bill Kennedy chaired the Club Literary Committee I went to nearly all the literary evenings he organized at the club—for example, the occasion that Kennedy writes about in his piece, “Norman Mailer: An Eavesdropper at the Lotos Club” (in ''Riding the Yellow Trolley Car''). But the night I am remembering here was a different occasion (if I remember rightly) in the early 1990s when William Styron was being honored, not long after the publication of ''Darkness Visible''. After the program I went downstairs to the famous Grill Room with Kennedy, Mailer, and Styron, where a fascinating literary conversation ensued, crystallizing certain key points regarding the state of twentieth-century American literature.

It started out genially enough in the almost deserted Lotos Grill Room, in the company of the famous nudes hanging on the walls around us. Kennedy and Mailer discussed other writers, and I talked with Styron about Robert Penn Warren. He had died a few years before, and we both said how much we loved and missed Red. I mentioned that Warren had been my sponsor for Lotos membership in 1978. We then talked about how Eleanor and the children were doing. At some point, I mentioned that my other sponsor for Lotos membership was Mary Hemingway. Mary and I had been friends for several years and I was pleased that the first woman member in the long history of the Lotos had been my co-sponsor with Warren. At this point, Styron made some crack about Hemingway—I don’t remember precisely everything he said but it had to do with how vastly over-rated Hemingway was and how his work “was inimical”—this I recall exactly because I always remember when somebody uses words like ''inimical'' or ''eschew''—“to good writing by all the writers who followed after him.” I remember thinking ''uh-oh I hope Norman didn’t hear that'' but he did and immediately abandoned his other conversation and entered what instantly became the fray. It did seem rather graceless for Styron to say such a thing in the presence of Mailer. But{{pg|389|390}}Styron looked very frail that night, his visage showing signs of fragility from his recent illness, so I gave him a pass. At first.

Styron insisted on Faulkner’s primacy and Hemingway’s insignificance. It seemed odd for him to do so, since he had so long borne the Faulkner-acolyte label, ever since the ''derivative-Faulknerian'' charges that were made against his early work. It also seemed odd since Styron’s close friend Warren always said, as he often did to me, that Faulkner and Hemingway were the two indispensable writers, and we all must write in their joint commingled shadow. At any rate, Styron and Mailer went at it: Hemingway’s famous understatement was a cover for what he didn’t know, Faulkner in saying too much said nothing; Hemingway’s sentences were sometimes baby-talk, Faulkner’s sentences were often over-stuffed verbosity; and so forth. At first Kennedy, always in my experience a calmly reasonable gentleman, said little. I also mostly listened at first. I was then, as far as I could tell, one of two or three Hemingway scholars in the country who was also a Faulkner scholar and firmly believed that we needed to know and love both of them. Most Faulknerians I knew were either ignorant or disdainful of Hemingway; and vice-versa. And I think that is the peace-making position that both Kennedy and I cultivated—we needed both Faulkner and Hemingway. But at some moments, when Styron said some of his harder things against Hemingway, it was clearly three against one. Mailer’s voice got louder when he said things like “Bill, I can’t allow that to go unchallenged” and Styron’s voice got softer and smaller. I was a little worried about him. But it was all just good tough literary talk among people who knew many things about writing. We eventually said goodnight amicably. It was the last time I saw Mailer. And Styron.

Since I thought it had been an evening of the best of all talking, I was very surprised when sometime later a fellow Lotos member, who had been in the corner of the Grill Room drinking alone that night, mentioned to me what he called Mailer’s ungentlemanly conduct. “Rude, loud and offensive,” he said.“Boorish and pugnacious as always.” I reckon that was just one of those labels that you can’t get unstuck. I disagreed genially and said maybe we should call a panel of Great Lotos Members who knew about good literary talk to sit in judgment—chaired by Mark Twain maybe. But I did wonder as I composed this essay if I had given Mailer a pass based on my newfound PEN-based personal fondness. So I recently asked the only other witness to that conversation if he thought Mailer was rude and unpleasant and pugnacious that night. He is a scientist and thus presumably a somewhat{{pg|390|391}}detached observer of the occasion. Now, almost two decades later, he remembered the occasion as invigorating literary debate, intense and informed argumentation, some of the best literary talk he ever heard. And he thought Mailer was gracious and civilized. That’s how I remember it, too.

All that has been recorded here may be a useful chapter in the history of Mailer’s reputation according to ''oral tradition''. It is also a reminder to me that we all have our literary sins of omission to atone for. I think I will now go back and finish ''Harlot’s Ghost'', take it off the shelf where it has been ignored for eighteen years with the bookmark on page 133, where I stopped reading in 1992. I might get a new copy of ''Advertisements for Myself'' and reread it, bringing full circle this exercise in ''temps perdu'' and ''temps retrouvé''. I might even teach ''The Naked and the Dead'' again. This Mailer prelude and postlude has made me aware, far more so than I realized when I agreed to write this piece, that Norman has always been there, at the center of ''my'' literary life, just as he was—as Tiny insisted long ago in Michigan—at the center of American literary life. I salute Norman Mailer: the writer for his work, and the man for his wit and for, on those occasions when I was in his presence, his decency and graciousness. And I miss him.

{{Review}}
[[Category:Articles (MR)]]

User talk:Grlucas

2025-04-06T00:03:10Z

Tbara4554: /* Oohh Normie Final Edits */

{{Talk header}}

== Article Errors ==

I've added the body of the article to my sandbox page. What errors do I need to specifically change in order to make it correct?[[User:CDucharme|CDucharme]] ([[User talk:CDucharme|talk]]) 17:04, 14 September 2020 (EDT)
:{{Reply to|CDucharme}} Mostly you need to add the notes, citation, and read for typos. It’s meticulous, but that’s the job. (Thanks for signing.) —[[User:Grlucas|Grlucas]] ([[User talk:Grlucas|talk]]) 17:08, 14 September 2020 (EDT)

Hey, I need help with instructions for the Norman Mailer Bibliography for the remediation project. I am not sure what I am supposed to do.[[User:AJohnson|AJohnson]] ([[User talk:AJohnson|talk]]) 29 March 2021 (EDT)
:{{Reply to|AJohnson}} You need to remediate the bibliography by adding missing entries from the PDF to the article on this site using the correct templates. As the note on the bibliography says, you may use [[The Mailer Review/Volume 2, 2008/Norman Mailer Bibliography: 2007|Norman Mailer Bibliography: 2007]] as a model. —[[User:Grlucas|Grlucas]] ([[User talk:Grlucas|talk]]) 14:48, 29 March 2021 (EDT)

== Final edits ==
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)

Hello, Dr. Lucas, I finished editing my article. May I have the banner removed?[[User:KJordan|KJordan]] ([[User talk:KJordan|talk]]) 20:13, 22 September 2020 (EDT)KJordan
:{{Reply to|KJordan}} Maybe. You should always link to something you want me to have a look at, please. —[[User:Grlucas|Grlucas]] ([[User talk:Grlucas|talk]]) 20:14, 22 September 2020 (EDT)

Dr. Lucas, I have finished editing my article. Can you please review it? Thank You. Here is a link to it: https://projectmailer.net/pm/The_Mailer_Review/Volume_2,_2008/The_Heart_of_the_Nation:_Jewish_Values_in_the_Fiction_of_Norman_Mailer --[[User:AMurray|AMurray]] ([[User talk:AMurray|talk]]) 21:56, 23 September 2020 (EDT)

:{{Reply to|AMurray}} Looking good! However, I still see quote a few typos. There should be no space before a footnote or citation.<ref>Like this.</ref> And all parenthetical citations need to be converted. I also see a lot of missing punctuation, especially around citations. —[[User:Grlucas|Grlucas]] ([[User talk:Grlucas|talk]]) 07:24, 24 September 2020 (EDT)

{{Reflist}}

Dr. Lucas, I finished editing my article. Will you please review?
https://projectmailer.net/pm/The_Mailer_Review/Volume_2,_2008/The_Unknown_and_the_General --[[User:Jrdavisjr|Jrdavisjr]] ([[User talk:Jrdavisjr|talk]]) 09:00, 25 September 2020 (EDT)
:{{Reply to| Jrdavisjr}} It looks good. Let's go through editing week and see if anything else comes up. —[[User:Grlucas|Grlucas]] ([[User talk:Grlucas|talk]]) 10:15, 25 September 2020 (EDT)

Dr. Lucas, I have finished editing my article. Can you please review it? Thank You
https://projectmailer.net/pm/User:JSheppard/sandbox [[User:JSheppard|JSheppard]] ([[User talk:JSheppard|talk]])
:{{Reply to| JSheppard}} You have a '''lot''' of work left to do. I see [[User:Jules Carry]] is helping, but you’re missing references and there are typos throughout. Keep working. —[[User:Grlucas|Grlucas]] ([[User talk:Grlucas|talk]]) 17:19, 25 September 2020 (EDT)

Dr. Lucas, I finished my article.
https://projectmailer.net/pm/The_Mailer_Review/Volume_13,_2019/More_Than_The_Dead_Know
[[User:RWalsh|RWalsh]] ([[User talk:RWalsh|talk]]) 15:15, 8 February 2021 (EST)
:{{reply to|RWalsh}} Not quite, but it's looking good. Clean it up and begin helping others. —[[User:Grlucas|Grlucas]] ([[User talk:Grlucas|talk]]) 07:11, 9 February 2021 (EST)

Dr. Lucas, I believe I have finished editing my article. Will you please review?
https://projectmailer.net/pm/The_Mailer_Review/Volume_13,_2019/%E2%80%9CHer_Problems_Were_Everyone%E2%80%99s_Problems%E2%80%9D:_Self_and_Gender_in_The_Deer_Park [[User:Klcrawford|Klcrawford]] ([[User talk:Klcrawford|talk]]) 09:06, 15 February 2021 (EST)
:{{Reply to|Klcrawford}} Great work. I have removed the working banner. I would appreciate it if you began to assist some of the other editors. Thanks. —[[User:Grlucas|Grlucas]] ([[User talk:Grlucas|talk]]) 13:04, 15 February 2021 (EST)

Hello Dr. Lucas, I have been making some edits, I am still looking to see if there is more, can you look through and give any feedback?https://projectmailer.net/pm/The_Mailer_Review/Volume_13,_2019/Angst,_Authorship,_Critics:_“The_Snows_of_Kilimanjaro,”_“The_Crack-Up,”_Advertisements_for_Myself [[User:JFordyce|JFordyce]] ([[User talk:JFordyce|talk]]) 18:27, 20 February 2021 (EST)JFordyce

Hello Dr. Lucas, I believe I have finished my article. Can you please review it? https://projectmailer.net/pm/The_Mailer_Review/Volume_13,_2019/Request [[User:EKrauskopf|EKrauskopf]] ([[User talk:EKrauskopf|talk]]) 13:06, 22 Februrary 2021 (EST)
:{{Reply to|EKrauskopf}} OK, looks good. Well done. Now please begin assisting others on getting volume 9 finished. —[[User:Grlucas|Grlucas]] ([[User talk:Grlucas|talk]]) 06:41, 23 February 2021 (EST)

Dr. Lucas, I have finished and cleaned up my article. Could you please review it?
https://projectmailer.net/pm/The_Mailer_Review/Volume_13,_2019/More_Than_The_Dead_Know [[User:RWalsh|RWalsh]] ([[User talk:RWalsh|talk]]) 12:35, 23 February 2021 (EST)
:{{Reply to|RWalsh}} OK, nice job. Now please begin assisting others on getting volume 9 finished. —[[User:Grlucas|Grlucas]] ([[User talk:Grlucas|talk]]) 13:47, 23 February 2021 (EST)

Hello Dr.Lucas final edits have been made and the article is finished.https://projectmailer.net/pm/The_Mailer_Review/Volume_13,_2019/Angst,_Authorship,_Critics:_“The_Snows_of_Kilimanjaro,”_“The_Crack-Up,”_Advertisements_for_Myself[[User:JFordyce|JFordyce]] ([[User talk:JFordyce|talk]]) 22:27, 2 March 2021 (EST) JFordyce

Hello, Dr. Lucas! I have completed remediation on [[The Mailer Review/Volume 4, 2010/The American Civil War in The Naked and the Dead and Across the River and Into the Trees]]. Can you please let me know if there's anything I need to correct? Thanks so much! [[User:KaraCroissant|KaraCroissant]] ([[User talk:KaraCroissant|talk]]) 17:11, 1 April 2025 (EDT)
:{{Reply to|KaraCroissant}} great work! 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. Other than that—great job! I have removed the banner, so you are free to help with the rest of the volume. Thanks! —[[User:Grlucas|Grlucas]] ([[User talk:Grlucas|talk]]) 08:58, 3 April 2025 (EDT)

Hi, Dr. Lucas. I think I have finished my PM article:[[The_Mailer_Review/Volume_4,_2010/Hemingway_to_Mailer_—_A_Delayed_Response_to_The_Deer_Park|Hemingway to Mailer-A Delayed Response to The Deer Park]]. Please let me know if there is anything else needed from me. [[User:Hobbitonya|Hobbitonya]] ([[User talk:Hobbitonya|talk]]) 17:54, 2 April 2025 (EDT)
:{{Reply to|Hobbitonya}} nice work. 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. Look at punctuation placement and footnotes; commas go inside quotation marks; punctuation goes before footnotes. You still have some citation issues. Note the read errors at the bottom of the page. These need to be gone. (Check the Mailer 1963 short footnote; there is no corresponding citation for 1963.) Thanks! —[[User:Grlucas|Grlucas]] ([[User talk:Grlucas|talk]]) 08:58, 3 April 2025 (EDT)

Hi Dr. Lucas. I think I have finished my article: https://projectmailer.net/index.php?title=The_Mailer_Review/Volume_4,_2010/Ernest_and_Norman:_A_Dialogue_in_Two_Acts&oldid=17870
Please let me know if there is anything I need to fix. Also, let me know if the link is working. [[User:DSánchez|DSánchez]] ([[User talk:DSánchez|talk]]) 17:13, 3 April 2025 (EDT)
:{{Reply to| DSánchez}} looks good. I removed the banner, but please remove all the links. I understand what you were trying to do, but it's unnecessary. Thanks. —[[User:Grlucas|Grlucas]] ([[User talk:Grlucas|talk]]) 07:13, 4 April 2025 (EDT)

==Article Request==
Dr. Lucas. I have started working on another article. Would you be able to send me the PDF of "The Savage Poet-- Unlocking the Universe With Metaphor" so that I can help add to the article? [[User:Klcrawford|Klcrawford]] ([[User talk:Klcrawford|talk]]) 18:24, 23 February 2021 (EST)
:{{Reply to|Klcrawford}} Done. Thank you. —[[User:Grlucas|Grlucas]] ([[User talk:Grlucas|talk]]) 07:46, 24 February 2021 (EST)

== When we Were Kings 1st remediation ==

[[The_Mailer_Review/Volume_13,_2019/When_We_Were_Kings:_Review_and_Commentary|https://projectmailer.net/pm/The_Mailer_Review/Volume_13,_2019/When_We_Were_Kings:_Review_and_Commentary]]

Here is the link for the remediation I did for this weeks assignment. I did not now where to place the link.

Thank you,
Trevor Ryals
:{{Reply to|TRyals}} Thank you, but this is unnecessary. Just do the work; I promise I will see it. (And be sure to sign your talk page posts.) —[[User:Grlucas|Grlucas]] ([[User talk:Grlucas|talk]]) 18:16, 2 February 2021 (EST)

==Summer 2021==
Can you please review my article? I have a couple errors that I do not understand how to fix. Other than that, I am finished. https://projectmailer.net/pm/User:PLowery/sandbox

Can you review my article again please? I think I might be done. [[User:PLowery|PLowery]] ([[User talk:PLowery|talk]])
:{{Reply to|PLowery}} In order for you to be finished, your entire article must be posted [[The Mailer Review/Volume 3, 2009/A Favor for the Ages|in the mainspace]]. Thanks. —[[User:Grlucas|Grlucas]] ([[User talk:Grlucas|talk]]) 07:29, 21 June 2021 (EDT)
::Done
:::I believe I have it done correctly now.

My topic person is Marion Stegeman Hodgson,however she was not my first choice. There are four others who initially chose Hodgson, Tyler McMillan, Elizabeth Webb, Caleb Andrews, and Marguerite Walker. I haven't gotten in touch with either classmate as of this date however.[[User:KWilcox|KWilcox]] ([[User talk:KWilcox|talk]])Kenneth Wilcox(KWilcox)July 7, 2021[[User:KWilcox|KWilcox]] ([[User talk:KWilcox|talk]])
:{{Reply to|KWilcox}} This work should be done on Wikipedia. Please post all questions and work about project 2 on Wikipedia. Thanks. —[[User:Grlucas|Grlucas]] ([[User talk:Grlucas|talk]]) 09:12, 8 July 2021 (EDT)

My attempt at creating a draft article failed by creating a new page. My next attempt will be using the user page to create the draft article, is this correct?[[User:KWilcox|KWilcox]] ([[User talk:KWilcox|talk]]) 10:22, 8 July 2021 (EDT)Kenneth Wilcox, July 8, 2021, 10:21am[[User:KWilcox|KWilcox]] ([[User talk:KWilcox|talk]]) 10:22, 8 July 2021 (EDT)
:{{Reply to|KWilcox}} As I said: please post all questions for project 2 on Wikipedia. This is an inappropriate forum for them. Thank you. —[[User:Grlucas|Grlucas]] ([[User talk:Grlucas|talk]]) 10:27, 8 July 2021 (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)

== 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)

User talk:Grlucas

2025-04-06T00:02:44Z

Tbara4554: /* Oohh Normie Final Edits */

{{Talk header}}

== Article Errors ==

I've added the body of the article to my sandbox page. What errors do I need to specifically change in order to make it correct?[[User:CDucharme|CDucharme]] ([[User talk:CDucharme|talk]]) 17:04, 14 September 2020 (EDT)
:{{Reply to|CDucharme}} Mostly you need to add the notes, citation, and read for typos. It’s meticulous, but that’s the job. (Thanks for signing.) —[[User:Grlucas|Grlucas]] ([[User talk:Grlucas|talk]]) 17:08, 14 September 2020 (EDT)

Hey, I need help with instructions for the Norman Mailer Bibliography for the remediation project. I am not sure what I am supposed to do.[[User:AJohnson|AJohnson]] ([[User talk:AJohnson|talk]]) 29 March 2021 (EDT)
:{{Reply to|AJohnson}} You need to remediate the bibliography by adding missing entries from the PDF to the article on this site using the correct templates. As the note on the bibliography says, you may use [[The Mailer Review/Volume 2, 2008/Norman Mailer Bibliography: 2007|Norman Mailer Bibliography: 2007]] as a model. —[[User:Grlucas|Grlucas]] ([[User talk:Grlucas|talk]]) 14:48, 29 March 2021 (EDT)

== Final edits ==
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)

Hello, Dr. Lucas, I finished editing my article. May I have the banner removed?[[User:KJordan|KJordan]] ([[User talk:KJordan|talk]]) 20:13, 22 September 2020 (EDT)KJordan
:{{Reply to|KJordan}} Maybe. You should always link to something you want me to have a look at, please. —[[User:Grlucas|Grlucas]] ([[User talk:Grlucas|talk]]) 20:14, 22 September 2020 (EDT)

Dr. Lucas, I have finished editing my article. Can you please review it? Thank You. Here is a link to it: https://projectmailer.net/pm/The_Mailer_Review/Volume_2,_2008/The_Heart_of_the_Nation:_Jewish_Values_in_the_Fiction_of_Norman_Mailer --[[User:AMurray|AMurray]] ([[User talk:AMurray|talk]]) 21:56, 23 September 2020 (EDT)

:{{Reply to|AMurray}} Looking good! However, I still see quote a few typos. There should be no space before a footnote or citation.<ref>Like this.</ref> And all parenthetical citations need to be converted. I also see a lot of missing punctuation, especially around citations. —[[User:Grlucas|Grlucas]] ([[User talk:Grlucas|talk]]) 07:24, 24 September 2020 (EDT)

{{Reflist}}

Dr. Lucas, I finished editing my article. Will you please review?
https://projectmailer.net/pm/The_Mailer_Review/Volume_2,_2008/The_Unknown_and_the_General --[[User:Jrdavisjr|Jrdavisjr]] ([[User talk:Jrdavisjr|talk]]) 09:00, 25 September 2020 (EDT)
:{{Reply to| Jrdavisjr}} It looks good. Let's go through editing week and see if anything else comes up. —[[User:Grlucas|Grlucas]] ([[User talk:Grlucas|talk]]) 10:15, 25 September 2020 (EDT)

Dr. Lucas, I have finished editing my article. Can you please review it? Thank You
https://projectmailer.net/pm/User:JSheppard/sandbox [[User:JSheppard|JSheppard]] ([[User talk:JSheppard|talk]])
:{{Reply to| JSheppard}} You have a '''lot''' of work left to do. I see [[User:Jules Carry]] is helping, but you’re missing references and there are typos throughout. Keep working. —[[User:Grlucas|Grlucas]] ([[User talk:Grlucas|talk]]) 17:19, 25 September 2020 (EDT)

Dr. Lucas, I finished my article.
https://projectmailer.net/pm/The_Mailer_Review/Volume_13,_2019/More_Than_The_Dead_Know
[[User:RWalsh|RWalsh]] ([[User talk:RWalsh|talk]]) 15:15, 8 February 2021 (EST)
:{{reply to|RWalsh}} Not quite, but it's looking good. Clean it up and begin helping others. —[[User:Grlucas|Grlucas]] ([[User talk:Grlucas|talk]]) 07:11, 9 February 2021 (EST)

Dr. Lucas, I believe I have finished editing my article. Will you please review?
https://projectmailer.net/pm/The_Mailer_Review/Volume_13,_2019/%E2%80%9CHer_Problems_Were_Everyone%E2%80%99s_Problems%E2%80%9D:_Self_and_Gender_in_The_Deer_Park [[User:Klcrawford|Klcrawford]] ([[User talk:Klcrawford|talk]]) 09:06, 15 February 2021 (EST)
:{{Reply to|Klcrawford}} Great work. I have removed the working banner. I would appreciate it if you began to assist some of the other editors. Thanks. —[[User:Grlucas|Grlucas]] ([[User talk:Grlucas|talk]]) 13:04, 15 February 2021 (EST)

Hello Dr. Lucas, I have been making some edits, I am still looking to see if there is more, can you look through and give any feedback?https://projectmailer.net/pm/The_Mailer_Review/Volume_13,_2019/Angst,_Authorship,_Critics:_“The_Snows_of_Kilimanjaro,”_“The_Crack-Up,”_Advertisements_for_Myself [[User:JFordyce|JFordyce]] ([[User talk:JFordyce|talk]]) 18:27, 20 February 2021 (EST)JFordyce

Hello Dr. Lucas, I believe I have finished my article. Can you please review it? https://projectmailer.net/pm/The_Mailer_Review/Volume_13,_2019/Request [[User:EKrauskopf|EKrauskopf]] ([[User talk:EKrauskopf|talk]]) 13:06, 22 Februrary 2021 (EST)
:{{Reply to|EKrauskopf}} OK, looks good. Well done. Now please begin assisting others on getting volume 9 finished. —[[User:Grlucas|Grlucas]] ([[User talk:Grlucas|talk]]) 06:41, 23 February 2021 (EST)

Dr. Lucas, I have finished and cleaned up my article. Could you please review it?
https://projectmailer.net/pm/The_Mailer_Review/Volume_13,_2019/More_Than_The_Dead_Know [[User:RWalsh|RWalsh]] ([[User talk:RWalsh|talk]]) 12:35, 23 February 2021 (EST)
:{{Reply to|RWalsh}} OK, nice job. Now please begin assisting others on getting volume 9 finished. —[[User:Grlucas|Grlucas]] ([[User talk:Grlucas|talk]]) 13:47, 23 February 2021 (EST)

Hello Dr.Lucas final edits have been made and the article is finished.https://projectmailer.net/pm/The_Mailer_Review/Volume_13,_2019/Angst,_Authorship,_Critics:_“The_Snows_of_Kilimanjaro,”_“The_Crack-Up,”_Advertisements_for_Myself[[User:JFordyce|JFordyce]] ([[User talk:JFordyce|talk]]) 22:27, 2 March 2021 (EST) JFordyce

Hello, Dr. Lucas! I have completed remediation on [[The Mailer Review/Volume 4, 2010/The American Civil War in The Naked and the Dead and Across the River and Into the Trees]]. Can you please let me know if there's anything I need to correct? Thanks so much! [[User:KaraCroissant|KaraCroissant]] ([[User talk:KaraCroissant|talk]]) 17:11, 1 April 2025 (EDT)
:{{Reply to|KaraCroissant}} great work! 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. Other than that—great job! I have removed the banner, so you are free to help with the rest of the volume. Thanks! —[[User:Grlucas|Grlucas]] ([[User talk:Grlucas|talk]]) 08:58, 3 April 2025 (EDT)

Hi, Dr. Lucas. I think I have finished my PM article:[[The_Mailer_Review/Volume_4,_2010/Hemingway_to_Mailer_—_A_Delayed_Response_to_The_Deer_Park|Hemingway to Mailer-A Delayed Response to The Deer Park]]. Please let me know if there is anything else needed from me. [[User:Hobbitonya|Hobbitonya]] ([[User talk:Hobbitonya|talk]]) 17:54, 2 April 2025 (EDT)
:{{Reply to|Hobbitonya}} nice work. 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. Look at punctuation placement and footnotes; commas go inside quotation marks; punctuation goes before footnotes. You still have some citation issues. Note the read errors at the bottom of the page. These need to be gone. (Check the Mailer 1963 short footnote; there is no corresponding citation for 1963.) Thanks! —[[User:Grlucas|Grlucas]] ([[User talk:Grlucas|talk]]) 08:58, 3 April 2025 (EDT)

Hi Dr. Lucas. I think I have finished my article: https://projectmailer.net/index.php?title=The_Mailer_Review/Volume_4,_2010/Ernest_and_Norman:_A_Dialogue_in_Two_Acts&oldid=17870
Please let me know if there is anything I need to fix. Also, let me know if the link is working. [[User:DSánchez|DSánchez]] ([[User talk:DSánchez|talk]]) 17:13, 3 April 2025 (EDT)
:{{Reply to| DSánchez}} looks good. I removed the banner, but please remove all the links. I understand what you were trying to do, but it's unnecessary. Thanks. —[[User:Grlucas|Grlucas]] ([[User talk:Grlucas|talk]]) 07:13, 4 April 2025 (EDT)

==Article Request==
Dr. Lucas. I have started working on another article. Would you be able to send me the PDF of "The Savage Poet-- Unlocking the Universe With Metaphor" so that I can help add to the article? [[User:Klcrawford|Klcrawford]] ([[User talk:Klcrawford|talk]]) 18:24, 23 February 2021 (EST)
:{{Reply to|Klcrawford}} Done. Thank you. —[[User:Grlucas|Grlucas]] ([[User talk:Grlucas|talk]]) 07:46, 24 February 2021 (EST)

== When we Were Kings 1st remediation ==

[[The_Mailer_Review/Volume_13,_2019/When_We_Were_Kings:_Review_and_Commentary|https://projectmailer.net/pm/The_Mailer_Review/Volume_13,_2019/When_We_Were_Kings:_Review_and_Commentary]]

Here is the link for the remediation I did for this weeks assignment. I did not now where to place the link.

Thank you,
Trevor Ryals
:{{Reply to|TRyals}} Thank you, but this is unnecessary. Just do the work; I promise I will see it. (And be sure to sign your talk page posts.) —[[User:Grlucas|Grlucas]] ([[User talk:Grlucas|talk]]) 18:16, 2 February 2021 (EST)

==Summer 2021==
Can you please review my article? I have a couple errors that I do not understand how to fix. Other than that, I am finished. https://projectmailer.net/pm/User:PLowery/sandbox

Can you review my article again please? I think I might be done. [[User:PLowery|PLowery]] ([[User talk:PLowery|talk]])
:{{Reply to|PLowery}} In order for you to be finished, your entire article must be posted [[The Mailer Review/Volume 3, 2009/A Favor for the Ages|in the mainspace]]. Thanks. —[[User:Grlucas|Grlucas]] ([[User talk:Grlucas|talk]]) 07:29, 21 June 2021 (EDT)
::Done
:::I believe I have it done correctly now.

My topic person is Marion Stegeman Hodgson,however she was not my first choice. There are four others who initially chose Hodgson, Tyler McMillan, Elizabeth Webb, Caleb Andrews, and Marguerite Walker. I haven't gotten in touch with either classmate as of this date however.[[User:KWilcox|KWilcox]] ([[User talk:KWilcox|talk]])Kenneth Wilcox(KWilcox)July 7, 2021[[User:KWilcox|KWilcox]] ([[User talk:KWilcox|talk]])
:{{Reply to|KWilcox}} This work should be done on Wikipedia. Please post all questions and work about project 2 on Wikipedia. Thanks. —[[User:Grlucas|Grlucas]] ([[User talk:Grlucas|talk]]) 09:12, 8 July 2021 (EDT)

My attempt at creating a draft article failed by creating a new page. My next attempt will be using the user page to create the draft article, is this correct?[[User:KWilcox|KWilcox]] ([[User talk:KWilcox|talk]]) 10:22, 8 July 2021 (EDT)Kenneth Wilcox, July 8, 2021, 10:21am[[User:KWilcox|KWilcox]] ([[User talk:KWilcox|talk]]) 10:22, 8 July 2021 (EDT)
:{{Reply to|KWilcox}} As I said: please post all questions for project 2 on Wikipedia. This is an inappropriate forum for them. Thank you. —[[User:Grlucas|Grlucas]] ([[User talk:Grlucas|talk]]) 10:27, 8 July 2021 (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)

== 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 @Grlucas 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)

User talk:Grlucas

2025-04-06T00:02:01Z

Tbara4554: Added final edit request for Oohh Normie, You're Sooo Hemingway

{{Talk header}}

== Article Errors ==

I've added the body of the article to my sandbox page. What errors do I need to specifically change in order to make it correct?[[User:CDucharme|CDucharme]] ([[User talk:CDucharme|talk]]) 17:04, 14 September 2020 (EDT)
:{{Reply to|CDucharme}} Mostly you need to add the notes, citation, and read for typos. It’s meticulous, but that’s the job. (Thanks for signing.) —[[User:Grlucas|Grlucas]] ([[User talk:Grlucas|talk]]) 17:08, 14 September 2020 (EDT)

Hey, I need help with instructions for the Norman Mailer Bibliography for the remediation project. I am not sure what I am supposed to do.[[User:AJohnson|AJohnson]] ([[User talk:AJohnson|talk]]) 29 March 2021 (EDT)
:{{Reply to|AJohnson}} You need to remediate the bibliography by adding missing entries from the PDF to the article on this site using the correct templates. As the note on the bibliography says, you may use [[The Mailer Review/Volume 2, 2008/Norman Mailer Bibliography: 2007|Norman Mailer Bibliography: 2007]] as a model. —[[User:Grlucas|Grlucas]] ([[User talk:Grlucas|talk]]) 14:48, 29 March 2021 (EDT)

== Final edits ==
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)

Hello, Dr. Lucas, I finished editing my article. May I have the banner removed?[[User:KJordan|KJordan]] ([[User talk:KJordan|talk]]) 20:13, 22 September 2020 (EDT)KJordan
:{{Reply to|KJordan}} Maybe. You should always link to something you want me to have a look at, please. —[[User:Grlucas|Grlucas]] ([[User talk:Grlucas|talk]]) 20:14, 22 September 2020 (EDT)

Dr. Lucas, I have finished editing my article. Can you please review it? Thank You. Here is a link to it: https://projectmailer.net/pm/The_Mailer_Review/Volume_2,_2008/The_Heart_of_the_Nation:_Jewish_Values_in_the_Fiction_of_Norman_Mailer --[[User:AMurray|AMurray]] ([[User talk:AMurray|talk]]) 21:56, 23 September 2020 (EDT)

:{{Reply to|AMurray}} Looking good! However, I still see quote a few typos. There should be no space before a footnote or citation.<ref>Like this.</ref> And all parenthetical citations need to be converted. I also see a lot of missing punctuation, especially around citations. —[[User:Grlucas|Grlucas]] ([[User talk:Grlucas|talk]]) 07:24, 24 September 2020 (EDT)

{{Reflist}}

Dr. Lucas, I finished editing my article. Will you please review?
https://projectmailer.net/pm/The_Mailer_Review/Volume_2,_2008/The_Unknown_and_the_General --[[User:Jrdavisjr|Jrdavisjr]] ([[User talk:Jrdavisjr|talk]]) 09:00, 25 September 2020 (EDT)
:{{Reply to| Jrdavisjr}} It looks good. Let's go through editing week and see if anything else comes up. —[[User:Grlucas|Grlucas]] ([[User talk:Grlucas|talk]]) 10:15, 25 September 2020 (EDT)

Dr. Lucas, I have finished editing my article. Can you please review it? Thank You
https://projectmailer.net/pm/User:JSheppard/sandbox [[User:JSheppard|JSheppard]] ([[User talk:JSheppard|talk]])
:{{Reply to| JSheppard}} You have a '''lot''' of work left to do. I see [[User:Jules Carry]] is helping, but you’re missing references and there are typos throughout. Keep working. —[[User:Grlucas|Grlucas]] ([[User talk:Grlucas|talk]]) 17:19, 25 September 2020 (EDT)

Dr. Lucas, I finished my article.
https://projectmailer.net/pm/The_Mailer_Review/Volume_13,_2019/More_Than_The_Dead_Know
[[User:RWalsh|RWalsh]] ([[User talk:RWalsh|talk]]) 15:15, 8 February 2021 (EST)
:{{reply to|RWalsh}} Not quite, but it's looking good. Clean it up and begin helping others. —[[User:Grlucas|Grlucas]] ([[User talk:Grlucas|talk]]) 07:11, 9 February 2021 (EST)

Dr. Lucas, I believe I have finished editing my article. Will you please review?
https://projectmailer.net/pm/The_Mailer_Review/Volume_13,_2019/%E2%80%9CHer_Problems_Were_Everyone%E2%80%99s_Problems%E2%80%9D:_Self_and_Gender_in_The_Deer_Park [[User:Klcrawford|Klcrawford]] ([[User talk:Klcrawford|talk]]) 09:06, 15 February 2021 (EST)
:{{Reply to|Klcrawford}} Great work. I have removed the working banner. I would appreciate it if you began to assist some of the other editors. Thanks. —[[User:Grlucas|Grlucas]] ([[User talk:Grlucas|talk]]) 13:04, 15 February 2021 (EST)

Hello Dr. Lucas, I have been making some edits, I am still looking to see if there is more, can you look through and give any feedback?https://projectmailer.net/pm/The_Mailer_Review/Volume_13,_2019/Angst,_Authorship,_Critics:_“The_Snows_of_Kilimanjaro,”_“The_Crack-Up,”_Advertisements_for_Myself [[User:JFordyce|JFordyce]] ([[User talk:JFordyce|talk]]) 18:27, 20 February 2021 (EST)JFordyce

Hello Dr. Lucas, I believe I have finished my article. Can you please review it? https://projectmailer.net/pm/The_Mailer_Review/Volume_13,_2019/Request [[User:EKrauskopf|EKrauskopf]] ([[User talk:EKrauskopf|talk]]) 13:06, 22 Februrary 2021 (EST)
:{{Reply to|EKrauskopf}} OK, looks good. Well done. Now please begin assisting others on getting volume 9 finished. —[[User:Grlucas|Grlucas]] ([[User talk:Grlucas|talk]]) 06:41, 23 February 2021 (EST)

Dr. Lucas, I have finished and cleaned up my article. Could you please review it?
https://projectmailer.net/pm/The_Mailer_Review/Volume_13,_2019/More_Than_The_Dead_Know [[User:RWalsh|RWalsh]] ([[User talk:RWalsh|talk]]) 12:35, 23 February 2021 (EST)
:{{Reply to|RWalsh}} OK, nice job. Now please begin assisting others on getting volume 9 finished. —[[User:Grlucas|Grlucas]] ([[User talk:Grlucas|talk]]) 13:47, 23 February 2021 (EST)

Hello Dr.Lucas final edits have been made and the article is finished.https://projectmailer.net/pm/The_Mailer_Review/Volume_13,_2019/Angst,_Authorship,_Critics:_“The_Snows_of_Kilimanjaro,”_“The_Crack-Up,”_Advertisements_for_Myself[[User:JFordyce|JFordyce]] ([[User talk:JFordyce|talk]]) 22:27, 2 March 2021 (EST) JFordyce

Hello, Dr. Lucas! I have completed remediation on [[The Mailer Review/Volume 4, 2010/The American Civil War in The Naked and the Dead and Across the River and Into the Trees]]. Can you please let me know if there's anything I need to correct? Thanks so much! [[User:KaraCroissant|KaraCroissant]] ([[User talk:KaraCroissant|talk]]) 17:11, 1 April 2025 (EDT)
:{{Reply to|KaraCroissant}} great work! 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. Other than that—great job! I have removed the banner, so you are free to help with the rest of the volume. Thanks! —[[User:Grlucas|Grlucas]] ([[User talk:Grlucas|talk]]) 08:58, 3 April 2025 (EDT)

Hi, Dr. Lucas. I think I have finished my PM article:[[The_Mailer_Review/Volume_4,_2010/Hemingway_to_Mailer_—_A_Delayed_Response_to_The_Deer_Park|Hemingway to Mailer-A Delayed Response to The Deer Park]]. Please let me know if there is anything else needed from me. [[User:Hobbitonya|Hobbitonya]] ([[User talk:Hobbitonya|talk]]) 17:54, 2 April 2025 (EDT)
:{{Reply to|Hobbitonya}} nice work. 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. Look at punctuation placement and footnotes; commas go inside quotation marks; punctuation goes before footnotes. You still have some citation issues. Note the read errors at the bottom of the page. These need to be gone. (Check the Mailer 1963 short footnote; there is no corresponding citation for 1963.) Thanks! —[[User:Grlucas|Grlucas]] ([[User talk:Grlucas|talk]]) 08:58, 3 April 2025 (EDT)

Hi Dr. Lucas. I think I have finished my article: https://projectmailer.net/index.php?title=The_Mailer_Review/Volume_4,_2010/Ernest_and_Norman:_A_Dialogue_in_Two_Acts&oldid=17870
Please let me know if there is anything I need to fix. Also, let me know if the link is working. [[User:DSánchez|DSánchez]] ([[User talk:DSánchez|talk]]) 17:13, 3 April 2025 (EDT)
:{{Reply to| DSánchez}} looks good. I removed the banner, but please remove all the links. I understand what you were trying to do, but it's unnecessary. Thanks. —[[User:Grlucas|Grlucas]] ([[User talk:Grlucas|talk]]) 07:13, 4 April 2025 (EDT)

==Article Request==
Dr. Lucas. I have started working on another article. Would you be able to send me the PDF of "The Savage Poet-- Unlocking the Universe With Metaphor" so that I can help add to the article? [[User:Klcrawford|Klcrawford]] ([[User talk:Klcrawford|talk]]) 18:24, 23 February 2021 (EST)
:{{Reply to|Klcrawford}} Done. Thank you. —[[User:Grlucas|Grlucas]] ([[User talk:Grlucas|talk]]) 07:46, 24 February 2021 (EST)

== When we Were Kings 1st remediation ==

[[The_Mailer_Review/Volume_13,_2019/When_We_Were_Kings:_Review_and_Commentary|https://projectmailer.net/pm/The_Mailer_Review/Volume_13,_2019/When_We_Were_Kings:_Review_and_Commentary]]

Here is the link for the remediation I did for this weeks assignment. I did not now where to place the link.

Thank you,
Trevor Ryals
:{{Reply to|TRyals}} Thank you, but this is unnecessary. Just do the work; I promise I will see it. (And be sure to sign your talk page posts.) —[[User:Grlucas|Grlucas]] ([[User talk:Grlucas|talk]]) 18:16, 2 February 2021 (EST)

==Summer 2021==
Can you please review my article? I have a couple errors that I do not understand how to fix. Other than that, I am finished. https://projectmailer.net/pm/User:PLowery/sandbox

Can you review my article again please? I think I might be done. [[User:PLowery|PLowery]] ([[User talk:PLowery|talk]])
:{{Reply to|PLowery}} In order for you to be finished, your entire article must be posted [[The Mailer Review/Volume 3, 2009/A Favor for the Ages|in the mainspace]]. Thanks. —[[User:Grlucas|Grlucas]] ([[User talk:Grlucas|talk]]) 07:29, 21 June 2021 (EDT)
::Done
:::I believe I have it done correctly now.

My topic person is Marion Stegeman Hodgson,however she was not my first choice. There are four others who initially chose Hodgson, Tyler McMillan, Elizabeth Webb, Caleb Andrews, and Marguerite Walker. I haven't gotten in touch with either classmate as of this date however.[[User:KWilcox|KWilcox]] ([[User talk:KWilcox|talk]])Kenneth Wilcox(KWilcox)July 7, 2021[[User:KWilcox|KWilcox]] ([[User talk:KWilcox|talk]])
:{{Reply to|KWilcox}} This work should be done on Wikipedia. Please post all questions and work about project 2 on Wikipedia. Thanks. —[[User:Grlucas|Grlucas]] ([[User talk:Grlucas|talk]]) 09:12, 8 July 2021 (EDT)

My attempt at creating a draft article failed by creating a new page. My next attempt will be using the user page to create the draft article, is this correct?[[User:KWilcox|KWilcox]] ([[User talk:KWilcox|talk]]) 10:22, 8 July 2021 (EDT)Kenneth Wilcox, July 8, 2021, 10:21am[[User:KWilcox|KWilcox]] ([[User talk:KWilcox|talk]]) 10:22, 8 July 2021 (EDT)
:{{Reply to|KWilcox}} As I said: please post all questions for project 2 on Wikipedia. This is an inappropriate forum for them. Thank you. —[[User:Grlucas|Grlucas]] ([[User talk:Grlucas|talk]]) 10:27, 8 July 2021 (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)

== 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)

The Mailer Review/Volume 4, 2010/“Oohh Normie—You’re Sooo Hemingway”: Mailer Memories and Encounters

2025-04-05T22:13:40Z

Tbara4554: Added the stylized page breaks

{{DISPLAYTITLE:{{BASEPAGENAME}}/{{SUBPAGENAME}}}}
{{MR04}}
{{Working}} 
{{Byline|last=Stoneback|first=H. R. |url=|abstract=|note=}}
LOOKING BACK NOW, OVER MORE THAN HALF A CENTURY, it seems Norman was always there. He was there, closer to the center of my cultural and literary formation and experience than I had remembered; and there, too, through the encounters I had with him over the years. And, in one way or another, Hemingway was involved in all of my “Mailer moments.” Yet, after my early twenties, I was seldom consciously aware of Mailer’s presence. And I have not finished any of his works published since the early 1970s, which was the last time I taught Mailer in my college classes. I hold no brief as a Mailer scholar, or even as an enthusiast of Mailer’s complete ''oeuvre''. Thus, when the editor of this journal invited me to submit a piece on Mailer and Hemingway, I begged off, saying I had not done my Mailer homework in decades and I could provide nothing more than anecdotal reminiscences of my encounters with Mailer. Our sage editor persisted, so I have written these remarks. In the course of mining history and inviting my memory to speak clearly, I have come to believe that a book, several rich and nuanced books, should be written on the subject of Mailer and Hemingway. Surely the special Hemingway-Mailer issue of this journal will constitute a significant step in the direction of that necessary goal. But all I have to offer here is anecdote. Not literary memoir—this is not the place to recount my conversations about Mailer with Mary Hemingway and Gregory Hemingway and Valerie Hemingway. Just personal anecdotes involving Mailer. And if this is taken as a sign that I am approaching my ''anecdotage'', so be it.

I first read ''The Naked and the Dead'' when I was fourteen years old. I was{{pg|371|372}}in the ninth grade then, in 1955, and my pantheon of great artists at that moment included Ernest Hemingway, Thomas Wolfe, Lord Byron, Hank Williams, Elvis Presley, and Fats Domino. We did not read ''The Naked and the Dead'' in school, but I read it at the same time that we were reading ''A Tale of Two Cities'' in my ninth-grade English class. I think I may have ranked Mailer higher than Dickens in my ninth-grade literary pronouncements. And I read Mailer immediately after the summer vacation when I read ''For Whom the Bell Tolls'' and ''The Old Man and the Sea'' in my grandmother’s attic in our summer place near Atlantic City. I do not remember whether I preferred Hemingway over Mailer then but I do remember the smell of my grandmother’s bookcases and the unpainted tongue-and-groove wainscoting of that attic, and the smell of the row-house outside Philadelphia—especially the basement where my father had to keep his copy of ''The Naked and the Dead''. And the feeling that reading both Hemingway and Mailer evoked is all mixed up with the scents of that season of reading. My father had to keep Mailer in the basement with certain other books next to his collection of 10,000 jazz records (78s of course) because my mother did not approve of Mailer and certain other authors having a place in the glass-fronted barrister’s bookcases in our dining room. Only one Hemingway—''The Old Man and the Sea''—was allowed in those bookcases with the complete works of Cooper, Irving, Scott and other classics, a generous assortment of Bibles and scriptural commentaries, and inscribed copies of books by a famous young evangelist named Billy Graham, who was my mother’s personal friend.

The next writing by Mailer that I remember reading was his celebrated and controversial essay, “The White Negro.” I was with my father in a used book and record shop when he purchased a soiled copy of the summer issue of Dissent for a nickel. Although my father was a factory worker then, in the fall of 1957, he had been in the 1920s and 1930s a publishing poet and jazz pianist of some reputation; he had been, for example, the only white musician and sideman on some “race records” vintage 1930. Thus he was interested in what Mailer had to say in “The White Negro.” And since I had long since announced (in the third grade) that I was going to be a writer and a singer, a novelist and a singer-songwriter, and I had long thought of myself as an outsider and a rebel, and I too was interested. By the end of 1957 I was reading ''The Village Voice'' whenever I could get hold of a copy and I had made my first hitchhiking trip to Greenwich Village to sing in coffeehouses. By the time I read and reread ''Advertisements for Myself'' in late 1959 I had hitchhiked to{{pg|372|373}}Greenwich Village several times and spent some time singing in the streets and in whatever places would give me ten or fifteen minutes on stage. I also sang with all the other folksingers in the famous gatherings in Washington Square. In spite of all the time I spent singing and playing guitar and writing songs in those high school years, I still thought of myself as primarily and primordially a writer; so I was well aware all during that time of how frequently Mailer’s name was linked with Hemingway’s—by English teachers, by the press, by anyone near my age who pretended to be a writer and to know something about the contemporary literary situation.

At the small church college I attended from 1959–1961 in Kentucky—first because I had fallen in love with the Kentucky River and then because I thought I was in love with a girl at that college—Mailer was not present on the list of authors who were talked about openly. His books were not in the college library. By the time I went to New York during the Christmas season of 1960 I had heard that Mailer had stabbed his wife, had spent some time at Bellevue, and had only managed to avoid prison time because his wife would not press charges. Some people that I talked to then held Mailer up as the prime example of a great talent laid waste by drink and drugs. I did not know if this were true. I was in Brooklyn for the Christmas season to sing with the Salvation Army on the streets, and to dress up as Santa Claus and ring the bell for donations. I couldn’t find any other Christmas break employment and the Sallies offered room and board. And I wanted to be in New York City. When my Santa Claus gig ended I moved from Brooklyn to Greenwich Village where I slept wherever I could find folks hospitable to young folksingers and would-be writers. There was so much hospitality that I had to get away from it for a few days, so I stayed at the old run-down Broadway Central Hotel because I’d read that Thomas Wolfe stayed there.It was so cold that winter that there wasn’t any singing outdoors in Washington Square, but I sang in some coffeehouses, the ''Café Wha?'', the ''Gaslight'' and other joints, and I sang at the Monday night hootenanny at ''Gerde’s Folk City''. At those hoots, we all got our fifteen minutes on stage. Even a kid named Robert Zimmerman, who was already calling himself Bob Dylan, although his name meant nothing at the time, only got fifteen minutes on stage in those days. The Village coffeehouses swarmed with winos and leftover Beats and some good kid-singers and older jazzmen and Uptown folks slumming and I suppose I saw many well-known writers that I did not recognize. I did not really care about meeting any writers although it would have been nice{{pg|373|374}}to see Kenneth Patchen who was, in my book then, in a league by himself. But I knew he could not be there in his wheelchair. One night somebody pointed out Allan Ginsberg to me. I liked ''Howl'' when I read it in the tenth grade, the year it came out. People said that they sometimes saw Mailer in the jazz and folk joints in the Village but if I ever saw him there I did not know it. But it was due to my momentary spell of infatuation with folksinging in Greenwich Village that I first saw Norman Mailer.

Because of the girl back in Kentucky that everybody but me thought of as my intended, I went back belatedly to attend the college winter quarter. Then, either during spring break or on one of my week-long hitchhiking trips AWOL from college, I was in the Village again in early April. The cops were harassing folksingers in the streets and tension was building over the singing in Washington Square. We sang “We Shall Not Be Moved” and made up words about Mayor Wagner and other city officials. I was lucky not to be in the Square the day the cops cracked down on the folksingers and hauled wagonloads away to jail. I was in the Library up on 42nd Street trying to read all the way through Hemingway’s ''Across the River and into the Trees''. Word of the crackdown and assault spread like wildfire and I was still in town a few days later when the protests and right-to-sing meetings started. I went to a few of these gatherings including one that was a kind of protest party in somebody’s place near the Judson Memorial Church.

At that event, more party than protest, there were many Village luminaries present, standing around talking in little circles with drinks in their hands, doing what I then regarded disdainfully as their dismal Prufrockian dance. A few of us proudly ''authentic'' kid-folksingers were singing in a far corner of that large warehouse-like room. During a break between songs, a tweedy, pipe-smoking professorial-looking older man that I talked to about being a writer said: “That’s Norman Mailer over there.” He gestured with his pipe toward the far side of the crowded room. “Mailer thinks he’s Hemingway but he doesn’t really know who Hemingway is, and he doesn’t write anything like him. And besides, Hemingway’s very sick now.” I remember staring at his lizard-lidded eyes behind thick black rectangular glasses and thinking ''what do you really know about Mailer and Hemingway'' but I said nothing. I put down my guitar to head over and introduce myself to Norman Mailer. I knew it was Mailer from all the pictures I’d seen. On my way across the large room I stopped at the outer fringe of one circle of talkers, the circle where Moe Asch—head of Folkways Records—held forth. He was the{{pg|374|375}}real reason I had come to that gathering, having heard he’d be there. More than anything, I wanted Moe Asch to offer me a recording contract with Folkways. Just like every other kid-folksinger in the room, in the Village, in the entire country—that’s what I wanted then. (Years later, I had a chance to make a Folkways album with Asch but I was too busy writing about Faulkner and Hemingway to take time off from my promotion-and-tenure quest.) That night in 1961 I listened to Asch talk about the record business for a few minutes, and when I turned to make my way through the crowd toward Mailer I saw his shoulders and the back of his head going through the door, leaving the gathering. I was a little disappointed I didn’t get to talk to him but I wasn’t going to chase him down the steps and into the street. So that was when I first ''saw'' Mailer. I went back to the singing corner and played guitar and sang some more. That night some girl gave me a copy of ''The Old Man and the Sea'', inscribed to me and my “future great writings.”

The next day I hitchhiked back to Kentucky, where I put my new copy of ''The Old Man and the Sea'' on my dorm room bookshelf next to my well-thumbed copy of ''Advertisements for Myself''. My Kentucky girl didn’t approve of Mailer but she thought Hemingway was OK. And even though she was from Patchen-Country she wouldn’t even look at his work. As for my writing I think she liked best the stuff that sounded like bad Byron or Keats or Whitman or Wordsworth that I’d written in the eighth grade. Sometime in May I heard from a country singer hitchhiking through Lexington that Mayor Wagner had just lifted the ban on folksinging in Washington Square. That was in a bar in Lexington where the rules of my college forbade me to be and Hank Williams was playing loud on the jukebox and I had just learned that my girlfriend was pregnant. There wasn’t any way we could get married and in those days in that place nobody even thought about abortion. When that term of college ended I was informed that I was expelled from college due to “accumulated demerits,” excessive absence from class and required chapel, and “general bad attitude.” Maybe I was a better student of Mailer than I realized.

Sometime after I’d heard about the lifted ban on folksinging, I had read about it in the newspapers in the college library. I was happy for my folksinging buddies in the Village but by then I already knew I wasn’t going back there. I’d had enough of the Village. So I’d just have to wait to talk to Norman Mailer. I cleaned out my dorm room and threw whatever possessions I had in a duffel bag and slung my guitar over my back, hitting the road,{{pg|375|376}}hitchhiking from Kentucky to Northern Michigan. The toughest decision I had to make was which books to give away and which to carry with me on the road. The choice was generally determined by weight but still I packed ''Advertisements for Myself'' with ''The Old Man'' and a few other books along with my notebooks filled with poems and stories in the burlap feed-sack that I tied on to my guitar with baling twine. I had a job for the summer up in Hemingway-Country at a resort not far from Petoskey. My job title was Assistant Social Director, and my duties included singing every night, organizing shows and entertainment, playing guitar at square dances (sometimes even doing the calling, under the tutelage of the regular 70-year-old caller), and generally keeping the tourists—maybe 70% women—happy.

It was mostly a good summer there in Hemingway-Country. That’s not the way I thought about Northern Michigan then and even though I was fishing and canoeing his streams and hanging out in places where he had lived and written I rarely thought about Hemingway at all. Until that day came in early July and the news of Hemingway’s death filled the airwaves, the newspapers, and all the conversations at the resort and in the nearby towns. Regardless of what the initial press releases said, everybody in that country said from the first that it was suicide.

I remember a heated discussion that lasted for hours one night at El Rancho—the name of the resort where I worked—that occurred a few days after Hemingway’s death. One of the debaters was my co-worker, a six-foot-four man who weighed about 400 pounds and everybody called “Tiny,” who was a big fan of both Mailer and Hemingway. He had borrowed my copy of ''Advertisements for Myself'' and was reading and rereading it all summer. I had borrowed his copy of ''The Deer Park'' but I was having trouble getting through it, partly because there wasn’t much time to read and partly because I hadn’t liked any writing about Hollywood since I read Nathanael West’s ''The Day of the Locust'' a few summers before. The other debaters were tourists or visitors to the ranch. I was mostly a silent listener, in a rare act of deference to my elders. When Tiny repeatedly asserted that up until then the twentieth century, in a literary sense, had belonged to Hemingway, but now Mailer was Hemingway’s only true heir and the rest of the century belonged to Mailer, one of the ranch visitors vehemently disagreed. He maintained that Mailer was nothing like Hemingway, that he had no clue regarding Hemingway’s code or vision. And Mailer’s sentences, his form, were nothing like Hemingway’s. Some of the tourists in the bar that night, the majority of them, agreed with{{pg|376|377}}him. His argument was compelling, citing chapter and verse from the works of both writers. He also said that the worst thing about Mailer was he had no compassion. I was very young, just a kid-folksinger who wanted to be a writer, so I wasn’t sure what I thought about the argument that night. I was just happy that it occurred, that people were taking writers and writing seriously, that they argued for hours about Mailer and Hemingway instead of about movie stars or sports or politics. But I did say, during a lull in the heated debate, that the very act of writing was itself an act of compassion. I had believed that for a long time and I had a deep respect for ''all'' writers, for anyone who was truly driven to write. When the girl from North Dakota was through working in the kitchen and came into the bar, I went off with her and we canoed across the lake. We could hear their voices, still arguing, echo across the lake. Although she was a big Hemingway fan she had never heard of Mailer. But we did not talk about writers and writing. Not that night.

The next morning I learned that Tiny’s debate opponent was a journalist from a major newspaper in Detroit or Chicago—I don’t remember his name or home base or newspaper—but he was on assignment at the ranch to do a feature story for the travel section on the phenomenon of square dancing ''in'' the lake that was a regular occurrence at the ranch that summer. He interviewed me over lunch, since he had discovered that I was the inventor of water-square-dancing. In one of my more Edisonian moments as Assistant Social Director, I had realized that for those who didn’t want to go horseback riding there wasn’t much to do in the afternoon, so I organized square dancing ''in'' the water as a regular afternoon event. When I said that the water slowed down the dancer’s moves, introduced a kind of artistic suspension into the motion that made it like ballet, the reporter wrote that down in his notebook. I had never seen a ballet then and I really just invented water-square-dancing to get myself free from leading trail rides and the dreaded archery instruction that were part of my time-filling assignments in the afternoons. I didn’t tell him that. In the course of our interview I mentioned that aside from being a singer-songwriter, I wanted to be a writer. He said he also wrote fiction. He looked like he was about fifty but he hadn’t published a novel yet. That afternoon he was down at the edge of the lake studying our water-square-dancing session like a bemused anthropologist investigating a strange lost tribe. His photographer took many pictures of the dancers doing their dosey-do’s and promenades in knee-deep and waist-deep water, and photos of me calling the dance and playing the{{pg|377|378}}guitar in knee-deep water, backed up by another guitar player and a fiddler who did not like fiddling in the water.

That night, after my evening performance, he came up to me and said he’d enjoyed meeting me but he had to leave for the Upper Peninsula—he had to get to Seney to do a story on the country of Hemingway’s “Big Two-Hearted River.” He referred to the great Hemingway-Mailer debate of the night before and counseled me firmly against following Mailer, told me to ''eschew the Maileresque path of self-involvement and self-advertisement'' if I wanted to be a writer. I knew what ''eschew'' meant, of course—at least since I had spelled it correctly in the fifth grade spelling bee. But I had never heard anybody say it in the course of a normal conversation and I did not like hearing the word. People who said words like ''eschew'' must live in another world, I thought. Then he said: “If you want to be a real writer, you must learn compassion.” I didn’t think that you could study and ''learn'' compassion, you either had it or you didn’t, and if you didn’t you wouldn’t write at all. If you had it, it probably came to you in an epiphanic flash, as it did to me as a teenager, and he was right that you had to have it to be a real writer. But I figured that Mailer had it, like all real writers, and also that this journalist was probably missing some wit and irony in Mailer’s deployment of his self-advertisement motif. But I didn’t say that to him. I just thanked him for his advice. He reminded me of other older failed writers who were intent on advising young would-be writers like me how to avoid failure. I’d noticed this syndrome before, but had never seen it so clearly. He was really an all right guy and I hope he got his novel written and published.

There were other “Hemingway-Mailer moments” at that Michigan ranch in the summer of 1961 but I will limit my account here to just this one, which does seem to me to be a token, a sign, a charged moment in the oral history of literary reputation. So, too, was the fact that when I finished my duties at the ranch, I left with no less than five books given to me by girls and women, inscribed with love and great hopes for my future writing. All of the books were by Hemingway.

{{* * *}}

That September, after some more hitchhiking-singing-on-the-road escapades, I went off to Parris Island to become a Marine. I offer this sidelight on the literary history of the Marine Corps: Marine privates, who were said{{pg|378|379}}in those days to be joining up either because they were running from the law or from a girl, did in fact ''read''. My platoon at Parris Island and Camp Lejeune was in fact a remarkably literate group, many of us college dropouts, and most of us dropouts were English ''majors''. We devoured war books and all of us preferred ''For Whom the Bell Tolls'' and ''The Naked and the Dead'' over Jones and ''From Here to Eternity'', over Styron’s ''The Long March'', over Remarque’s ''All Quiet on the Western Front'' and all the other World War One books by Aldington, Cummings, Dos Passos and the rest. The fact that Hemingway and Mailer received the Good Marine Seal of Approval—in my platoon—must mean at least as much as a good or bad review in the ''New York Times''.

Although I am enjoying this informal survey of literary history, I fear my readers may by now be mumbling ''mere anecdotage'' so I will truncate these memories. It’s OK to look back, as the slogan goes, just don’t ''stare''. And I offer my assurance that these remarks contain none of that unearned emotion known as nostalgia, not even ''la nostalgie de la boue'', for there is no homesickness here for the fundamentally hungry wretched life of the kid-folksinger on the road.

When my active duty in the Marine Corps ended in 1962, I was based in Kentucky and drove a truck for awhile before I quit and hitchhiked to New Orleans. From my first days in New Orleans, I lost forever any homesickness I might have had for Greenwich Village. The French Quarter became the new capitol of my Bohemian universe and erased almost all memory of an attraction to the Village. After a road-trip to Mexico, I went back to Kentucky and my new girl friend and we ran away to get married and build a log cabin in Alabama. My new wife was a great reader and she had read more Hemingway than I had but she did not like Mailer. While she worked in a café to earn money to pay the rent on our attic apartment, I worked in the deep woods from dawn to dusk, building a log-cabin the old way—no chainsaw, felling all the trees with my ax, skinning all the logs with a draw-knife, notching everything into place. Remarkably, a legendary character and landowner there in east-central Alabama had given me the rights to forty acres of his land for exactly ''one penny''. Things like that still happened in the America of 1962. I didn’t read much during those long months of deep satisfaction in the singularity of intense physical labor, at least twelve hours every day, and Mailer and the literary life of theVillage, all literary life, began{{pg|379|380}}to recede to the far corners of my consciousness. Mailer didn’t go well with log cabins in the wilderness; neither did Hemingway.

My wife and I were now singing (sometimes on the local radio station, sometimes in country churches, occasionally in the rare southern coffeehouses which were nothing like the coffeehouses of New York and the Northeast), more classic country and gospel than folk, and Hank Williams and Jimmie Rodgers and Johnny Cash didn’t seem to have much to do with Mailer—his American Dream seemed far distant from mine. But then, maybe, Cash and Mailer and Williams were more kindred spirits than they could recognize. And the American Dream—all of our American dreams—were much closer in spirit and substance than any of us could see then or maybe even now.

Somehow I ended up back in New Orleans by mid-1963, largely from the need to earn money so that I could complete my cabin in Alabama. This time I landed a regular gig singing in a club on Bourbon Street. I became a kind of local ''star'', and people came to my club to hear me sing my own songs, which felt nothing like the songs I’d been writing in the Village two years before. I was hired to sing at private parties, on Mississippi river-boats, at Tulane sorority parties and I even had my own day-time television show. I knew everybody in the French Quarter, including legendary old jazz musicians who played at Dixieland Hall (then more important than Preservation Hall). I also knew all the literary types in the Quarter and none of them admired Mailer. One of the few who even mentioned him—a would-be writer, who had been a would-be writer much longer than I’d been one—said that ''Advertisements for Myself'' was very passé, that Mailer seemed like a 1930s Old Left character who had discovered drugs, an old Leftie who couldn’t even sing.

When the price of living my entertainer’s Bohemian life in the French Quarter began to seem too high, I decided to go back to college. It seemed like a way to give shape to time. I was twenty-three and I hadn’t written much of anything except songs for several years. If I was going to be a writer, I knew I had to know more writers. My decision to get a B.A. was in fact my decision to get a Ph.D. and read everything I had not yet read. So I went to Rutgers, where neither Hemingway nor Mailer played any role in my coursework or indeed in any of the courses offered. By 1964 the anti-Hemingway reaction that so characterized the later ‘60s and after had set in; and, if you were in the grip of a thoroughly wrong-headed assessment of Hemingway,{{pg|380|381}}how could you accurately gauge Hemingway-Mailer connections? At the level of literary ''conversation'' (not coursework), you still heard talk in Rutgers circles about Mailer as the heir to the Hemingway legacy. But now this was understood to be a negative thing—a tainted and unfortunate legacy, macho, violent, and solipsist, claimed by a confused heir. Confusion was rampant on all sides. As escape from what I felt to be the dead-end imperatives of contemporary American writing, I invested most of my time and passion in exploration of the Russians and the French, and even considered doing my Ph.D. in French literature.

As usual when I needed money my only sure fallback position was entertainment. So my wife and I, with some student partners, opened a coffeehouse, which immediately became ''the'' place to go for Rutgers students and many locals. We did all the cooking and we sang almost every night of the week. Sometimes, we put on stage the folksingers passing through town—although there were not as many kid-folksingers on the road as there had been just a few years before. We had a hootenanny night (“Open Mike” in today’s terminology) for mostly locals, with the predictable mixed results. Something had changed in the folk music world: audiences were more receptive to our stage repertoire—mostly deep old country, authentic traditional (and non-politicized) folksongs, gospel, and some of our own songs. By then, too, Dylan songs were ''de rigueur''. Some things about our coffeehouse carried on what I then felt to be the old-fashioned late 1950s Greenwich Village traditions—jazz records that customers could choose from and play until live show times. And chessboards.

The best chess player was an older black man, an artist and a fine painter who had been Ezra Pound’s attendant when he was incarcerated at St. Elizabeth’s Hospital. Gregory—that was the only name we knew him by and the way he signed all his paintings—was a regular. I never saw him lose a game of chess. I talked many hours and days with him about the kind of man Ezra Pound was—Gregory loved him deeply, but preferred to talk about the ''Cantos'', with which I had then only a passing and superficial acquaintance. We had several shelves of books for our customers to peruse in the quiet hours. One day I tried to give Gregory my now-ancient and much-traveled copy of ''Advertisements for Myself'', which had been on the coffeehouse bookshelves since we opened. He held the book in his hand with a certain world-weary look while he talked about Mailer. Gregory had been a ''hipster'' in the late 1940s sense and a regular at New York jazz clubs from the 1940s into the{{pg|381|382}}1950s. He said he had often seen Mailer in the jazz clubs and talked to him a few times. Said he was a nice guy but Gregory didn’t like Mailer’s work. He had particular words of disdain for “The White Negro.” He said it was an all too familiar case of ''la nostalgie de la boue'' (it was from Gregory that I first heard that seminal phrase), the kind of ''romanticized slumming''—Gregory spoke this sentence very slowly and firmly—''that you might expect from a rich Ivy League Jewish boy''. He said he could no longer read Mailer, and, anyway, he much preferred Pound. He liked Hemingway, too, and thought that nobody had really understood Hemingway yet and how he was Pound’s best student. Gregory declined my gift of ''Advertisements for Myself''. A few weeks later I gave it to a fellow student who, shortly thereafter, drove his Harley—stoned—over a cliff at 120 MPH.

I finished my B.A. at Rutgers quickly; in spite of having been expelled years before from that college in Kentucky I spent only three-and-a-half years total earning the degree. I already knew that I wanted to get my Ph.D. at Vanderbilt, so the location of my M.A. degree didn’t matter a great deal to me. When the University of Hawaii offered me a Teaching Assistantship, complete with travel pay from the East Coast, I packed my bags. I earned my M.A. there in nine months of intense coursework that did not, however, include any Hemingway or Mailer. It was 1966 and dismissal of Hemingway and Mailer was pervasive. In Hawaii, of all places, I first truly discovered Faulkner, read twice everything he wrote, and wrote my M.A. thesis on Faulkner’s folk usages. Hawaii was as far as you could get from Greenwich Village, from Mailer and the New York literary life. There were no coffeehouses but we sang occasionally in some local joints and even learned some Hawaiian folksongs from Big Island cowboys. But they really preferred Hank Williams to their own folksongs. If there was a jazz scene in Hawaii, we never saw it. We lived in the apartment in the old Jungle of Waikiki that Kui Lee, the legendary Hawaiian songwriter-poet, had just vacated. His songs were scrawled on the wooden walls of that shack. And Frank Zappa played the guitar up in a tree at a party in my front yard. But no Mailer, no Hemingway—not in those islands.

I accepted a Ph.D. fellowship at Vanderbilt and in the fall of 1966 I moved to Nashville. Mailer and Hemingway were not read in any of the courses at Vanderbilt then, and if their names came up at all it was only in a negative sense in passing disdainful remarks. There we lived, to be sure, in what was regarded as the capitol of the Southern Renascence, and the long shadow of{{pg|382|383}}Fugitive-Agrarianism was a palpable daily presence. We took literary criticism courses with Allen Tate and special seminars with Cleanth Brooks, down from Yale for a week. I got to know Robert Penn Warren and, immersed as I was by then in southern lit, I started thinking of Red as my literary father. The literary life of New York and the East Coast, if it were granted existence at all, was something from another planet. There was only one other doctoral candidate who read ''Why Are We in Vietnam?'' and ''The Armies of the Night'' at the same time as I did. He was also the only other graduate student who sang and played music in clubs when he needed money. There weren’t any coffeehouses in Nashville and the folksongs that were sung in the Village were not sung there. But there were plenty of juke-joints and country music places where I sang what I thought of by then as ''authentic'' folksongs, along with the songs I was writing and trying to pitch to the likes of Johnny Cash. My only Maileresque moment in Nashville was when we set up a temporary coffeehouse at the headquarters of Eugene McCarthy’s brief quixotic presidential campaign. I sang some of the old Village songs there, and some new ones, but I had nothing to do with the place being named EUGENE, surely the worst name ever for a coffeehouse. After three years at Vanderbilt, with my newly minted Ph.D. in hand, I accepted a job teaching graduate studies in Faulkner and southern lit, as well as undergraduate and graduate folksong courses, at a place I had never heard of—SUNY-New Paltz, an hour and a half north of Manhattan. It seemed like a good place to be for a few years. I am still there, still teaching, forty-one years later. It is still one of the good places. Inevitably, as a function of landscape or place or location, I was drawn back into the literary life of New York City.

The first night I saw Mailer face-to-face and shook hands with him was at ''The Lion’s Head'' in the Village in the early 1970s. It was perhaps the most famous literary saloon in New York City and, as I would learn, one of Mailer’s favorite hangouts. But I did not go there to meet Mailer. I’d heard on the street that the Clancy Brothers might be singing there that night, informally, as they often did. And I knew that other singer-songwriters often performed there. In the late 1960s, Jerry Jeff Walker’s greatest hit “Bo Jangles” had its debut there at ''The Lion’s Head'' as did perhaps another of his early greatest hits, “Stoney” (a song, I confess, that is about me). I don’t know if my old road-buddy Jerry Jeff knew Mailer at all, but the next time we talk I’ll ask him. Just the other day, as I was composing this essay, I was at the Guthrie Center in the Berkshires for a concert by Tom Paxton, one of the most{{pg|383|384}}celebrated folksingers and songwriters of the ‘60s. Talking to Tom after the show, he confirmed that he regularly saw Mailer at ''The Lion’s Head'' for a number of years; Norman had his own roundtable there where he held forth, and “he was a good guy.” I forgot to ask Paxton if Mailer liked folk music. Maybe he did. In any case, I went to ''The Lion’s Head'' for the folk music the first night I shook hands with Mailer. He was not at his roundtable; he was standing at the bar talking with Pete Hamill, Jimmy Breslin, and some other regulars, a loud raucous conversation about New York politics and personalities. I was drawn into the conversation and eventually introduced myself and shook hands with them. I liked them all and it was the good real old talking and I wanted to stay but I had to get up to Grand Central and catch the last train to Poughkeepsie. I had to teach ''The Naked and the Dead'' the next morning. It was the first (and last) time I taught Mailer. That course was called Contemporary Literature (contemporary then meant everything after 1945). The professor who usually taught the course was hospitalized for the rest of the term and I’d been asked to take over the course, called up from the Southern League. It was also the first (but not the last) time I taught Hemingway.

The next few times I was in the Village I stopped in at ''The Lion’s Head'' but I did not see Mailer there. I did hear some good folksinging. Then I went off for a year’s stint as Visiting Professor at the University of Paris (Faulkner & Southern Lit of course), and I lived in the Latin Quarter and Montparnasse. Just as New Orleans and the French Quarter had erased my early love of the Village, Paris now became my magical palimpsest. Nobody in Paris that year (1973–74), French or American, talked about Mailer as Hemingway’s heir. Nobody talked about Mailer at all, except James Jones at one memorable long lunch we had on the Boulevard Raspail. Discretion may be the better part of memoir, so it must suffice to say here that Jones thought ''From Here to Eternity'' was a far, far better book than ''The Naked and the Dead''.

By the 1980s nobody at my university, nobody that I knew around the country, was teaching Mailer. When I did a senior Fulbright year in China— now hired to teach both Faulkner ''and'' Hemingway—at Peking University, I was much involved in translation projects initiated by Chinese scholars and translators who wanted to get all of the best twentieth-century American fiction rendered into Chinese. On several occasions, I was formally consulted on this matter, and once I was asked to comment on a very long list of writers and works that were under consideration. Mailer’s name was not on the{{pg|384|385}}list. I suggested that they should add his name. I do not know if they did or if he was ever translated into Chinese. One translator, roughly my age, who knew the names of many lesser American writers, said he had never heard of Mailer. But then he had never heard of Elvis Presley either.

{{* * *}}
And that brings me to my most important encounter with Mailer—at the legendary 1986 PEN meeting in New York. My original intent here was simply to record that encounter. I had hoped to locate the careful notes I took at all the meetings and sessions where Mailer presided, but they seem hopelessly lost among the trunks and closets full of pre-computer writing in my vast wreck of a house. Still, it is a story worth telling, and to tell it properly I have felt it necessary here to record my long involvement at the periphery of Mailer’s life and work. So I offer this anecdote, this record of my newfound admiration for Mailer, as a kind of atonement for my own long neglect.

The 48th Congress of International PEN in January 1986, when the nation’s and the world’s leading writers came to New York at the invitation of Norman Mailer, president of PEN’s American Center, to discuss the theme of the gathering—“The Writer’s Imagination and the Imagination of the State”—was the most extraordinary literary event I have witnessed in a lifetime of participation in remarkable literary conferences and parliaments worldwide. Only Mailer could have created and presided over such a happening. I was not an invited participant, just a bystander, an observer who was present at most of the events as I stayed at the St. Moritz Hotel on Central Park South for the duration of the Congress. For a week I sat next to and rode the hotel elevator with and exchanged passing remarks with the likes of Brodsky, Coetzee, Gordimer, Grass, Milosz, Oz, Rushdie, Soyinka, Vargas Llosa, and of course the Americans such as Bellow, Carver, Doctorow, Morrison, Sontag, Styron, Updike, Vonnegut and many others I had seen or met or talked with at previous literary occasions. It is hard to believe that a detailed account of the event does not exist in print, but if it does I am not aware of it. I have heard, in conversation, the event referred to as “Mailer’s Disgrace.” But I prefer to think of it as “Mailer’s Triumph.” Since I have been unable to locate my detailed contemporaneous notes taken at the meetings, I can only sketch here a few of the most memorable moments.{{pg|385|386}}
I remember the grand opening event at the Library, for which Mailer had arranged the star speaker George Schultz, Reagan’s Secretary of State. I remember the protests made by many writers, the denunciations to the effect that Mailer was making all of the assembled writers appear to be Reagan stooges. That seemed laughable to me, since the occasion seemed to exemplify one of Mailer’s finest traits, his taste for free and open debate, at the highest level. Besides, I rather liked Schultz—the man—ever since I’d talked to him at some length during Reagan’s state visit to China in 1984. I talked with him both at the State Dinner and at a private cocktail party, and it seemed extraordinary that he actually knew who I was—''a leading young Hemingway scholar'' he called me. He knew that I was the Senior Fulbright Scholar at Peking University, China’s most prestigious institution, and without any clue from me, he said it was a very good thing that I was teaching Hemingway to China’s future leaders. That earned him some credit with me and not just because he was a man who did his homework and actually read advance briefings. (Conversation with Schultz was certainly more focused and illuminating than the interview I did with Diane Sawyer on network news later that week.) In any case, amidst all the protests, I approved of Mailer’s choice of Schultz as speaker, and I made a point of telling him this after the occasion. He seemed very pleased, as if no one else had expressed approval.

I remember the confrontation between Günter Grass and Saul Bellow, and how Bellow handled the situation with poise and grace. I remember the denunciations of Bruno Kreisky, the Chancellor of Austria, and how he came across as the exemplar of graceful lucidity. I remember many readings by so many fine writers, including Updike’s near mystical celebration of mailboxes as a medium of the free and open movement of thought and feeling. And I remember, of course, the women’s protests over the lack of women on the various session panels. They had a point, but it was probably Susan Sontag (not a part of the rebellion) who had the last word on that score: “Literature is not an equal opportunity employer."

It was after the major session of the women’s revolt that I had my most memorable Mailer moment. With Mailer presiding, many women occupied the front rows of the auditorium and proceeded to interrupt him persistently with hisses, catcalls, and other audible forms of disapproval and disorder. Many in the audience clearly felt a sense of chagrin, a deep embarrassment over the way things were going. I was sitting next to Günter{{pg|386|387}}Grass and Salman Rushdie and their sense of discomfiture was evident. Behind me a writer I did not recognize said in heavily accented English: “This is shameful. It does not matter what he has said and done and written about women in the past—this is about this moment, this occasion, and they must cease their rudeness.” But the hissing and interruption continued; although it seemed that most in the audience were appalled, no one, as I remember things, rose to the floor in defense of Mailer. I thought—and many others agreed—that Mailer handled an impossible situation well, mostly with even-tempered wit. On the elevator that night, crowded in with Bellow and Amos Oz and other writers, I recall that someone said: “Norman handled that mess with poise and uncharacteristic grace.” But that was later.

Right after the heated session I was walking through the crowded lobby next to Mailer. We were squeezed in tight by the crowd, hardly able to move. I had just told him that I thought he’d handled the difficulties like some tough field commander conducting a battle against terrible odds. The PEN events, especially the protests, had captured the attention of the media, and there were reporters asking questions on all sides and television news cameras pointed in our faces. I remember thinking ''isn’t it nice that literature is news''. Then, as the TV cameramen backed away from Mailer and me and the crowd around us, clearing a space in front of us to improve camera angles, a young man pushed into that open space, got in Mailer’s face and said: “You’re such a tough guy Mr. Mailer. May I have this dance?” He was either flamboyantly gay or pretending to be. With Mailer’s left arm pressed against me by the crowd, I could feel him tensing up. Then the young man said: “Oohh Normie—you’re sooo Hemingway.” Immediately, I felt Mailer’s left arm tense and saw his fist then his tight left uppercut started toward the young man’s chin. I put my right hand firmly on Mailer’s wrist and said: “It’s not worth it.” I do not know whether I stopped the uppercut or he pulled his punch but the cameras were rolling and I was later told that there was a sound bite, a brief sequence of this moment on the 11 o’clock news that night and I could be heard clearly saying “It’s not worth it.” They told me that the TV clip—I never saw it—ended with the young man on the floor in front of Mailer, apparently out cold. Simultaneous with the stopped punch, the young man fell to the floor and seemed to be unconscious for a few seconds. All of us, including Mailer, pushed the crowd back to give him more breathing room and summoned emergency aid. When the cops showed up{{pg|387|388}}immediately, the young man got up and ran the other way, and with a high shrieking laugh he disappeared in the crowd.

The incident of the fake fainting spell, the pulled or stopped or phantom punch, has haunted me off and on over the years. Was it the “sooo Hemingway” remark hissed in his face, after all the hissing at the women’s revolt session just before, that made Mailer seem to lose his composure for a second? Or was it the “Oohh Normie”? Maybe both. Or maybe he didn’t lose his composure at all, and the near-deed was the sure sign of a cool equanimity. I remember standing there, as the cops cleared the crowd away, seeing Doctorow sitting at the bar across the lobby and the expression on his face, and then as the cops escorted Mailer toward the Central Park South sidewalk his turning back and looking at me and saying “Thanks.” The whole sequence of events, I stood there thinking, seemed to signify some terrible primordial cultural misappropriation of both Hemingway and Mailer, calamitously emblematic of the deep confusions of our culture.

After that night in 1986 I saw Mailer on several other occasions. He gave the keynote address at the 1990 International Hemingway Conference at the Kennedy Library in Boston. I remember that I defended some things Mailer had said against the objections of my Hemingway colleagues. I do not remember what those things were since I do not have a copy of that speech, necessary as a corrective to what Mailer had said about Hemingway over the years. After the speech I spoke with Mailer, who was sitting with Jackie Onassis. He was jovial and relaxed and he made some coded humorous reference to the 1986 PEN encounter in the lobby. Something about Cassius Clay and Sonny Liston and a phantom punch. Both Mailer and Jackie Onassis were pleasant and charming that night.

Sometime in April 1991 I drove up to Albany for the “Telling the Truth Symposium” put on by the New York State Writers Institute. I particularly wanted to see Gay Talese again and to hear the “Is Fiction Truer than Truth?” panel with Mailer, Mary Gordon, and William Kennedy. I knew all three of them and it seemed like a fine mix for some fireworks or at least lively discussion, with Gordon and Mailer, and Kennedy’s ''politesse'' between them. It wasn’t exactly fireworks, but after Gordon held forth at length on the Catholic novel, it was Mailer’s turn to say something about the Jewish novel. When Mary kept interrupting Norman, even on the subject of Jewishness, he said what he said. Suffice it to say that Mailer won the debate, scoring top points in the categories of literary acuity and wit. When I talked to Mailer{{pg|388|389}}after the program, he again made a reference to the phantom PEN-punch at the St. Moritz.

One last encounter germane to my Hemingway-Mailer motif here was a night at the Lotos Club in the early 1990s that stands sharply at attention in memory. The Lotos Club, in NewYork off Fifth Avenue in the East 60s, is one of America’s oldest and most elegant private literary clubs. Mark Twain was a member, as were many other literary and arts luminaries—a long list. And I have been a member for over thirty years; in the period when Bill Kennedy chaired the Club Literary Committee I went to nearly all the literary evenings he organized at the club—for example, the occasion that Kennedy writes about in his piece, “Norman Mailer: An Eavesdropper at the Lotos Club” (in ''Riding the Yellow Trolley Car''). But the night I am remembering here was a different occasion (if I remember rightly) in the early 1990s when William Styron was being honored, not long after the publication of ''Darkness Visible''. After the program I went downstairs to the famous Grill Room with Kennedy, Mailer, and Styron, where a fascinating literary conversation ensued, crystallizing certain key points regarding the state of twentieth-century American literature.

It started out genially enough in the almost deserted Lotos Grill Room, in the company of the famous nudes hanging on the walls around us. Kennedy and Mailer discussed other writers, and I talked with Styron about Robert Penn Warren. He had died a few years before, and we both said how much we loved and missed Red. I mentioned that Warren had been my sponsor for Lotos membership in 1978. We then talked about how Eleanor and the children were doing. At some point, I mentioned that my other sponsor for Lotos membership was Mary Hemingway. Mary and I had been friends for several years and I was pleased that the first woman member in the long history of the Lotos had been my co-sponsor with Warren. At this point, Styron made some crack about Hemingway—I don’t remember precisely everything he said but it had to do with how vastly over-rated Hemingway was and how his work “was inimical”—this I recall exactly because I always remember when somebody uses words like ''inimical'' or ''eschew''—“to good writing by all the writers who followed after him.” I remember thinking ''uh-oh I hope Norman didn’t hear that'' but he did and immediately abandoned his other conversation and entered what instantly became the fray. It did seem rather graceless for Styron to say such a thing in the presence of Mailer. But{{pg|389|390}}Styron looked very frail that night, his visage showing signs of fragility from his recent illness, so I gave him a pass. At first.

Styron insisted on Faulkner’s primacy and Hemingway’s insignificance. It seemed odd for him to do so, since he had so long borne the Faulkner-acolyte label, ever since the ''derivative-Faulknerian'' charges that were made against his early work. It also seemed odd since Styron’s close friend Warren always said, as he often did to me, that Faulkner and Hemingway were the two indispensable writers, and we all must write in their joint commingled shadow. At any rate, Styron and Mailer went at it: Hemingway’s famous understatement was a cover for what he didn’t know, Faulkner in saying too much said nothing; Hemingway’s sentences were sometimes baby-talk, Faulkner’s sentences were often over-stuffed verbosity; and so forth. At first Kennedy, always in my experience a calmly reasonable gentleman, said little. I also mostly listened at first. I was then, as far as I could tell, one of two or three Hemingway scholars in the country who was also a Faulkner scholar and firmly believed that we needed to know and love both of them. Most Faulknerians I knew were either ignorant or disdainful of Hemingway; and vice-versa. And I think that is the peace-making position that both Kennedy and I cultivated—we needed both Faulkner and Hemingway. But at some moments, when Styron said some of his harder things against Hemingway, it was clearly three against one. Mailer’s voice got louder when he said things like “Bill, I can’t allow that to go unchallenged” and Styron’s voice got softer and smaller. I was a little worried about him. But it was all just good tough literary talk among people who knew many things about writing. We eventually said goodnight amicably. It was the last time I saw Mailer. And Styron.

Since I thought it had been an evening of the best of all talking, I was very surprised when sometime later a fellow Lotos member, who had been in the corner of the Grill Room drinking alone that night, mentioned to me what he called Mailer’s ungentlemanly conduct. “Rude, loud and offensive,” he said.“Boorish and pugnacious as always.” I reckon that was just one of those labels that you can’t get unstuck. I disagreed genially and said maybe we should call a panel of Great Lotos Members who knew about good literary talk to sit in judgment—chaired by Mark Twain maybe. But I did wonder as I composed this essay if I had given Mailer a pass based on my newfound PEN-based personal fondness. So I recently asked the only other witness to that conversation if he thought Mailer was rude and unpleasant and pugnacious that night. He is a scientist and thus presumably a somewhat{{pg|390|391}}detached observer of the occasion. Now, almost two decades later, he remembered the occasion as invigorating literary debate, intense and informed argumentation, some of the best literary talk he ever heard. And he thought Mailer was gracious and civilized. That’s how I remember it, too.

All that has been recorded here may be a useful chapter in the history of Mailer’s reputation according to ''oral tradition''. It is also a reminder to me that we all have our literary sins of omission to atone for. I think I will now go back and finish ''Harlot’s Ghost'', take it off the shelf where it has been ignored for eighteen years with the bookmark on page 133, where I stopped reading in 1992. I might get a new copy of ''Advertisements for Myself'' and reread it, bringing full circle this exercise in ''temps perdu'' and ''temps retrouvé''. I might even teach ''The Naked and the Dead'' again. This Mailer prelude and postlude has made me aware, far more so than I realized when I agreed to write this piece, that Norman has always been there, at the center of ''my'' literary life, just as he was—as Tiny insisted long ago in Michigan—at the center of American literary life. I salute Norman Mailer: the writer for his work, and the man for his wit and for, on those occasions when I was in his presence, his decency and graciousness. And I miss him.

The Mailer Review/Volume 4, 2010/“Oohh Normie—You’re Sooo Hemingway”: Mailer Memories and Encounters

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LOOKING BACK NOW, OVER MORE THAN HALF A CENTURY, it seems Norman was always there. He was there, closer to the center of my cultural and literary formation and experience than I had remembered; and there, too, through the encounters I had with him over the years. And, in one way or another, Hemingway was involved in all of my “Mailer moments.” Yet, after my early twenties, I was seldom consciously aware of Mailer’s presence. And I have not finished any of his works published since the early 1970s, which was the last time I taught Mailer in my college classes. I hold no brief as a Mailer scholar, or even as an enthusiast of Mailer’s complete ''oeuvre''. Thus, when the editor of this journal invited me to submit a piece on Mailer and Hemingway, I begged off, saying I had not done my Mailer homework in decades and I could provide nothing more than anecdotal reminiscences of my encounters with Mailer. Our sage editor persisted, so I have written these remarks. In the course of mining history and inviting my memory to speak clearly, I have come to believe that a book, several rich and nuanced books, should be written on the subject of Mailer and Hemingway. Surely the special Hemingway-Mailer issue of this journal will constitute a significant step in the direction of that necessary goal. But all I have to offer here is anecdote. Not literary memoir—this is not the place to recount my conversations about Mailer with Mary Hemingway and Gregory Hemingway and Valerie Hemingway. Just personal anecdotes involving Mailer. And if this is taken as a sign that I am approaching my ''anecdotage'', so be it.

I first read ''The Naked and the Dead'' when I was fourteen years old. I was{{pg|371|372}}in the ninth grade then, in 1955, and my pantheon of great artists at that moment included Ernest Hemingway, Thomas Wolfe, Lord Byron, Hank Williams, Elvis Presley, and Fats Domino. We did not read ''The Naked and the Dead'' in school, but I read it at the same time that we were reading ''A Tale of Two Cities'' in my ninth-grade English class. I think I may have ranked Mailer higher than Dickens in my ninth-grade literary pronouncements. And I read Mailer immediately after the summer vacation when I read ''For Whom the Bell Tolls'' and ''The Old Man and the Sea'' in my grandmother’s attic in our summer place near Atlantic City. I do not remember whether I preferred Hemingway over Mailer then but I do remember the smell of my grandmother’s bookcases and the unpainted tongue-and-groove wainscoting of that attic, and the smell of the row-house outside Philadelphia—especially the basement where my father had to keep his copy of ''The Naked and the Dead''. And the feeling that reading both Hemingway and Mailer evoked is all mixed up with the scents of that season of reading. My father had to keep Mailer in the basement with certain other books next to his collection of 10,000 jazz records (78s of course) because my mother did not approve of Mailer and certain other authors having a place in the glass-fronted barrister’s bookcases in our dining room. Only one Hemingway—''The Old Man and the Sea''—was allowed in those bookcases with the complete works of Cooper, Irving, Scott and other classics, a generous assortment of Bibles and scriptural commentaries, and inscribed copies of books by a famous young evangelist named Billy Graham, who was my mother’s personal friend.

The next writing by Mailer that I remember reading was his celebrated and controversial essay, “The White Negro.” I was with my father in a used book and record shop when he purchased a soiled copy of the summer issue of Dissent for a nickel. Although my father was a factory worker then, in the fall of 1957, he had been in the 1920s and 1930s a publishing poet and jazz pianist of some reputation; he had been, for example, the only white musician and sideman on some “race records” vintage 1930. Thus he was interested in what Mailer had to say in “The White Negro.” And since I had long since announced (in the third grade) that I was going to be a writer and a singer, a novelist and a singer-songwriter, and I had long thought of myself as an outsider and a rebel, and I too was interested. By the end of 1957 I was reading ''The Village Voice'' whenever I could get hold of a copy and I had made my first hitchhiking trip to Greenwich Village to sing in coffeehouses. By the time I read and reread ''Advertisements for Myself'' in late 1959 I had hitchhiked to{{pg|372|373}}Greenwich Village several times and spent some time singing in the streets and in whatever places would give me ten or fifteen minutes on stage. I also sang with all the other folksingers in the famous gatherings in Washington Square. In spite of all the time I spent singing and playing guitar and writing songs in those high school years, I still thought of myself as primarily and primordially a writer; so I was well aware all during that time of how frequently Mailer’s name was linked with Hemingway’s—by English teachers, by the press, by anyone near my age who pretended to be a writer and to know something about the contemporary literary situation.

At the small church college I attended from 1959–1961 in Kentucky—first because I had fallen in love with the Kentucky River and then because I thought I was in love with a girl at that college—Mailer was not present on the list of authors who were talked about openly. His books were not in the college library. By the time I went to New York during the Christmas season of 1960 I had heard that Mailer had stabbed his wife, had spent some time at Bellevue, and had only managed to avoid prison time because his wife would not press charges. Some people that I talked to then held Mailer up as the prime example of a great talent laid waste by drink and drugs. I did not know if this were true. I was in Brooklyn for the Christmas season to sing with the Salvation Army on the streets, and to dress up as Santa Claus and ring the bell for donations. I couldn’t find any other Christmas break employment and the Sallies offered room and board. And I wanted to be in New York City. When my Santa Claus gig ended I moved from Brooklyn to Greenwich Village where I slept wherever I could find folks hospitable to young folksingers and would-be writers. There was so much hospitality that I had to get away from it for a few days, so I stayed at the old run-down Broadway Central Hotel because I’d read that Thomas Wolfe stayed there.It was so cold that winter that there wasn’t any singing outdoors in Washington Square, but I sang in some coffeehouses, the ''Café Wha?'', the ''Gaslight'' and other joints, and I sang at the Monday night hootenanny at ''Gerde’s Folk City''. At those hoots, we all got our fifteen minutes on stage. Even a kid named Robert Zimmerman, who was already calling himself Bob Dylan, although his name meant nothing at the time, only got fifteen minutes on stage in those days. The Village coffeehouses swarmed with winos and leftover Beats and some good kid-singers and older jazzmen and Uptown folks slumming and I suppose I saw many well-known writers that I did not recognize. I did not really care about meeting any writers although it would have been nice{{pg|373|374}}to see Kenneth Patchen who was, in my book then, in a league by himself. But I knew he could not be there in his wheelchair. One night somebody pointed out Allan Ginsberg to me. I liked ''Howl'' when I read it in the tenth grade, the year it came out. People said that they sometimes saw Mailer in the jazz and folk joints in the Village but if I ever saw him there I did not know it. But it was due to my momentary spell of infatuation with folksinging in Greenwich Village that I first saw Norman Mailer.

Because of the girl back in Kentucky that everybody but me thought of as my intended, I went back belatedly to attend the college winter quarter. Then, either during spring break or on one of my week-long hitchhiking trips AWOL from college, I was in the Village again in early April. The cops were harassing folksingers in the streets and tension was building over the singing in Washington Square. We sang “We Shall Not Be Moved” and made up words about Mayor Wagner and other city officials. I was lucky not to be in the Square the day the cops cracked down on the folksingers and hauled wagonloads away to jail. I was in the Library up on 42nd Street trying to read all the way through Hemingway’s ''Across the River and into the Trees''. Word of the crackdown and assault spread like wildfire and I was still in town a few days later when the protests and right-to-sing meetings started. I went to a few of these gatherings including one that was a kind of protest party in somebody’s place near the Judson Memorial Church.

At that event, more party than protest, there were many Village luminaries present, standing around talking in little circles with drinks in their hands, doing what I then regarded disdainfully as their dismal Prufrockian dance. A few of us proudly ''authentic'' kid-folksingers were singing in a far corner of that large warehouse-like room. During a break between songs, a tweedy, pipe-smoking professorial-looking older man that I talked to about being a writer said: “That’s Norman Mailer over there.” He gestured with his pipe toward the far side of the crowded room. “Mailer thinks he’s Hemingway but he doesn’t really know who Hemingway is, and he doesn’t write anything like him. And besides, Hemingway’s very sick now.” I remember staring at his lizard-lidded eyes behind thick black rectangular glasses and thinking ''what do you really know about Mailer and Hemingway'' but I said nothing. I put down my guitar to head over and introduce myself to Norman Mailer. I knew it was Mailer from all the pictures I’d seen. On my way across the large room I stopped at the outer fringe of one circle of talkers, the circle where Moe Asch—head of Folkways Records—held forth. He was the{{pg|374|375}}real reason I had come to that gathering, having heard he’d be there. More than anything, I wanted Moe Asch to offer me a recording contract with Folkways. Just like every other kid-folksinger in the room, in the Village, in the entire country—that’s what I wanted then. (Years later, I had a chance to make a Folkways album with Asch but I was too busy writing about Faulkner and Hemingway to take time off from my promotion-and-tenure quest.) That night in 1961 I listened to Asch talk about the record business for a few minutes, and when I turned to make my way through the crowd toward Mailer I saw his shoulders and the back of his head going through the door, leaving the gathering. I was a little disappointed I didn’t get to talk to him but I wasn’t going to chase him down the steps and into the street. So that was when I first ''saw'' Mailer. I went back to the singing corner and played guitar and sang some more. That night some girl gave me a copy of ''The Old Man and the Sea'', inscribed to me and my “future great writings.”

The next day I hitchhiked back to Kentucky, where I put my new copy of ''The Old Man and the Sea'' on my dorm room bookshelf next to my well-thumbed copy of ''Advertisements for Myself''. My Kentucky girl didn’t approve of Mailer but she thought Hemingway was OK. And even though she was from Patchen-Country she wouldn’t even look at his work. As for my writing I think she liked best the stuff that sounded like bad Byron or Keats or Whitman or Wordsworth that I’d written in the eighth grade. Sometime in May I heard from a country singer hitchhiking through Lexington that Mayor Wagner had just lifted the ban on folksinging in Washington Square. That was in a bar in Lexington where the rules of my college forbade me to be and Hank Williams was playing loud on the jukebox and I had just learned that my girlfriend was pregnant. There wasn’t any way we could get married and in those days in that place nobody even thought about abortion. When that term of college ended I was informed that I was expelled from college due to “accumulated demerits,” excessive absence from class and required chapel, and “general bad attitude.” Maybe I was a better student of Mailer than I realized.

Sometime after I’d heard about the lifted ban on folksinging, I had read about it in the newspapers in the college library. I was happy for my folksinging buddies in the Village but by then I already knew I wasn’t going back there. I’d had enough of the Village. So I’d just have to wait to talk to Norman Mailer. I cleaned out my dorm room and threw whatever possessions I had in a duffel bag and slung my guitar over my back, hitting the road,{{pg|375|376}}hitchhiking from Kentucky to Northern Michigan. The toughest decision I had to make was which books to give away and which to carry with me on the road. The choice was generally determined by weight but still I packed ''Advertisements for Myself'' with ''The Old Man'' and a few other books along with my notebooks filled with poems and stories in the burlap feed-sack that I tied on to my guitar with baling twine. I had a job for the summer up in Hemingway-Country at a resort not far from Petoskey. My job title was Assistant Social Director, and my duties included singing every night, organizing shows and entertainment, playing guitar at square dances (sometimes even doing the calling, under the tutelage of the regular 70-year-old caller), and generally keeping the tourists—maybe 70% women—happy.

It was mostly a good summer there in Hemingway-Country. That’s not the way I thought about Northern Michigan then and even though I was fishing and canoeing his streams and hanging out in places where he had lived and written I rarely thought about Hemingway at all. Until that day came in early July and the news of Hemingway’s death filled the airwaves, the newspapers, and all the conversations at the resort and in the nearby towns. Regardless of what the initial press releases said, everybody in that country said from the first that it was suicide.

I remember a heated discussion that lasted for hours one night at El Rancho—the name of the resort where I worked—that occurred a few days after Hemingway’s death. One of the debaters was my co-worker, a six-foot-four man who weighed about 400 pounds and everybody called “Tiny,” who was a big fan of both Mailer and Hemingway. He had borrowed my copy of ''Advertisements for Myself'' and was reading and rereading it all summer. I had borrowed his copy of ''The Deer Park'' but I was having trouble getting through it, partly because there wasn’t much time to read and partly because I hadn’t liked any writing about Hollywood since I read Nathanael West’s ''The Day of the Locust'' a few summers before. The other debaters were tourists or visitors to the ranch. I was mostly a silent listener, in a rare act of deference to my elders. When Tiny repeatedly asserted that up until then the twentieth century, in a literary sense, had belonged to Hemingway, but now Mailer was Hemingway’s only true heir and the rest of the century belonged to Mailer, one of the ranch visitors vehemently disagreed. He maintained that Mailer was nothing like Hemingway, that he had no clue regarding Hemingway’s code or vision. And Mailer’s sentences, his form, were nothing like Hemingway’s. Some of the tourists in the bar that night, the majority of them, agreed with{{pg|376|377}}him. His argument was compelling, citing chapter and verse from the works of both writers. He also said that the worst thing about Mailer was he had no compassion. I was very young, just a kid-folksinger who wanted to be a writer, so I wasn’t sure what I thought about the argument that night. I was just happy that it occurred, that people were taking writers and writing seriously, that they argued for hours about Mailer and Hemingway instead of about movie stars or sports or politics. But I did say, during a lull in the heated debate, that the very act of writing was itself an act of compassion. I had believed that for a long time and I had a deep respect for ''all'' writers, for anyone who was truly driven to write. When the girl from North Dakota was through working in the kitchen and came into the bar, I went off with her and we canoed across the lake. We could hear their voices, still arguing, echo across the lake. Although she was a big Hemingway fan she had never heard of Mailer. But we did not talk about writers and writing. Not that night.

The next morning I learned that Tiny’s debate opponent was a journalist from a major newspaper in Detroit or Chicago—I don’t remember his name or home base or newspaper—but he was on assignment at the ranch to do a feature story for the travel section on the phenomenon of square dancing ''in'' the lake that was a regular occurrence at the ranch that summer. He interviewed me over lunch, since he had discovered that I was the inventor of water-square-dancing. In one of my more Edisonian moments as Assistant Social Director, I had realized that for those who didn’t want to go horseback riding there wasn’t much to do in the afternoon, so I organized square dancing ''in'' the water as a regular afternoon event. When I said that the water slowed down the dancer’s moves, introduced a kind of artistic suspension into the motion that made it like ballet, the reporter wrote that down in his notebook. I had never seen a ballet then and I really just invented water-square-dancing to get myself free from leading trail rides and the dreaded archery instruction that were part of my time-filling assignments in the afternoons. I didn’t tell him that. In the course of our interview I mentioned that aside from being a singer-songwriter, I wanted to be a writer. He said he also wrote fiction. He looked like he was about fifty but he hadn’t published a novel yet. That afternoon he was down at the edge of the lake studying our water-square-dancing session like a bemused anthropologist investigating a strange lost tribe. His photographer took many pictures of the dancers doing their dosey-do’s and promenades in knee-deep and waist-deep water, and photos of me calling the dance and playing the{{pg|377|378}}guitar in knee-deep water, backed up by another guitar player and a fiddler who did not like fiddling in the water.

That night, after my evening performance, he came up to me and said he’d enjoyed meeting me but he had to leave for the Upper Peninsula—he had to get to Seney to do a story on the country of Hemingway’s “Big Two-Hearted River.” He referred to the great Hemingway-Mailer debate of the night before and counseled me firmly against following Mailer, told me to ''eschew the Maileresque path of self-involvement and self-advertisement'' if I wanted to be a writer. I knew what ''eschew'' meant, of course—at least since I had spelled it correctly in the fifth grade spelling bee. But I had never heard anybody say it in the course of a normal conversation and I did not like hearing the word. People who said words like ''eschew'' must live in another world, I thought. Then he said: “If you want to be a real writer, you must learn compassion.” I didn’t think that you could study and ''learn'' compassion, you either had it or you didn’t, and if you didn’t you wouldn’t write at all. If you had it, it probably came to you in an epiphanic flash, as it did to me as a teenager, and he was right that you had to have it to be a real writer. But I figured that Mailer had it, like all real writers, and also that this journalist was probably missing some wit and irony in Mailer’s deployment of his self-advertisement motif. But I didn’t say that to him. I just thanked him for his advice. He reminded me of other older failed writers who were intent on advising young would-be writers like me how to avoid failure. I’d noticed this syndrome before, but had never seen it so clearly. He was really an all right guy and I hope he got his novel written and published.

There were other “Hemingway-Mailer moments” at that Michigan ranch in the summer of 1961 but I will limit my account here to just this one, which does seem to me to be a token, a sign, a charged moment in the oral history of literary reputation. So, too, was the fact that when I finished my duties at the ranch, I left with no less than five books given to me by girls and women, inscribed with love and great hopes for my future writing. All of the books were by Hemingway.

* * *

That September, after some more hitchhiking-singing-on-the-road escapades, I went off to Parris Island to become a Marine. I offer this sidelight on the literary history of the Marine Corps: Marine privates, who were said{{pg|378|379}}in those days to be joining up either because they were running from the law or from a girl, did in fact ''read''. My platoon at Parris Island and Camp Lejeune was in fact a remarkably literate group, many of us college dropouts, and most of us dropouts were English ''majors''. We devoured war books and all of us preferred ''For Whom the Bell Tolls'' and ''The Naked and the Dead'' over Jones and ''From Here to Eternity'', over Styron’s ''The Long March'', over Remarque’s ''All Quiet on the Western Front'' and all the other World War One books by Aldington, Cummings, Dos Passos and the rest. The fact that Hemingway and Mailer received the Good Marine Seal of Approval—in my platoon—must mean at least as much as a good or bad review in the ''New York Times''.

Although I am enjoying this informal survey of literary history, I fear my readers may by now be mumbling ''mere anecdotage'' so I will truncate these memories. It’s OK to look back, as the slogan goes, just don’t ''stare''. And I offer my assurance that these remarks contain none of that unearned emotion known as nostalgia, not even ''la nostalgie de la boue'', for there is no homesickness here for the fundamentally hungry wretched life of the kid-folksinger on the road.

When my active duty in the Marine Corps ended in 1962, I was based in Kentucky and drove a truck for awhile before I quit and hitchhiked to New Orleans. From my first days in New Orleans, I lost forever any homesickness I might have had for Greenwich Village. The French Quarter became the new capitol of my Bohemian universe and erased almost all memory of an attraction to the Village. After a road-trip to Mexico, I went back to Kentucky and my new girl friend and we ran away to get married and build a log cabin in Alabama. My new wife was a great reader and she had read more Hemingway than I had but she did not like Mailer. While she worked in a café to earn money to pay the rent on our attic apartment, I worked in the deep woods from dawn to dusk, building a log-cabin the old way—no chainsaw, felling all the trees with my ax, skinning all the logs with a draw-knife, notching everything into place. Remarkably, a legendary character and landowner there in east-central Alabama had given me the rights to forty acres of his land for exactly ''one penny''. Things like that still happened in the America of 1962. I didn’t read much during those long months of deep satisfaction in the singularity of intense physical labor, at least twelve hours every day, and Mailer and the literary life of theVillage, all literary life, began{{pg|379|380}}to recede to the far corners of my consciousness. Mailer didn’t go well with log cabins in the wilderness; neither did Hemingway.

My wife and I were now singing (sometimes on the local radio station, sometimes in country churches, occasionally in the rare southern coffeehouses which were nothing like the coffeehouses of New York and the Northeast), more classic country and gospel than folk, and Hank Williams and Jimmie Rodgers and Johnny Cash didn’t seem to have much to do with Mailer—his American Dream seemed far distant from mine. But then, maybe, Cash and Mailer and Williams were more kindred spirits than they could recognize. And the American Dream—all of our American dreams—were much closer in spirit and substance than any of us could see then or maybe even now.

Somehow I ended up back in New Orleans by mid-1963, largely from the need to earn money so that I could complete my cabin in Alabama. This time I landed a regular gig singing in a club on Bourbon Street. I became a kind of local ''star'', and people came to my club to hear me sing my own songs, which felt nothing like the songs I’d been writing in the Village two years before. I was hired to sing at private parties, on Mississippi river-boats, at Tulane sorority parties and I even had my own day-time television show. I knew everybody in the French Quarter, including legendary old jazz musicians who played at Dixieland Hall (then more important than Preservation Hall). I also knew all the literary types in the Quarter and none of them admired Mailer. One of the few who even mentioned him—a would-be writer, who had been a would-be writer much longer than I’d been one—said that ''Advertisements for Myself'' was very passé, that Mailer seemed like a 1930s Old Left character who had discovered drugs, an old Leftie who couldn’t even sing.

When the price of living my entertainer’s Bohemian life in the French Quarter began to seem too high, I decided to go back to college. It seemed like a way to give shape to time. I was twenty-three and I hadn’t written much of anything except songs for several years. If I was going to be a writer, I knew I had to know more writers. My decision to get a B.A. was in fact my decision to get a Ph.D. and read everything I had not yet read. So I went to Rutgers, where neither Hemingway nor Mailer played any role in my coursework or indeed in any of the courses offered. By 1964 the anti-Hemingway reaction that so characterized the later ‘60s and after had set in; and, if you were in the grip of a thoroughly wrong-headed assessment of Hemingway,{{pg|380|381}}how could you accurately gauge Hemingway-Mailer connections? At the level of literary ''conversation'' (not coursework), you still heard talk in Rutgers circles about Mailer as the heir to the Hemingway legacy. But now this was understood to be a negative thing—a tainted and unfortunate legacy, macho, violent, and solipsist, claimed by a confused heir. Confusion was rampant on all sides. As escape from what I felt to be the dead-end imperatives of contemporary American writing, I invested most of my time and passion in exploration of the Russians and the French, and even considered doing my Ph.D. in French literature.

As usual when I needed money my only sure fallback position was entertainment. So my wife and I, with some student partners, opened a coffeehouse, which immediately became ''the'' place to go for Rutgers students and many locals. We did all the cooking and we sang almost every night of the week. Sometimes, we put on stage the folksingers passing through town—although there were not as many kid-folksingers on the road as there had been just a few years before. We had a hootenanny night (“Open Mike” in today’s terminology) for mostly locals, with the predictable mixed results. Something had changed in the folk music world: audiences were more receptive to our stage repertoire—mostly deep old country, authentic traditional (and non-politicized) folksongs, gospel, and some of our own songs. By then, too, Dylan songs were ''de rigueur''. Some things about our coffeehouse carried on what I then felt to be the old-fashioned late 1950s Greenwich Village traditions—jazz records that customers could choose from and play until live show times. And chessboards.

The best chess player was an older black man, an artist and a fine painter who had been Ezra Pound’s attendant when he was incarcerated at St. Elizabeth’s Hospital. Gregory—that was the only name we knew him by and the way he signed all his paintings—was a regular. I never saw him lose a game of chess. I talked many hours and days with him about the kind of man Ezra Pound was—Gregory loved him deeply, but preferred to talk about the ''Cantos'', with which I had then only a passing and superficial acquaintance. We had several shelves of books for our customers to peruse in the quiet hours. One day I tried to give Gregory my now-ancient and much-traveled copy of ''Advertisements for Myself'', which had been on the coffeehouse bookshelves since we opened. He held the book in his hand with a certain world-weary look while he talked about Mailer. Gregory had been a ''hipster'' in the late 1940s sense and a regular at New York jazz clubs from the 1940s into the{{pg|381|382}}1950s. He said he had often seen Mailer in the jazz clubs and talked to him a few times. Said he was a nice guy but Gregory didn’t like Mailer’s work. He had particular words of disdain for “The White Negro.” He said it was an all too familiar case of ''la nostalgie de la boue'' (it was from Gregory that I first heard that seminal phrase), the kind of ''romanticized slumming''—Gregory spoke this sentence very slowly and firmly—''that you might expect from a rich Ivy League Jewish boy''. He said he could no longer read Mailer, and, anyway, he much preferred Pound. He liked Hemingway, too, and thought that nobody had really understood Hemingway yet and how he was Pound’s best student. Gregory declined my gift of ''Advertisements for Myself''. A few weeks later I gave it to a fellow student who, shortly thereafter, drove his Harley—stoned—over a cliff at 120 MPH.

I finished my B.A. at Rutgers quickly; in spite of having been expelled years before from that college in Kentucky I spent only three-and-a-half years total earning the degree. I already knew that I wanted to get my Ph.D. at Vanderbilt, so the location of my M.A. degree didn’t matter a great deal to me. When the University of Hawaii offered me a Teaching Assistantship, complete with travel pay from the East Coast, I packed my bags. I earned my M.A. there in nine months of intense coursework that did not, however, include any Hemingway or Mailer. It was 1966 and dismissal of Hemingway and Mailer was pervasive. In Hawaii, of all places, I first truly discovered Faulkner, read twice everything he wrote, and wrote my M.A. thesis on Faulkner’s folk usages. Hawaii was as far as you could get from Greenwich Village, from Mailer and the New York literary life. There were no coffeehouses but we sang occasionally in some local joints and even learned some Hawaiian folksongs from Big Island cowboys. But they really preferred Hank Williams to their own folksongs. If there was a jazz scene in Hawaii, we never saw it. We lived in the apartment in the old Jungle of Waikiki that Kui Lee, the legendary Hawaiian songwriter-poet, had just vacated. His songs were scrawled on the wooden walls of that shack. And Frank Zappa played the guitar up in a tree at a party in my front yard. But no Mailer, no Hemingway—not in those islands.

I accepted a Ph.D. fellowship at Vanderbilt and in the fall of 1966 I moved to Nashville. Mailer and Hemingway were not read in any of the courses at Vanderbilt then, and if their names came up at all it was only in a negative sense in passing disdainful remarks. There we lived, to be sure, in what was regarded as the capitol of the Southern Renascence, and the long shadow of{{pg|382|383}}Fugitive-Agrarianism was a palpable daily presence. We took literary criticism courses with Allen Tate and special seminars with Cleanth Brooks, down from Yale for a week. I got to know Robert Penn Warren and, immersed as I was by then in southern lit, I started thinking of Red as my literary father. The literary life of New York and the East Coast, if it were granted existence at all, was something from another planet. There was only one other doctoral candidate who read ''Why Are We in Vietnam?'' and ''The Armies of the Night'' at the same time as I did. He was also the only other graduate student who sang and played music in clubs when he needed money. There weren’t any coffeehouses in Nashville and the folksongs that were sung in the Village were not sung there. But there were plenty of juke-joints and country music places where I sang what I thought of by then as ''authentic'' folksongs, along with the songs I was writing and trying to pitch to the likes of Johnny Cash. My only Maileresque moment in Nashville was when we set up a temporary coffeehouse at the headquarters of Eugene McCarthy’s brief quixotic presidential campaign. I sang some of the old Village songs there, and some new ones, but I had nothing to do with the place being named EUGENE, surely the worst name ever for a coffeehouse. After three years at Vanderbilt, with my newly minted Ph.D. in hand, I accepted a job teaching graduate studies in Faulkner and southern lit, as well as undergraduate and graduate folksong courses, at a place I had never heard of—SUNY-New Paltz, an hour and a half north of Manhattan. It seemed like a good place to be for a few years. I am still there, still teaching, forty-one years later. It is still one of the good places. Inevitably, as a function of landscape or place or location, I was drawn back into the literary life of New York City.

The first night I saw Mailer face-to-face and shook hands with him was at ''The Lion’s Head'' in the Village in the early 1970s. It was perhaps the most famous literary saloon in New York City and, as I would learn, one of Mailer’s favorite hangouts. But I did not go there to meet Mailer. I’d heard on the street that the Clancy Brothers might be singing there that night, informally, as they often did. And I knew that other singer-songwriters often performed there. In the late 1960s, Jerry Jeff Walker’s greatest hit “Bo Jangles” had its debut there at ''The Lion’s Head'' as did perhaps another of his early greatest hits, “Stoney” (a song, I confess, that is about me). I don’t know if my old road-buddy Jerry Jeff knew Mailer at all, but the next time we talk I’ll ask him. Just the other day, as I was composing this essay, I was at the Guthrie Center in the Berkshires for a concert by Tom Paxton, one of the most{{pg|383|384}}celebrated folksingers and songwriters of the ‘60s. Talking to Tom after the show, he confirmed that he regularly saw Mailer at ''The Lion’s Head'' for a number of years; Norman had his own roundtable there where he held forth, and “he was a good guy.” I forgot to ask Paxton if Mailer liked folk music. Maybe he did. In any case, I went to ''The Lion’s Head'' for the folk music the first night I shook hands with Mailer. He was not at his roundtable; he was standing at the bar talking with Pete Hamill, Jimmy Breslin, and some other regulars, a loud raucous conversation about New York politics and personalities. I was drawn into the conversation and eventually introduced myself and shook hands with them. I liked them all and it was the good real old talking and I wanted to stay but I had to get up to Grand Central and catch the last train to Poughkeepsie. I had to teach ''The Naked and the Dead'' the next morning. It was the first (and last) time I taught Mailer. That course was called Contemporary Literature (contemporary then meant everything after 1945). The professor who usually taught the course was hospitalized for the rest of the term and I’d been asked to take over the course, called up from the Southern League. It was also the first (but not the last) time I taught Hemingway.

The next few times I was in the Village I stopped in at ''The Lion’s Head'' but I did not see Mailer there. I did hear some good folksinging. Then I went off for a year’s stint as Visiting Professor at the University of Paris (Faulkner & Southern Lit of course), and I lived in the Latin Quarter and Montparnasse. Just as New Orleans and the French Quarter had erased my early love of the Village, Paris now became my magical palimpsest. Nobody in Paris that year (1973–74), French or American, talked about Mailer as Hemingway’s heir. Nobody talked about Mailer at all, except James Jones at one memorable long lunch we had on the Boulevard Raspail. Discretion may be the better part of memoir, so it must suffice to say here that Jones thought ''From Here to Eternity'' was a far, far better book than ''The Naked and the Dead''.

By the 1980s nobody at my university, nobody that I knew around the country, was teaching Mailer. When I did a senior Fulbright year in China— now hired to teach both Faulkner ''and'' Hemingway—at Peking University, I was much involved in translation projects initiated by Chinese scholars and translators who wanted to get all of the best twentieth-century American fiction rendered into Chinese. On several occasions, I was formally consulted on this matter, and once I was asked to comment on a very long list of writers and works that were under consideration. Mailer’s name was not on the{{pg|384|385}}list. I suggested that they should add his name. I do not know if they did or if he was ever translated into Chinese. One translator, roughly my age, who knew the names of many lesser American writers, said he had never heard of Mailer. But then he had never heard of Elvis Presley either.

* * *

And that brings me to my most important encounter with Mailer—at the legendary 1986 PEN meeting in New York. My original intent here was simply to record that encounter. I had hoped to locate the careful notes I took at all the meetings and sessions where Mailer presided, but they seem hopelessly lost among the trunks and closets full of pre-computer writing in my vast wreck of a house. Still, it is a story worth telling, and to tell it properly I have felt it necessary here to record my long involvement at the periphery of Mailer’s life and work. So I offer this anecdote, this record of my newfound admiration for Mailer, as a kind of atonement for my own long neglect.

The 48th Congress of International PEN in January 1986, when the nation’s and the world’s leading writers came to New York at the invitation of Norman Mailer, president of PEN’s American Center, to discuss the theme of the gathering—“The Writer’s Imagination and the Imagination of the State”—was the most extraordinary literary event I have witnessed in a lifetime of participation in remarkable literary conferences and parliaments worldwide. Only Mailer could have created and presided over such a happening. I was not an invited participant, just a bystander, an observer who was present at most of the events as I stayed at the St. Moritz Hotel on Central Park South for the duration of the Congress. For a week I sat next to and rode the hotel elevator with and exchanged passing remarks with the likes of Brodsky, Coetzee, Gordimer, Grass, Milosz, Oz, Rushdie, Soyinka, Vargas Llosa, and of course the Americans such as Bellow, Carver, Doctorow, Morrison, Sontag, Styron, Updike, Vonnegut and many others I had seen or met or talked with at previous literary occasions. It is hard to believe that a detailed account of the event does not exist in print, but if it does I am not aware of it. I have heard, in conversation, the event referred to as “Mailer’s Disgrace.” But I prefer to think of it as “Mailer’s Triumph.” Since I have been unable to locate my detailed contemporaneous notes taken at the meetings, I can only sketch here a few of the most memorable moments.{{pg|385|386}}
I remember the grand opening event at the Library, for which Mailer had arranged the star speaker George Schultz, Reagan’s Secretary of State. I remember the protests made by many writers, the denunciations to the effect that Mailer was making all of the assembled writers appear to be Reagan stooges. That seemed laughable to me, since the occasion seemed to exemplify one of Mailer’s finest traits, his taste for free and open debate, at the highest level. Besides, I rather liked Schultz—the man—ever since I’d talked to him at some length during Reagan’s state visit to China in 1984. I talked with him both at the State Dinner and at a private cocktail party, and it seemed extraordinary that he actually knew who I was—''a leading young Hemingway scholar'' he called me. He knew that I was the Senior Fulbright Scholar at Peking University, China’s most prestigious institution, and without any clue from me, he said it was a very good thing that I was teaching Hemingway to China’s future leaders. That earned him some credit with me and not just because he was a man who did his homework and actually read advance briefings. (Conversation with Schultz was certainly more focused and illuminating than the interview I did with Diane Sawyer on network news later that week.) In any case, amidst all the protests, I approved of Mailer’s choice of Schultz as speaker, and I made a point of telling him this after the occasion. He seemed very pleased, as if no one else had expressed approval.

I remember the confrontation between Günter Grass and Saul Bellow, and how Bellow handled the situation with poise and grace. I remember the denunciations of Bruno Kreisky, the Chancellor of Austria, and how he came across as the exemplar of graceful lucidity. I remember many readings by so many fine writers, including Updike’s near mystical celebration of mailboxes as a medium of the free and open movement of thought and feeling. And I remember, of course, the women’s protests over the lack of women on the various session panels. They had a point, but it was probably Susan Sontag (not a part of the rebellion) who had the last word on that score: “Literature is not an equal opportunity employer."

It was after the major session of the women’s revolt that I had my most memorable Mailer moment. With Mailer presiding, many women occupied the front rows of the auditorium and proceeded to interrupt him persistently with hisses, catcalls, and other audible forms of disapproval and disorder. Many in the audience clearly felt a sense of chagrin, a deep embarrassment over the way things were going. I was sitting next to Günter{{pg|386|387}}Grass and Salman Rushdie and their sense of discomfiture was evident. Behind me a writer I did not recognize said in heavily accented English: “This is shameful. It does not matter what he has said and done and written about women in the past—this is about this moment, this occasion, and they must cease their rudeness.” But the hissing and interruption continued; although it seemed that most in the audience were appalled, no one, as I remember things, rose to the floor in defense of Mailer. I thought—and many others agreed—that Mailer handled an impossible situation well, mostly with even-tempered wit. On the elevator that night, crowded in with Bellow and Amos Oz and other writers, I recall that someone said: “Norman handled that mess with poise and uncharacteristic grace.” But that was later.

Right after the heated session I was walking through the crowded lobby next to Mailer. We were squeezed in tight by the crowd, hardly able to move. I had just told him that I thought he’d handled the difficulties like some tough field commander conducting a battle against terrible odds. The PEN events, especially the protests, had captured the attention of the media, and there were reporters asking questions on all sides and television news cameras pointed in our faces. I remember thinking ''isn’t it nice that literature is news''. Then, as the TV cameramen backed away from Mailer and me and the crowd around us, clearing a space in front of us to improve camera angles, a young man pushed into that open space, got in Mailer’s face and said: “You’re such a tough guy Mr. Mailer. May I have this dance?” He was either flamboyantly gay or pretending to be. With Mailer’s left arm pressed against me by the crowd, I could feel him tensing up. Then the young man said: “Oohh Normie—you’re sooo Hemingway.” Immediately, I felt Mailer’s left arm tense and saw his fist then his tight left uppercut started toward the young man’s chin. I put my right hand firmly on Mailer’s wrist and said: “It’s not worth it.” I do not know whether I stopped the uppercut or he pulled his punch but the cameras were rolling and I was later told that there was a sound bite, a brief sequence of this moment on the 11 o’clock news that night and I could be heard clearly saying “It’s not worth it.” They told me that the TV clip—I never saw it—ended with the young man on the floor in front of Mailer, apparently out cold. Simultaneous with the stopped punch, the young man fell to the floor and seemed to be unconscious for a few seconds. All of us, including Mailer, pushed the crowd back to give him more breathing room and summoned emergency aid. When the cops showed up{{pg|387|388}}immediately, the young man got up and ran the other way, and with a high shrieking laugh he disappeared in the crowd.

The incident of the fake fainting spell, the pulled or stopped or phantom punch, has haunted me off and on over the years. Was it the “sooo Hemingway” remark hissed in his face, after all the hissing at the women’s revolt session just before, that made Mailer seem to lose his composure for a second? Or was it the “Oohh Normie”? Maybe both. Or maybe he didn’t lose his composure at all, and the near-deed was the sure sign of a cool equanimity. I remember standing there, as the cops cleared the crowd away, seeing Doctorow sitting at the bar across the lobby and the expression on his face, and then as the cops escorted Mailer toward the Central Park South sidewalk his turning back and looking at me and saying “Thanks.” The whole sequence of events, I stood there thinking, seemed to signify some terrible primordial cultural misappropriation of both Hemingway and Mailer, calamitously emblematic of the deep confusions of our culture.

After that night in 1986 I saw Mailer on several other occasions. He gave the keynote address at the 1990 International Hemingway Conference at the Kennedy Library in Boston. I remember that I defended some things Mailer had said against the objections of my Hemingway colleagues. I do not remember what those things were since I do not have a copy of that speech, necessary as a corrective to what Mailer had said about Hemingway over the years. After the speech I spoke with Mailer, who was sitting with Jackie Onassis. He was jovial and relaxed and he made some coded humorous reference to the 1986 PEN encounter in the lobby. Something about Cassius Clay and Sonny Liston and a phantom punch. Both Mailer and Jackie Onassis were pleasant and charming that night.

Sometime in April 1991 I drove up to Albany for the “Telling the Truth Symposium” put on by the New York State Writers Institute. I particularly wanted to see Gay Talese again and to hear the “Is Fiction Truer than Truth?” panel with Mailer, Mary Gordon, and William Kennedy. I knew all three of them and it seemed like a fine mix for some fireworks or at least lively discussion, with Gordon and Mailer, and Kennedy’s ''politesse'' between them. It wasn’t exactly fireworks, but after Gordon held forth at length on the Catholic novel, it was Mailer’s turn to say something about the Jewish novel. When Mary kept interrupting Norman, even on the subject of Jewishness, he said what he said. Suffice it to say that Mailer won the debate, scoring top points in the categories of literary acuity and wit. When I talked to Mailer{{pg|388|389}}after the program, he again made a reference to the phantom PEN-punch at the St. Moritz.

One last encounter germane to my Hemingway-Mailer motif here was a night at the Lotos Club in the early 1990s that stands sharply at attention in memory. The Lotos Club, in NewYork off Fifth Avenue in the East 60s, is one of America’s oldest and most elegant private literary clubs. Mark Twain was a member, as were many other literary and arts luminaries—a long list. And I have been a member for over thirty years; in the period when Bill Kennedy chaired the Club Literary Committee I went to nearly all the literary evenings he organized at the club—for example, the occasion that Kennedy writes about in his piece, “Norman Mailer: An Eavesdropper at the Lotos Club” (in ''Riding the Yellow Trolley Car''). But the night I am remembering here was a different occasion (if I remember rightly) in the early 1990s when William Styron was being honored, not long after the publication of ''Darkness Visible''. After the program I went downstairs to the famous Grill Room with Kennedy, Mailer, and Styron, where a fascinating literary conversation ensued, crystallizing certain key points regarding the state of twentieth-century American literature.

It started out genially enough in the almost deserted Lotos Grill Room, in the company of the famous nudes hanging on the walls around us. Kennedy and Mailer discussed other writers, and I talked with Styron about Robert Penn Warren. He had died a few years before, and we both said how much we loved and missed Red. I mentioned that Warren had been my sponsor for Lotos membership in 1978. We then talked about how Eleanor and the children were doing. At some point, I mentioned that my other sponsor for Lotos membership was Mary Hemingway. Mary and I had been friends for several years and I was pleased that the first woman member in the long history of the Lotos had been my co-sponsor with Warren. At this point, Styron made some crack about Hemingway—I don’t remember precisely everything he said but it had to do with how vastly over-rated Hemingway was and how his work “was inimical”—this I recall exactly because I always remember when somebody uses words like ''inimical'' or ''eschew''—“to good writing by all the writers who followed after him.” I remember thinking ''uh-oh I hope Norman didn’t hear that'' but he did and immediately abandoned his other conversation and entered what instantly became the fray. It did seem rather graceless for Styron to say such a thing in the presence of Mailer. But{{pg|389|390}}Styron looked very frail that night, his visage showing signs of fragility from his recent illness, so I gave him a pass. At first.

Styron insisted on Faulkner’s primacy and Hemingway’s insignificance. It seemed odd for him to do so, since he had so long borne the Faulkner-acolyte label, ever since the ''derivative-Faulknerian'' charges that were made against his early work. It also seemed odd since Styron’s close friend Warren always said, as he often did to me, that Faulkner and Hemingway were the two indispensable writers, and we all must write in their joint commingled shadow. At any rate, Styron and Mailer went at it: Hemingway’s famous understatement was a cover for what he didn’t know, Faulkner in saying too much said nothing; Hemingway’s sentences were sometimes baby-talk, Faulkner’s sentences were often over-stuffed verbosity; and so forth. At first Kennedy, always in my experience a calmly reasonable gentleman, said little. I also mostly listened at first. I was then, as far as I could tell, one of two or three Hemingway scholars in the country who was also a Faulkner scholar and firmly believed that we needed to know and love both of them. Most Faulknerians I knew were either ignorant or disdainful of Hemingway; and vice-versa. And I think that is the peace-making position that both Kennedy and I cultivated—we needed both Faulkner and Hemingway. But at some moments, when Styron said some of his harder things against Hemingway, it was clearly three against one. Mailer’s voice got louder when he said things like “Bill, I can’t allow that to go unchallenged” and Styron’s voice got softer and smaller. I was a little worried about him. But it was all just good tough literary talk among people who knew many things about writing. We eventually said goodnight amicably. It was the last time I saw Mailer. And Styron.

Since I thought it had been an evening of the best of all talking, I was very surprised when sometime later a fellow Lotos member, who had been in the corner of the Grill Room drinking alone that night, mentioned to me what he called Mailer’s ungentlemanly conduct. “Rude, loud and offensive,” he said.“Boorish and pugnacious as always.” I reckon that was just one of those labels that you can’t get unstuck. I disagreed genially and said maybe we should call a panel of Great Lotos Members who knew about good literary talk to sit in judgment—chaired by Mark Twain maybe. But I did wonder as I composed this essay if I had given Mailer a pass based on my newfound PEN-based personal fondness. So I recently asked the only other witness to that conversation if he thought Mailer was rude and unpleasant and pugnacious that night. He is a scientist and thus presumably a somewhat{{pg|390|391}}detached observer of the occasion. Now, almost two decades later, he remembered the occasion as invigorating literary debate, intense and informed argumentation, some of the best literary talk he ever heard. And he thought Mailer was gracious and civilized. That’s how I remember it, too.

All that has been recorded here may be a useful chapter in the history of Mailer’s reputation according to ''oral tradition''. It is also a reminder to me that we all have our literary sins of omission to atone for. I think I will now go back and finish ''Harlot’s Ghost'', take it off the shelf where it has been ignored for eighteen years with the bookmark on page 133, where I stopped reading in 1992. I might get a new copy of ''Advertisements for Myself'' and reread it, bringing full circle this exercise in ''temps perdu'' and ''temps retrouvé''. I might even teach ''The Naked and the Dead'' again. This Mailer prelude and postlude has made me aware, far more so than I realized when I agreed to write this piece, that Norman has always been there, at the center of ''my'' literary life, just as he was—as Tiny insisted long ago in Michigan—at the center of American literary life. I salute Norman Mailer: the writer for his work, and the man for his wit and for, on those occasions when I was in his presence, his decency and graciousness. And I miss him.

The Mailer Review/Volume 4, 2010/“Oohh Normie—You’re Sooo Hemingway”: Mailer Memories and Encounters

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The Mailer Review/Volume 4, 2010/“Oohh Normie—You’re Sooo Hemingway”: Mailer Memories and Encounters

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