2008

On 9 April, a memorial service, “The Time of His Time: A Celebration of the Life of Norman Mailer,” is held at Carnegie Hall, with Charlie Rose as the master of ceremonies. All of Mailer’s children, his sister, nephew, and many friends and relatives speak at the event.

On 30 June, Blue Night: Photographs by George Hirose, is published by Provincetown Arts Press. It contains fifty-two photographs of Provincetown shot at night with long exposures, and Mailer’s introduction (08.2), which is one of the last things he writes before his death.

On 6 October, “In the Ring: Grappling with the Twentieth Century” is published in New Yorker (08.1). It consists of thirty-eight letters from Mailer to various correspondents from 1945–1988. Eighteen of the letters are later collected in Selected Letters of Norman Mailer (14.3).

In November, the 2008 double issue of the Mailer Review appears. It contains the statements made by 25 individuals, members of Mailer's family and his friends, at the 9 April 2008 memorial program for Mailer at Carnegie Hall, sponsored by Mailer's publisher, Random House, and produced by Norris Church Mailer, Lawrence Schiller, Carol Schneider, and J. Michael Lennon. Mailer is quoted innumerable times in these eulogies, and in many others collected in this volume.

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  Norman Mailer's desk in Provincetown, 2008. Photo by Donna Pedro Lennon.

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  Carnegie Hall Memorial Program.