97.11a

“A Conversation with Norman Mailer and Dr. Christopher M. Leighton.” Undated, but obviously from the period just after the publication of The Gospel According to the Son (97.13) on 2 May. In this transcribed telephone interview, Leighton, a theologian, presses Mailer on his motives for writing the narrative and what effects his retelling will have on Jews and Christians. Along the way, Mailer reveals a good deal about his own Jewishness, including his Jewish and Yiddish language study and his reading of Graetz’s five-volume history of the Jews. Important interview.