67.13

The Deer Park: A Play. New York: Dial, 7 August; simultaneously as a softcover; New York: Dell; London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1970. 192 pp., $4.50.

Dedication:

“ To Leo Garen and James F. Walsh, Director and Producer of The Deer Park, and to Paul John Austin—Stage Manager, and the brave players in the first New York company: Rip Torn, Rosemary Tory and Hugh Marlowe, Will Lee, Beverly Bentley and Mickey Knox, Gene Lindsey and Margaret Fairchild, Mara Lynn and Joe McWherter, Marsha Mason and Gary Campbell, Bernard Farbar; and to the fine work of the technical crew and the box office, and the standbys. And to Elizabeth Farley, Richard Shepard, Dan Durning and Tom Baker for the first production of The Deer Park at Act IV in Provincetown. ”

This published version of the play follows the stage version which ran from 31 January through 21 May at the Theatre de Lys in New York; it is markedly different in form, but consistent in spirit with the fragments published in 1959 and 1960. See 57.2, 59.11, 59.13, 60.4, other 1967 entries, 72.7 and the novel on which the play is based: 55.4.

“ There were times when I thought I even cared more for it than the novel from which it was delivered; it was certainly different from the novel, narrower, more harrowing, funnier I hoped, sadder, certainly more tragic. It was also more multi-layered. If I was a novelist trying to write plays, I was also trying to put more into this play than I had put into the novel. If the compass was obligatorily more narrow, the well was being dug to a deeper water. ” — Mailer, 67.3

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