1975

In March, Mailer meets Barbara Norris (later Norris Church Mailer) in Arkansas through his army friend “Fig” Gwaltney.

The Fight (75.12) is published on 21 July, after long excerpts appear in Playboy. It is the last of eight consecutive books in which he uses the third person to depict himself, a technique called illeism, or third person personal.

He spends most of the summer in Mt. Desert, ME.

In December, he separates from Carol Stevens and begins living with Norris Church and her son Matthew at 142 Columbia Heights in Brooklyn.

Excerpts from The Fight in Playboy win the magazine’s Best Nonfiction Award.

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  Norris and NM, c. 1981.