06.8a
“Taking a trip to Mr. Mailer’s Planet.” Article-interview by Jeff Salamon. Austin American-Statesman, 19 November. Report on a conference the previous week at the Harry Ransom Center of the University of Texas-Austin, “The Sense of Our Time: Norman Mailer and America in Conflict.” The author comments on the remarks of key speakers: Mailer, Robert F. Lucid, Gay Talese, Sam Tanenhaus, Shelley Fisher Fishkin, Alan Petigny, and Janet Davis. Mailer read from Why Are We at War? (03.18), which he said was “far from the best of my writing.” Several of the participants debated the respective merits of the work of Mailer and Saul Bellow.
