82.23

Interview by Hilary Mills. In Mailer: A Biography, by Hilary Mills, passim. New York: Empire Books, mid-November. First book-length biography of Mailer. Valuable for its interviews with several of his wives, including his first, Beatrice Silverman, and a number of his friends and acquaintances including Jean Malaquais, Scott Meredith, George Plimpton, Dwight Macdonald, Mickey Knox, Vance and Tina Bourjaily, John W. Aldridge, Gore Vidal, Joe Flaherty, Walter Minton, James Baldwin, Seymour Krim, Jason Epstein, Arthur Schlesinger Jr., Roger Donald, Gloria Jones, Pete Hamill, Milton Greene, Jimmy Breslin, Larry Alson, Daniel Wolf, William and Rose Styron, Adeline Lubell, Harold Hayes, Rust Hills, Midge Decter, Norman Podhoretz, Willie Morris, Abbie Hoffman, Dotson Rader, Buzz Farbar, and José Torres. Mills’s biography contains little new material from Mailer himself, but many important perspectives from family and friends. Mills is fair, but not always accurate or alive to nuance. Her method of documentation is sometimes difficult to follow, but her pioneering biography is foundational. See 81.2, 83.31, 83.50, 84.5.