The Mailer Review/Volume 2, 2008/Norman Mailer in “God’s Attic”

Written by
Donald L. Kaufmann

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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.

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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 House and, except for the governor, was the most powerful politician in Alaska. Gravel was on the lookout for likely staffers and bumped into (supposedly) two word-rich academics. Immediately, Mike, Ed, and I became friends.

Our University English Department was well funded. We were told: “Bring up that Norman Mailer and Ralph Ellison to celebrate our next early snowy spring.”

How could Mailer snub such a bountiful invitation? He almost did. He responded with three “existential stipulations.”

(Late 1964 was the onset of Mailer’s more distinct political phase. There was the earlier [1963] The Presidential Papers. Esquire [November 1964] published In the Red Light: A History of the Republican Convention; then the celebrated The Armies of the Night [1968], culminating in the 1969 Mailer-Breslin ticket in the Democrat Primary for the New York City Mayoralty.)

When the Alaskan offer arrived, Mailer was probably in a high-risk political existential mood. Hence, three stipulations. His counteroffer: “Do the undoable, or else!” Mailer would visit Alaska only if:

1. He must be greeted at the Juneau Airport by the governor;
2. He must be escorted to the state capitol building and be permitted to address both Houses in session (a real political challenge);
3. He must be allowed to attend a Democratic Party caucus meeting.

All these “musts” sounded to Ed and me like a Maileresque “Catch-22.” These details were sent to us by Mailer saying, in essence, that he had vetoed the visit and was having realpolitik fun.

How was Mailer expected to fully comprehend our Mike Gravel “connection”?

Try to imagine Mailer’s surprise when, on February 6, 1965, Governor William Egan wrote to him:

I am sure that your visit to the University of Alaska in Fairbanks as a lecturer during the 1965 Festival of Arts will benefit the University and the State. May I invite you to be my guest for a day in Juneau prior to your appearance in Fairbanks? We look forward to your stay with us.

In The Presidential Papers, Mailer defined politics as “the art of the possible.” Mike Gravel, indeed, was Alaska’s supreme artist.

Skellings immediately wrote to Mailer that Mike Gravel, Speaker of the Alaska House, would take care of all his arrangements in Juneau and Anchorage before Mailer came to Fairbanks. Skellings wrote: “I imagine you should arrive Juneau on April 1 for the day with the Governor and Demo party caucusing on the second. Anchorage on the third. Then here for lecture with Ellison.”

I did not witness, firsthand, Mailer’s initial ground-time in Alaska, but Mike Gravel did. On the next day in Anchorage, where Ed and I were still preparing for Day Two’s festivities, Mike told me that he and Bill Egan had greeted Mailer at the Juneau Airport and that Mailer was escorted on a comprehensive tour of the capital, climaxed with more than polite applause when the state’s guest of honor appeared at a joint session of both Houses of the Alaskan State Legislature: There was thunderous applause before and after Mailer’s undoubtedly tasty and serendipitous remarks. The finale included Mailer attending a meeting of the Democrat Party Caucus (a non-member was usually considered unimportant) which, undoubtedly, made Mailer feel like a real politician.

The happy endings of those three stipulations continued on into that evening at the governor’s home, where Mr. and Mrs. Egan hosted an unpretentious dinner, which Mailer described as “pleasant.” House Speaker Gravel did not have to say that Mailer’s Juneau stopover was both political and peaceful.

Anchorage, the next stop, was no Juneau (the latter, tiny, inaccessible by road, a political microcosm and little else). Anchorage was Alaska’s largest city and cosmopolitan center. There, in a flight from Juneau, Gravel and Mailer landed at what was also the Speaker’s home city, which Mailer, after one fulsome day, would later in Fairbanks label Anchorage as “Little Las Vegas.”

Mailer was not a one-night tourist. On the contrary, he was an in-depth observer and, in retrospect, I sensed what Mailer would soon perceive: just ignore those majestic seas and mountains and you could imagine yourself being in any small city in Nevada or Montana. Fairbanks, a real wilderness city, awaited Mailer, reputedly the leading urban American exponent of the German psychologist and existentialist philosopher, Karl Jaspers (1883–1969). High risk behavior with a dash of violence was Mailer’s literary reputation. Anchorage and Fairbanks awaited.

Anchorage offered little time for unscripted events. Norman, Ed, and I took a few catnaps and slept over at the spacious home of Tom Bischel, a Gravel friend, influential businessman, and maestro of the Mailer visit. Gravel, however, was the official Anchorage host. He and Bischel asked Mailer about his urban wants and places he wanted to visit. Mailer was mindful of his notoriety, spawned by his violence-prone essay, “The White Negro,” and the live Black Power racial violence swirling in the Lower 48. Ralph Ellison, author of Invisible Man, was going to debate this upstart “White Negro” in Fairbanks. Mailer’s one-day preoccupation was with minorities. We did some brief sightseeing, but mostly short stops in black neighborhoods where Mailer met with local residents and politicians. In mid-afternoon, we rushed to an Anchorage TV station for a scheduled videotaping of a Mailer-Gravel-Skellings-Kaufmann panel discussion for a statewide audience. The next stop was a media-inspired Mailer farewell.

Anchorage’s Western Hotel was the site for a well-advertised, open door reception or “Come Meet Controversial Norman Mailer.” The most civilized segment of the Alaskan populace was about to press the flesh with America’s most reputed belligerent literary celebrity, off and on the page. I was the official host. I was positioned at the entrance to greet the friendly and the curious. They glared and spoke the same tongue.

“Where’s that tough guy?”

“Where’s that wife-knifer?”

Just then, the vast reception room became surreal. I made the rounds for a few hours, keeping my eyes on the crowd. Each time Mailer was accosted, he remained gentlemanly and conciliatory. Then, suddenly, Mailer was out of the circle and into a ring, involved in a crazy sort of fisticuffs, mostly lunges and misses, but uniformed security made instant peace, and Mailer swaggered back into his inner circle, with an Irish smile and a fresh drink.

By the end, I was a mixture of alcohol and fatigue, but I could decipher Gravel’s and Bischel’s smiles. Tonight had been an unforgettable success. A nightcap celebration was in order. Why not duplicate our daytime travels, the canvas of black precincts, with a midnight session at Anchorage’s prize black nightclub?

I vaguely recall dim lights and faces, and piping-hot Soul music and a full rocking dance floor and I think I sat at a big table, full of converging “I-know-Norman-faces.” All was a murky mood. Then I saw the rarest of sights. I nudged Ed Skellings and said, “Look, Norman Mailer is dancing.”

Work Cited

• Lennon, J. Michael (1986). Critical Essays on Norman Mailer. Boston: G. K. Hall.