The Mailer Review/Volume 1, 2007/“A Series of Tragicomedies”: Mailer’s Letters on The Deer Park, 1954–55: Difference between revisions

The Mailer Review/Volume 1, 2007/“A Series of Tragicomedies”: Mailer’s Letters on The Deer Park, 1954–55 (view source)

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 Love,<br />Norman
+==124. To Mickey Knox==
+E. 55th Street, New York, NY<br />November 30, 1954
+Dear Mick,<ref>Mickey Knox (b. 1922): NM met Knox, an actor, during his first trip to Hollywood in 1948 when he was stumping for the Progressive Party. They became good friends and in June 1951, NM, now at loose ends and looking for action after breaking with Bea, decided to accompany
+Knox on a cross-country drive to California in Knox’s new car. On the way to Hollywood they made a 20-minute drive through Palm Springs, which NM was scouting as a possible setting for his still-unwritten third novel, ''DP''. NM wrote more letters to Knox, a blacklisted actor and acting coach who lived in Rome for decades, than to anyone else. See Knox’s fascinating and lively memoir, ''The Good, the Bad, the Dolce Vita: The Adventures of an Actor in Hollywood, Paris and Rome'' (2004).</ref>
+My apologies for scolding you about the bitching. The way you describe the exhaust system, it makes perfect sense. So bitch away.
+And I thank you for the $100. Right now I’m pretty flush, so if there are debts you feel are more pressing, take care of them first, Knoxovitch. And when the hell are you coming back to New York?
+I’ve had an annoying two weeks. A fortn’t ago, Stan Rinehart who’s hated ''The Deer Park'' all along decided all of a sudden to breach the contract.<ref>President of the firm of Rinehart and Co., Rinehart (1897–1969) was enthusiastic about ''NAD'', but rejected ''DP''.</ref> Since the book was already in page proof, it’s just a hell of waste of time, energy, and duplicated effort. Right now I’ve submitted it to two other publishers, and I expect they’ll take it, one of them anyway. Do keep quiet about this, because the thing that hurts most is the bad name it’s going to give the book. With all the critics, book reviewers, and knife men, the word will probably go around that this was such a stinker, Stan Rinehart ran out on his contract. Anyway, Rinehart and Co. is torn from top to bottom with the editorial department which always liked the book just aghast. Actually, I think I’ll get quite a bit of money from Stan, but it is an awful situation. I’d give you further details but they’re long, boring, and finally resolve down to Stan wanting me to cut out the blow-job sequence. What else? I’ve come to the conclusion that I’ll publish the book privately before I do that. The reason I sold ''Naked''<ref>''NAD'' was sold to Paul Gregory’s production company, Gregjac, for $100,000, and distributed by Warner Brothers in 1958.</ref> was to get financial independence so I could write what I want to and hang the consequences, and if I don’t use it now, I’ve been a fool to sell ''Naked''. Anyway, don’t fret about it yet, because I’m fairly confident the book will be taken quickly somewhere else.
+Believe it or not, Susy asked for you the other day. Seems she remembers you, and remembers you playing the harmonica. I think you did that day, but Susy is certain, and her memory is often better than mine. What a kid she is. I wish you could see her. Five year old girls are fantastic.
+Adele sends her love. I think she misses you as much as I do. Good luck, good fucking, and good loot.
+Love,<br />Norm
+==125. To Robert Lindner==
+E. 55th Street, New York, NY<br />December 20, 1954
+Dear Bob,
+More notes from the journal.<ref>Lipton’s. See note 36.</ref> I don’t intend to keep sending this stuff to you, having respect for your time among other things, but I do believe these notes clarify a hell of a lot I said before. On Note 56 you will find a blurb for ''The Fifty Minute Hour''.<ref>The subtitle of Lindner’s 1955 book is ''A Collection of True Psychoanalytic Tales''. It had been reissued several times, most recently in 2002.</ref> The corrections come for an interesting reason. I wrote the blurb before I reread the book in its published form. Reading it, I liked it considerably better than the first time, particularly Charles, Mac, and Anton — Kirk is about the same, but you know how enthusiastic I was about that. I’d really be very excited about the book it weren’t for two literary faults of yours, one overcome by discipline; the other perhaps psychically more serious. The first is just your style which at its worst gets down to pure cornball, Bob. But this is just wasteful. You should make the effort yourself, but after I go over the lectures, let us say. For if I give them a week, I think I can show you what I mean. My editorial principles are very close to Orwell’s, even though when I write I’m guilty of many lapses myself. And this you can learn. Charley Devlin<ref>A Brooklyn writer who helped NM with ''NAD'', he was also the model for McLeod in ''[[51.1|BS]]''.</ref> once went though a book for me (Naked) and I learned an awful lot from him.
+Perhaps you don’t like the blurb. If you don’t, I’m willing to write something shorter, vaguer, and more complimentary cause I would like to help you sell books. But I do have this conviction that the evaluative blurb<ref>NM has generally held to this principle in the hundreds of blurbs he
+has given over the past half century.</ref> as opposed to the laudatory blurb actually interests people more. They’re given five new classics every week, and so a blurb which is not simply dithyrambic catches their eye more I think.
+The other difficulty is something we must talk about carefully. In short what it comes down to is that your endings tend to be wandering and uneasy. I suspect, although I may be wrong, that it comes from being at the cross-roads of your ambition. On the one hand you want to be a great man; on the other you want to be a celebrity here and now. Your contempt for the thinking of celebrities keeps you from really serving the pablum which is requisite, but the tendency in all your thought which is to go out very far, very wide, with nothing but your speed and your sincerity to protect you is something you probably hesitate before. So, the equivocation which probably expresses itself in the ends and the endings.
+My own affairs, alack, alay. As of today it looks like I can’t get together with Knopf. I really believe they want to do the book, but Blanche Knopf<ref>Wife of Alfred C. Knopf, president of the eponymous publishing house.</ref> seems almost irrationally terrified by the thought of the book being prosecuted. I cooperate with them to a point. I took out sentence after sentence which might be construed as sexually gratuitous. I went far because they were willing to leave the Teppis scene intact. But finally it came down to cutting passages which involved the motivation of characters. And this I can’t do. It’s the heart of the book. The worst of it, is that gossip has made the book seem so pornographic that by the time it goes to six more publishers, somebody is going to have to believe it’s the best thing since ''Remembrance of Things Past'' before he’s willing to publish it. Bob, it looks like ''The Deer Park'' is in for a long haul. But of course I have the ace in the sleeve of finally publishing it myself, no matter the cost. What the hell did I sell ''Naked'' for, if not to have such options? Anyway, I’ll give you no more day by day communiques until a contract is signed. For, frankly, it’s like being on an elevator. Yet, deep-down, a part of me is delighted. I must have done something to get people that upset.
+Reading ''Fifty Minute'' made me realize something again about you. You’re such a manipulator of people. I suspect my notes have not been answered because you’re worried about me, and you’re trying to think of the thing to say which will move me in the direction which is best (by your lights) for me. If it is true … oh, Bob) Just tell me what you think straight out. Don’t manipulate me. My mother is the great one of all time, and I have enormous sensory apparatus toward that.
+How’s about getting some mescaline, kid?<ref>NM tried mescaline when in Mexico and used it to write the final sentences of ''DP'', but paid for it with “a hangover beyond measure.” See ''AFM'' 245.</ref>
+Love,<br />Norm
 ==Notes==