97.26

“Norman Mailer.” Interview by Brian Lamb. In Booknotes: America’s Finest Authors on Reading, Writing, and the Power of Ideas, by Brian Lamb, 162–165. New York: Random House. Included are interviews with 47 “reporters,” 26 “public figures,” and 46 “storytellers,” including Mailer. The latter include Shelby Foote, Doris Kearns Goodwin, Simon Schama, Daniel Boorstin, Henry Louis Gates Jr., Peggy Noonan and Charles Kuralt. The host of C-Span’s “Booknotes” interviewed Mailer on the air on 25 June 1995 on Oswald’s Tale: An American Mystery (95.16). Lamb leaves his questions out of his interviews with 119 writers collected in this volume. Mailer’s comments deal mainly with the six months (1992–1993) he spent in Minsk, researching Lee Harvey Oswald’s two years there. He also describes his writing routine.