07.33

“Arts, Briefly.” Squib by Lawrence Van Gelder. New York Times, 29 June. Speaking at the New York Public Library with Günter Grass, Mailer defended Grass for belatedly revealing that he had served in the Waffen-SS as a teenager. Mailer said he searched his own life to understand: “What have I held onto for so long?” He answered his own question: the stabbing of his second wife Adele in 1960. “It’s something I’ll probably never write about,” he said. See November-December 1960 entries, 07.35.