The Mailer Review/Volume 13, 2019/On the State of Mailer Studies: A Conversation with J. Michael Lennon: Difference between revisions

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 public intellectual.What is your most powerful and lasting memory of him?
-. . .
+'''J. Michael Lennon''': It’s not an easy question. I have so many memories of
+Norman. But one of the things that has always impressed me about him,
+right to the very end, is ''work ethic''. Norman was always devoted to the literary arts,which took a toll on other relationships.Yet it was it was something
+that drove him. For example,when he entered the hospital for his last round
+of operations and treatments, he brought with him a half dozen books on
+Adolf Hitler. I was just stunned by that! I thought, oh, my God, when is he
+going to give it a break? No, he just didn’t give up.
+As a writer, he was devoted to the notion that the novel was the art form
+that had the greatest capacity for understanding society and human psychology. He believed the novel made the world more understandable, made
+it a better place to live in.
+The other issue that comes to mind is his identity as an insider/outsider.
+Norman knew a lot of famous people, of course, including Muhammad Ali,
+Jack Kennedy, Bill Clinton, John Lennon, and practically every one of his
+major contemporaries in the United States: Bellow, Mary McCarthy, Robert
+Lowell, Dwight Macdonald, the Beats—Kerouac, Ginsberg and Burroughs—
+Bill Styron, Henry Miller, Lillian Hellman, Bill Kennedy, George Plimpton,
+Diana Trilling, James Baldwin, Gay Talese, John Irving, Joyce Carol Oates,
+Philip Roth, and James Jones (his dearest friend), and Don DeLillo (with
+whom he had a special kinship), and Gore Vidal and Truman Capote, with
+whom he had off-and-on friendships with—I could name more.
+He also
+knew many major writers around the world, including Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Carlos Fuentes, Romain Gary, Salman Rushdie, Martin Amis, and
+Günter Grass. But he never really wanted to be a conspicuous part of the literary establishment.. He wanted to maintain a modicum of distance from it
+so that he could criticize it; he was resolute about not losing his independent perspective, and so he backed out of many activities. However, he was
+president of PEN for a couple of years, and yes, that is certainly the establishment. But he got out of there after only two years. He called it his “church
+work.”With Norman there was always the sense of “I want to be an outsider. I do not want to be trammeled by my affiliations with any literary, political
+or what-have-you establishment to the extent that it will dampen my independence, or constrict my perspective.” Norman felt that one must be there
+to speak to one’s time on the planet. He was also exceptionally devoted to his
+family and his friends; there had to be at least fifty people who thought of
+themselves as “Norman Mailer’s best friend.” He had a kind of openness, candor, and generosity of spirit with his friends and his family, a personal
+magnetism.
+'''PS''': Do you feel that this duality of insider and outsider hurt him at times?
+Did it accelerate tensions or create conflicts that perhaps someone with a
+more stable identity of either insider or outsider might not encounter?
+...
 {{Review}}
 {{DEFAULTSORT:On the State of Mailer Studies: A Conversation with J. Michael Lennon}}
+===Works Cited===
+{{Refbegin}}
+* {{cite book |last=Sipiora|first=Phillip|date= Fall 2019 |title= On the State of Mailer Studies: A Conversation with J. Michael Lennon |url= |location= |publisher=The Norman Mailer Society |pages=47-64 |isbn= |author-link=Phillip Sipiora |ref=harv }}
+{{Refend}}