00.1

Letter to the Editor. “Just the Factoids.” New York Times, 9 January. Mailer writes to complain about inaccuracies in Mary Dearborn’s Mailer: A Biography (99.8) that he found repeated in a review of the biography in the 19 December 1999 New York Times review by Caleb Crain. He particularly objected to Dearborn saying that he had not read the works of Karl Marx, and states that he “spent nine months in the winter, spring and summer of 1948-49 reading and brooding over Das Kapital.” He also states that he did not, contrary to her biography, share his Provincetown home with Roy Cohn, who lived next door, and attributes this error to Peter Manso, who he characterized as “a bilious ex-friend.” He chastises Crain for linking himself “uncritically to the free-floating authority of a casual biographer looking for ‘biffs’ and ‘whams’ and ‘pows.’” See 02.8.