Lipton’s Journal/Editors’ Note: Difference between revisions

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{{DISPLAYTITLE:<span style="font-size:22px;">Lipton’s Journal/</span>Editors’ Note}}
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{{byline|last=Lennon|first=J. Michael|last1=Mailer|first1=Susan}}
{{byline|last=Lennon|first=J. Michael|last1=Mailer|first1=Susan|last2=Lucas|first2=Gerald R.}}


Mailer began this journal on December 1, 1954, two months before his 32nd birthday. His intention was to record the effects of marijuana, which he had been smoking regularly for a few years, on the other activities of his life at the time—writing and his literary ambitions, sex, jazz, and his interactions with his colleagues at ''Dissent'' magazine, the leftist journal edited by Irving Howe, and with friends and family. One of the most important figures in his life at the time was Dr. Robert Lindner, a well-known psychiatrist and author of popular psychology books, including ''Must You Conform'' and ''Rebel without a Cause''. Rinehart published the work of both men, and they had corresponded since the fall of 1952. After Mailer had completed a series of entries (he numbered them 1–689), perhaps ten pages worth, he would mail a carbon copy to Lindner, who then responded in letters, telephone calls and meetings in New York or Baltimore, where Lindner and his wife Johnnie lived.
{{dc|dc=W|hen Mailer made the final entry to ''Lipton’s'',}} the journal topped 104,000 words divided into 708 numbered entries. Mailer numbered each entry consecutively over the twenty-one days he wrote in his journal, from December 1, 1954 to March 4, 1955. Occasionally he would skip a number and likewise repeat one. Sometimes entries were repetitive, redundant, or ridiculous. The archival manuscript is rough, like a first-draft that an editor might be privy to. It should not be published in its current form, but needed to undergo careful editing to present a cohesive, readable, and logical volume. We decided to approach editing the journal with two platforms in mind, the Web and the book, each with its own intended users: (re)searchers and readers, respectively.


Mailer asked Lindner to analyze him, but Lindner said it would destroy their warm and supportive friendship. Mailer then decided to use the journal to self-analyze himself, although Lindner’s running commentary made their relationship as close as the traditional one between analyst and analysand. Mailer quotes Lindner for the length of the journal, arguing with, joshing, provoking and confiding with the older man—Lindner was about nine years older than Mailer. Lindner was Mailer’s closest male friend (James Jones was a close second), and during this period they were in regular communication. He likened their intellectual relationship to an imaginary one between Marx (the outer world of politics, society realism and economics), and Freud (the inner world of dreams, the unconscious, narcissism and repression), but was not willing to say which roles he and Lindner played.
In this digital project, the main users of the journal will be researchers looking for quick information, likely via Google or through keyword searches of this site. The journal, then, has been remediated to make search the most likely avenue of access. Users may search ''Lipton’s'' on any page of the project, either in the box in the upper-right, or the box above the navigation at the bottom of the page. The latter search box will privilege ''Lipton’s'' entries, while the other presents results form the entire site based on Google’s algorithm. Mailer’s original entries have been renumbered, eliminating errors in the manuscript. Each journal entry has its own page, often with linked cross-references to other entries. Blocks of text in the original have been logically paragraphed for readability, and a navigational box appears at the bottom of every entry for browsing.


As the journal proceeded, Mailer took on many other topics and issues: language and its unconscious roots, bi-sexuality, societal repression and the necessary revolt against it, race, hipsters, the atomic bomb, laughter, family and two prototypes he invented and exfoliated on for the length of the journal: the saint and the psychopath. He also explored his burgeoning belief in his own genius, and laid down an artistic manifesto about the role of the artist in a coercive, constraining society. Some of his entries are rants, others are whimsical, still others are mini-essays that run for several pages. Ultimately, the journal led to Mailer’s role as an antagonistic columnist at the weekly newspaper he named and co-founded in 1956, the ''Village Voice'', and a year later to his seminal essay, “[[The White Negro]],” one of the most reprinted essays after WWII.
Since the entries occupy their individual pages, annotations are repeated throughout. These annotations explain important people and events that might not be inferred from the text and often provide a greater intellectual and philosophical context for Mailer’s thought, especially to users who may be unfamiliar with or new to Mailer’s work. While readers would find this application of footnotes redundant, the nature of the digital presentation makes their repetition logical. To expand these notes for those who are interested, we have linked many names to Wikipedia articles. We have tried to keep these links in the footnotes for consistency and to avoid unnecessary interruption in the text of the entries.


About two weeks before Mailer began “Lipton’s,” Stanley Rinehart, the head of Rinehart publishing, broke the firm’s contract with Mailer for his third novel, set in Hollywood, ''[[The Deer Park]]'', which was already scheduled for publication. Between writing journal entries, Mailer tried and failed to find a new publisher. After six more rejections, in late January 1955, the novel was picked up by Putnam’s. The journal, therefore, is crammed with Mailer’s dismay and anger about Rinehart’s spineless action, one resulting from Mailer refusing to drop a description of oral sex.  
We also employ hover notes: these clarify terms or ideas that Mailer discusses in earlier entries but continues to refer to or develop in subsequent ones. Again, the idea here is to provide the necessary context if a researcher lands on an entry in the middle of the journal. These glossed terms are often abbreviations or neologisms that would make little sense without knowledge of previous entries. Hover notes are indicated by a {{H:title|This is an example of a hover note.|dotted-underline}} and can be accessed by hovering over them with the mouse pointer.


As described in Lennon’s biography of Mailer, “Lipton’s” is simultaneously a
Finally, to preserve some of the feel of the manuscript, we have adopted a visual system that shows Mailer’s handwritten edits to the journal. We use a {{ins|green highlight}} to indicate additions or marginalia, and a {{del|red line}} to show deleted text.


{{quote|collection of ruminations and meditations on societal repression, postscripts to his first three novels, a brutally honest self-analysis, and candid portraits of family members and friends that comprise a web of carefully considered calibrations of his relationships with people, events and ideas, set down in preparation for his forthcoming artistic mission. We can in fairness call the journal an examination of conscience and consciousness, but perhaps more than anything else it is an urgent summoning of his powers. He termed it a “great adventure,” adding “I don’t think I have ever been so frightened in my life.”<ref>{{cite book |last=Lennon |first=J. Michael |date=2013 |title=Norman Mailer: A Double Life |url= |location=New York |publisher=Simon & Schuster |page=187 |access-date= |ref=harv }}</ref>}}
In this digital version of ''Lipton’s Journal'', we decided to keep everything from the original manuscript to give researchers the most complete picture of the manuscript as possible, accessible via search. While this would be tedious for readers, for researchers and casual browsers, an edited but complete presentation seemed the best way to approach a Digital Humanities project. Of course, the original document is available via the Harry Ransom Center in Austin, TX, for those needing to see the yellowing, typewritten pages—perhaps a more authentic, albeit less-convenient, way that would likely have been Mailer-approved. Be that as it may, we hope users find this digital version valuable, accessible, and convenient. Of course, any suggestions for improvements are welcome; they may be sent to {{nospam|editor|projectmailer.net}}.
 
I would only add that the journal is also a wellspring of ideas and stances that Mailer drew on—without ever quoting directly from it—for the rest of his life, and the closest thing to a genuine psychoanalysis he ever undertook. He made his final entries on March 4, 1955. Estimated total length: 112,000 words.  
 
Like Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Mailer was nothing if not intellectually ambitious and similarly desired to find a way to reconcile the demands and insights of science, religion and politics. He failed of course, not only because the quest has not advanced very far since Aristotle, but also because he insisted on an oppositional thrust to all he did. He sought to make one out of two, but not until he was sure that he was not abandoning his critique of a repressive society too quickly, too easily. The grand synthesis might take a lifetime, or several, and he feared declaring a premature victory until he had explored all aspects of human existence. He had a voracious curiosity.
 
==Note==
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Latest revision as of 08:23, 15 July 2022

Written by
J. Michael Lennon
Susan Mailer
Gerald R. Lucas

When Mailer made the final entry to Lipton’s, the journal topped 104,000 words divided into 708 numbered entries. Mailer numbered each entry consecutively over the twenty-one days he wrote in his journal, from December 1, 1954 to March 4, 1955. Occasionally he would skip a number and likewise repeat one. Sometimes entries were repetitive, redundant, or ridiculous. The archival manuscript is rough, like a first-draft that an editor might be privy to. It should not be published in its current form, but needed to undergo careful editing to present a cohesive, readable, and logical volume. We decided to approach editing the journal with two platforms in mind, the Web and the book, each with its own intended users: (re)searchers and readers, respectively.

In this digital project, the main users of the journal will be researchers looking for quick information, likely via Google or through keyword searches of this site. The journal, then, has been remediated to make search the most likely avenue of access. Users may search Lipton’s on any page of the project, either in the box in the upper-right, or the box above the navigation at the bottom of the page. The latter search box will privilege Lipton’s entries, while the other presents results form the entire site based on Google’s algorithm. Mailer’s original entries have been renumbered, eliminating errors in the manuscript. Each journal entry has its own page, often with linked cross-references to other entries. Blocks of text in the original have been logically paragraphed for readability, and a navigational box appears at the bottom of every entry for browsing.

Since the entries occupy their individual pages, annotations are repeated throughout. These annotations explain important people and events that might not be inferred from the text and often provide a greater intellectual and philosophical context for Mailer’s thought, especially to users who may be unfamiliar with or new to Mailer’s work. While readers would find this application of footnotes redundant, the nature of the digital presentation makes their repetition logical. To expand these notes for those who are interested, we have linked many names to Wikipedia articles. We have tried to keep these links in the footnotes for consistency and to avoid unnecessary interruption in the text of the entries.

We also employ hover notes: these clarify terms or ideas that Mailer discusses in earlier entries but continues to refer to or develop in subsequent ones. Again, the idea here is to provide the necessary context if a researcher lands on an entry in the middle of the journal. These glossed terms are often abbreviations or neologisms that would make little sense without knowledge of previous entries. Hover notes are indicated by a dotted-underline and can be accessed by hovering over them with the mouse pointer.

Finally, to preserve some of the feel of the manuscript, we have adopted a visual system that shows Mailer’s handwritten edits to the journal. We use a green highlight to indicate additions or marginalia, and a red line to show deleted text.

In this digital version of Lipton’s Journal, we decided to keep everything from the original manuscript to give researchers the most complete picture of the manuscript as possible, accessible via search. While this would be tedious for readers, for researchers and casual browsers, an edited but complete presentation seemed the best way to approach a Digital Humanities project. Of course, the original document is available via the Harry Ransom Center in Austin, TX, for those needing to see the yellowing, typewritten pages—perhaps a more authentic, albeit less-convenient, way that would likely have been Mailer-approved. Be that as it may, we hope users find this digital version valuable, accessible, and convenient. Of course, any suggestions for improvements are welcome; they may be sent to editor@projectmailer.net.


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