User:NrmMGA5108/sandbox: Difference between revisions

range from panelist to cultural critic. ‘’Playboy’’ paid him $5,000 to reprint his debate with William F. Buckley and, in 1967, Mailer offered ‘’Playboy’’ his essay on bullfighting. Then, in 1975, he wrote over 28,000 words on the prizefight between Ali and Foreman, which ‘’Playboy’’ published in two installments (with rare illustrations). He continued to offer the magazine selections on sports and politics at the turn of the century. In 2004 ‘’Playboy’’ published Mailer’s “Immodest Proposals,” a call to American voters to review the government’s handling of war, welfare, imprisonment, abortion, gay-marriage, and foreign policy. ‘’Playboy’’ posthumously published “A Man of Letters” in January 2009 to honor Mailer. The byline to the feature reads, “A literary giant’s correspondence on Hollywood, celebrity, and society shows him to be a critic and crusader, pugilist and poet” (70, Jan. 2007). The simple eulogy for a poetic boxer sums up why ‘’Playboy’’ continued to rely on Mailer for his nonfiction and fiction contributions: Mailer’s persona represented ‘’Playboy’s’’ commitment to masculinity and intellect.

Although an apropos ‘’Playboy’’ author, Mailer’s relationship with ‘’Playboy’’ involved lawsuits coupled with considerable praise. After ‘’Playboy’’ editors paid Mailer for the essay report on the Buckley’s debates, Mailer sued ‘’Playboy’’ on the grounds that his essay was worth more than the paid sum (Buckley). Mailer also wrote to the editors, denouncing them for labeling him a liberal: “I don’t care if people call me a radical, a red, a revolutionary, an outsider, an outlaw, a Bolshevik, an anarchist, a nihilist or even a left conservative, but please don’t ever call me a liberal” (8, April 1963). And later, in 1975, Elmo Henderson sued ‘’Playboy’’ for publishing “The Fight,” in which Mailer created the factoid that Henderson had been in an insane asylum (Manso 560). But according to one of ‘’Playboy’s’’ executive editors, Arthur Kretchmer, Mailer was “a long-run investment” (Manso 561). In an excerpt from Peter Manso’s ‘’Mailer: His Life and Times’’, Kretchmer explains how ‘’Playboy’’ did not “function on pornography or ‘’Enquirer’’-like sensationalism. It functioned on the fact that people who read ‘’Playboy’’ have a certain sense of upscale events, and Norman’s part of that psychology” (Manso 561). By distancing ‘’Playboy from Enquirer’’, Kretchmer suggests that ‘’Playboy’’ readers are much more sophisticated than those that read either sensational or pornographic media. Mailer’s contributions, then, are used to elevate the magazine’s content. In the 1970s, Kretchmer wanted to publish a magazine that