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{{byline|last=Kaufmann|first=Donald L.|abstract=An eyewitness to Norman Mailer’s five-day visit to Alaska in 1965 chronicles | {{byline|last=Kaufmann|first=Donald L.|abstract=An eyewitness to Norman Mailer’s five-day visit to Alaska in 1965 chronicles | ||
the details of the only visit Mailer made to Alaska.|url=https://prmlr.us/mr08kauf}} | the details of the only visit Mailer made to Alaska.|url=https://prmlr.us/mr08kauf}} | ||
The post-climax of Norman Mailer’s ''An American Dream'' (1965) features | |||
Stephen Rojack (some might say the author’s virtual alter ego) in the desert, | |||
outside Vegas, in a surreal phone booth, ideal for a celestial call to his dead | |||
lover, Cherry, now with Marilyn Monroe. But Rojack, uncharacteristically, | |||
remains speechless, hangs up the phone, and makes no phone call the next | |||
morning because this Mailer protagonist was “something like sane again.” | |||
Moreover, he is headed due south to the jungles of Guatemala and Yucatan. | |||
The starting point for such a seminal exit from America is the Vegas desert, | |||
just a casino chip’s throw from America’s real nadir point, Death Valley. | |||
There was nothing Arctic about Mailer’s 1965 novel, or was there? | |||
This Maileresque literary fallout was conceived before Mailer’s flash, five-day visit to Alaska in April 1965. Imagine a literary mind experiencing such a one-man, in-house American culture shock from hot sandy Nevada to the 49th state the size of Texas, California and Montana combined, including three million lakes. And a coastline double the size of all the Lower 48 states. Alaska also boasts of its one glacier—the size of Holland—and its outdoor adventures with animals far outnumbering humans, a mere 300,000 plus, the population of a single mid-sized Lower 48 city. Alaska, indeed, is a huge hunk of wild Americana. | |||
Mailer, Brooklyn bred, literary celebrity, seasoned traveler, and existential doer, was interviewed in London about his Alaska Odyssey two weeks after his Arctic visit. Mailer said: “There are one or two places a man can visit | |||
in his lifetime that affect him as an existential experience. Alaska was one of | |||
those places for me.” | |||
I had yet to ask Mailer, “Where’s the other place?” I had my opportunities. I might have been the first to ask because I witnessed Mailer’s Day Two | |||
in Anchorage, and his three-day ''finale'' in Fairbanks. There, at the State University of Alaska, I was an assistant professor in the English Department, | |||
teaching while turning a Mailer dissertation into a Mailer book. I was there, | |||
live. I was also one of the few who were “hip” to the Alaskan academic magic | |||
that prompted (virtually tricked) a reluctant Mailer to visit Alaska. | |||
Edmund Skellings (later to become a Messiah of high tech art, a.k.a. the | |||
“Electric Poet”) was my best friend and fellow PhD candidate at the State | |||
University of Iowa. There, Ed and I first met the Norman Mailer. | |||
''Esquire'' (the home magazine of Mailer’s eight-part serialization [Jan–Aug | |||
1964] of ''An American Dream'') had sponsored a college road show, “Symposium for Writers,” a panel that included Mailer, Mark Harris, Dwight Macdonald, and others. During its Iowa City stopover, and after the panel | |||
presentation, Ed and I pressed the flesh with Mailer—who responded with | |||
warm wit and a promise to keep this mellow threesome mood going that | |||
night at the party at Donald Justice’s home. | |||
I arrived a bit late at the poet’s house. Don Justice told me that Mailer and | |||
Mark Harris had shouted and wrestled and that Mailer, in a huff, had exited | |||
the party with Ed Skellings—seemingly gone for good. | |||
The next morning Ed had news. He and Mailer had hit it off. After verbal sparring and some marijuana, Mailer was exposed to what he later, smilingly, called: “Skelling’s formidable breeziness,” and at its inception, instant | |||
friendship. Skellings added that Mailer was not his but “our” friend. | |||
Ed graduated from Iowa and stationed himself in a lively English Department at Fairbanks, about 140 miles south of the Arctic Circle. I had remained | |||
in Iowa City to finish up my last year in the doctorate program when, suddenly, I received this message: “Come north, Good Buddy, and share in my | |||
high professorial adventures.” Ed really tempted me when he flew to New | |||
York and fell flush into one of those famous Norman Mailer Brooklyn | |||
Heights parties. At one of them, this conversation took place: | |||
:“Norman,” Skellings said, “you’re going to Alaska.” | |||
:Mailer replied, “The hell I am.” | |||
Those in the Mailer inner circle then, as always, said, “No one tells Norman Mailer what to do.” I got the Iowa City jitters. How formidable could | |||
a best friend be? Upon graduation, I joined Ed in Fairbanks, September 1964. | |||
What an operatic happening it was when two former Massachusetts high | |||
school friends reunited in Alaska, Ed Skellings and Mike Gravel. How fortuitous. Gravel, a liberal Democrat, was the Speaker of the Alaskan Lower | |||
===Citations=== | ===Citations=== | ||
{{Reflist}} | {{Reflist}} | ||
===Works Cited=== | ===Works Cited=== |
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