Norman Mailer Society/News/2014

2014-05-22: Via Harvard Review Online, Okla Elliott reviews Mind of an Outlaw: “Phillip Sipiora has usefully organized Mind of an Outlaw by decade, starting with the 1940s, which are represented by a lone essay on Mailer’s choice to support the Progressive Party over the Communist Party. The following decades are more fully represented, with perhaps the 1950s and 1960s being the most interesting, since those were Mailer’s most prolific years in terms of the essay form. This was also when he was helping to invent New Journalism and what we today call creative nonfiction.”

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The essence of spirit … was to choose the thing which did not better one’s position but made it more perilous. That was why the world he knew was poor, for it insisted morality and caution were identical.

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— Mailer, The Deer Park

2014-04-18: Barry Leeds has penned a new memoir, A Movable Beast, containing chapters on Norman Mailer and Norris Church Mailer. From the cover: “Poignant, funny, tragic, steamy, Barry Leeds’ A MOVEABLE BEAST is his most personal book to date, and shows that he himself, shaped by literature and life experiences, is a work in progress.” Congratulations, Barry. Get your copy now by following the link above. Prefer an ebook, try Kobo.
2014-04-11: From Larry Schiller: “I wanted to share a video from last summer’s fellowship and workshop program in Brooklyn Heights, New York. As we prepare and make arrangements for this summer’s program, just imagine all the fun you will have in Salt Lake City. Click the link to view the video from last year, then be sure to follow the links to the fellowship or workshop applications so you can join us in July of this year.”
2014-03-09: Theatre in LA announces a production of Ronald K. Fried’s Two Mailers at Edgemar Center for the Arts. Michael Aushenker has more: “The Big Empty Comes Full Circle in Two Mailers.”
2014-03-01: Speaking of Tough Guys, Music Box Records has just released on CD the soundtrack of TGDD, composed by Angelo Badalamenti. From their web site: “Music Box Records presents the remastered and expanded release of renowned composer Angelo Badalamenti’s (Blue Velvet, TV series Twin Peaks, The City of Lost Children) original score to the Cannon Films 1987 crime mystery comedy-drama feature film Tough Guys Don’t Dance, starring Ryan O’Neal, Isabella Rossellini, Debra Sandlund, Wings Hauser and Lawrence Tierney, and directed by Pulitzer Prize winning-author Norman Mailer, based on his best-selling 1984 novel.”
2014-02-28: James Parker and Rivka Galchen on the New York Times ask “What’s Become of the So-Called Literary Bad Boy?” William S. Burroughs was born 100 years ago this month. James Parker and Rivka Galchen discuss where literary bad boys live today.
2014-02-15: Via Eric Bryant on ArtSpace: “Decoding "River of Fundament": 8 Keys to Unlocking Matthew Barney’s Egyptian Epic.” The multiple narratives about jealous gods, reincarnated pharaohs, and Norman Mailer are confounding, but limpid storytelling is not the point. So what is Barney’s point?
2014-02-07: Via Art Matters: “Sexy Beast”—Summoning Norman Mailer, Egyptian mythology, an oboe-playing porn star and one dead cow, Matthew Barney creates “River of Fundament,” a baroque and no less baffling art-world spectacle.
2014-12-31: Today, Mailer would have turned 91. His last novel, The Castle in the Forest, was as complicated as its author. Few things say “dangerous writing territory” like a story about Hitler’s childhood. And yet Castle received the best critical reviews of Mailer’s career since Executioner. Publishers Weekly gave it a starred review, concluding that, “Mailer arrives at a somber, compelling portrait of a monstrous soul,” while Booklist commented that “In his first novel in more than a decade, Mailer continues to provoke. Only a writer with his temerity would attempt a novel interpreting perhaps the most notorious figure in modern history, Adolf Hitler.” (Via BookTrib.)

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