Lipton’s Journal/January 20, 1955/206
If I have qualities of genius, it is because in my case I have never found a home. I straddle many coteries and can never truly join any, yet I have a sensitivity and knowledge for each in myself. But that is why so many people see me as being tortured and nervous and obviously anxious. I have no home, no roots—I am indeed the orphan hero of Barbary Shore and The Deer Park—and so all my anxiety is evident whereas it is buried in other people. And that is why Adele[1] and I were drawn together—for she is an orphan as much as I am.
note
- ↑ Adele Morales (1925 – 2015), who he married in April 1954, was Mailer’s second wife. The mother of his daughters Danielle (b. 1957), and Elizabeth Anne (b. 1959), she separated from Mailer in early 1961 a few months after he stabbed her with a penknife, just missing her heart. He pled guilty to felonious assault and was given a suspended sentence. They divorced in 1962.
