Lipton’s Journal/Correspondence of Robert Lindner and Norman Mailer/April 15, 1953: Difference between revisions

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Dear Bob,
Dear Bob,


I’ve been pushing hard into the book, mainly by an act of will, because now that I’m near the end, time just seems to drift. I guess what it comes down to is that I just don’t want to finish it because then what will I do next? The problems of the unemployed man. In a way I almost wish you hadn’t liked it so much because now I feel less drive to improve it—my feeling is pretty much one that it has good structure and just needs a new coat of paint. Telling Amussen did no harm except for the tender vanities involved over there—when I see you I’ll tell you how funny the whole thing was, because before you spoke to Ted the situation there was very complicated, and now it’s probably even more complicated. Anyway, we’ll have a laugh over it. There’s been something I’ve been meaning to write to you about for a long time, and I’ve let it rest to see if I would cool down in my feeling about the matter. But since I still feel the same enthusiasm, I guess it’s safe to broach it now. Going to that prison, Bob, was truly a central experience for me. I had the feeling that for the first time in years I’d found something which excited me basically. I believe I mentioned in passing something about doing such work to you, and I know I mentioned it to Johnnie [Lindner’s wife], but anyway, thinking about it at length, the following set-up has occurred to me. I want very much to work on some sort of interviewing level in prisons for six months say after I finish this book. Not necessarily to write a prison novel, but the feeling I have is that I’m running dry of personal experience and life experience, and that it’s time to fill the well again. (Fill the pen again!) And the women fascinated me even more than the men because I know so little about women from lower income levels. What a way to describe them! But you know what I mean. So I suggest this as something which might be of interest to you, and possibly of mutual benefit—I know it’ll be of benefit to me. That is, that I work as your assistant over at that prison on a full-week basis, possibly doing some sort of research for you that you don’t have the time to do personally but would like to see followed up. As far as pay goes, I don’t care about that particularly because I’m still relatively solvent, and I’d rather do the sort of work I want to do rather than take pay for something which interests me less. Possibly a sort of social counseling job to the girls or whatever would be feasible. I can see any number of aspects to this which are impractical or worse for you, and there probably are difficulties I don’t even know about, but I thought I would throw it out to you, and when we get together next time we can go into it at length. Also, you’ll know how you feel about it at that time.
I hope you’ll excuse this long delay, but things have been kind of up in the air. I’ve started working on the second draft of my book [''[[The Deer Park]]''], and the first month on a book (as I said this second draft is virtually a new book) is the worst kind of hell I know. If anything drives me to analysis in the near future, it’s going to be exactly that depression, ambivalence, anxiety, etc. etc. etc. which just comes upon me, predictably as a railroad schedule, whenever I start. Indeed at the moment this second draft strikes me as being conceivably a roaring error. No sooner had I gotten into it, than a whole set of ideas occurred to me on how to save the first draft, and I’m still debating whether to go back to that—hence the non-appearance of my promised manuscript in your mail. Will you be patient on that? I feel at the moment as if it would be very bad to have anyone read that first draft, for I’m so susceptible to opinion at the moment that I think a man I picked off the street to read a page of mine could depress or elate me according to his reaction. And since your reaction would be far more important to me than that, I think it best to bull through this on my own for the next few months.  


Incidentally, I met an actor named [[w:Neville Brand|Neville Brand]] who’s quite a fantastic character. He was one of the five or ten most decorated soldiers in the last war, and he’s a big oaf of a man in appearance, but with it all is surprisingly intelligent, sensitive, and articulate. On top of it all he’s been analyzed for years now and has that tender somewhat muddled surface personality that people in analysis often have. Anyway he worked in a picture called ''Riot in Cell Block 11'' which he says is the best (if not the ''first'') prison picture ever made. It’s coming out this week in New York, and I aim to see it early. Neville put in about two weeks in [[w:Folsom Prison|Folsom Prison]] before the picture, and spent something like eighty hours with a homicidal psychopath who he says was just brilliant—a cell-block leader. He talked all night about prisons, and he apparently had an experience something like mine. He said that the moment he walked into Folsom he thought to himself, “I’m home.” Brand, by the way, read all your books in boning up for the role, and would love to meet you. I took the liberty of telling him that if he’s ever in Baltimore he should look you up cause I think you’ll find him very interesting indeed. He’s the only man I ever met who’s not only a hero, but has imagination as well. We talked about [Lindner’s 1944 study] ''Rebel Without A Cause'' and he thinks [[w:Walter Wanger|Walter Wanger]] might be interested because Wanger since his four months in jail has been completely hipped on the subject of prison. If you have an agent, it might be well for him to contact Wanger, or if you wish, I could get you a Hollywood agent easily enough. I’ve been trying to remember if the ''Rebel'' screenplay belongs to you now or is still in [[w:Jerry Wald|Jerry Wald]]’s hands.
[John] Lamont<ref>A friend of NM’s.</ref> mentioned to me that you had remarked how much you had enjoyed our luncheon. Well, I did too, Bob, and I hope we can make it a regular function on your trips to New York. In fact I’m looking forward to your next appearance. There are so many things to talk about. One of the things I’d like to go into with you, are the curious psychological prerequisites for writing a novel in the first person or the third person.<ref> See Mailer’s discussion of the opportunities and hazards of both points of view in ''[[The Spooky Art]]'' (2003), 84-88.</ref> I’ve been very aware of it the last few weeks, for there have been alternate days in which I’ve written in first person, third person, and finally both, and think I have a certain small knowledge of why. 



Adele and I are having a tremendous party this Saturday, and if there’s any chance of you and Johnnie being in town, we’d love to have you. Actually, it would be a waste. I’d be greedy for your collective company and have to share the two of you with seventy others. But, still I throw this out in case you might be in town.
I read your article on the gambler with very great interest,<ref>Lindner’s classic article, “The Psychodynamics of Gambling” was published in the ''Annals of the American Academy of Political Science and Social Science'' 269 (May 1950).</ref> and I thought it a sound convincing piece of work—the necessity to both win and lose, finally to lose if sanity is to be maintained, seemed exactly right to me vis-à-vis my “friend” “Bernard.”<ref>An alias for Mailer’s father, Barney.</ref> I found that something happened in me too while I was reading. I had always felt about Bernard that it was a question of character as well as neurosis, and that there was something unpleasant about him above and beyond his gambling. While I read your monograph a fund of rare compassion for him began to form in me—I understood suddenly how terribly compulsively neurotic Bernard is, how helpless he is, and I felt more tender toward him, understanding for perhaps the first time—this may sound odd—that he is merely a sick man and not a despicable man, and that he has suffered the most. Incidentally, I never met his father, and he rarely talks about him, but his father is apparently or was like the father of Ralph, stern, cold, unfeeling, and it’s quite possible Bernard hated him. One difference, however, is that Bernard started gambling before his father’s death.  


I’ll be seeing Ted Amussen tomorrow and will be giving him your regards. Do give my warmest to Johnnie, and say hello to Marged, Jean, and the boys.
The amusing part of the article to me were the various interpretations advanced on gambling (i.e., not by you, but your patients). Psychoanalysis is so often in danger of explaining the soul by listing the features of the soul, so that I suspect on almost all the “delinquency” symptoms—homosexuality, alcoholism, gambling, dope, sex perversion, etc—the explanations are in danger of being merely big-word substitutions for the commonfolk’s little words—which indeed you practically say yourself. I remember that once after Bernard wrote me a chatty little letter in which he asked virtually in passing for several thousand bucks—it seemed that if I didn’t get it to him in forty-eight hours his bank account would explode—I flipped my lid and wrote him back that he had been masturbating all his life, and it was about time he quit. Thus my perception was equaled only by my stupidity, and as an amusing footnote to it, Bernard succeeded in punishing me by running the debt up to five thousand dollars. Also his answer to my letter was livid, the only time he has ever in my memory been abusive in a letter. Well, that for that.


::::::::::::::::::::As ever,<br />
How does your work get along? I’d love to read your manuscript if you ever feel the need or desire. As soon as I’m somewhere on this draft, I would still like you to see my first draft. Let’s get together soon.
 
:::::::::::::::::::: My best to you, Bob,<br />
:::::::::::::::::::::Norman
:::::::::::::::::::::Norman
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Revision as of 13:36, 13 September 2020

NORMAN MAILER’s Letters
To Robert Lindner
February 16, 1954


Dear Bob,

I hope you’ll excuse this long delay, but things have been kind of up in the air. I’ve started working on the second draft of my book [The Deer Park], and the first month on a book (as I said this second draft is virtually a new book) is the worst kind of hell I know. If anything drives me to analysis in the near future, it’s going to be exactly that depression, ambivalence, anxiety, etc. etc. etc. which just comes upon me, predictably as a railroad schedule, whenever I start. Indeed at the moment this second draft strikes me as being conceivably a roaring error. No sooner had I gotten into it, than a whole set of ideas occurred to me on how to save the first draft, and I’m still debating whether to go back to that—hence the non-appearance of my promised manuscript in your mail. Will you be patient on that? I feel at the moment as if it would be very bad to have anyone read that first draft, for I’m so susceptible to opinion at the moment that I think a man I picked off the street to read a page of mine could depress or elate me according to his reaction. And since your reaction would be far more important to me than that, I think it best to bull through this on my own for the next few months.

[John] Lamont[1] mentioned to me that you had remarked how much you had enjoyed our luncheon. Well, I did too, Bob, and I hope we can make it a regular function on your trips to New York. In fact I’m looking forward to your next appearance. There are so many things to talk about. One of the things I’d like to go into with you, are the curious psychological prerequisites for writing a novel in the first person or the third person.[2] I’ve been very aware of it the last few weeks, for there have been alternate days in which I’ve written in first person, third person, and finally both, and think I have a certain small knowledge of why. 


I read your article on the gambler with very great interest,[3] and I thought it a sound convincing piece of work—the necessity to both win and lose, finally to lose if sanity is to be maintained, seemed exactly right to me vis-à-vis my “friend” “Bernard.”[4] I found that something happened in me too while I was reading. I had always felt about Bernard that it was a question of character as well as neurosis, and that there was something unpleasant about him above and beyond his gambling. While I read your monograph a fund of rare compassion for him began to form in me—I understood suddenly how terribly compulsively neurotic Bernard is, how helpless he is, and I felt more tender toward him, understanding for perhaps the first time—this may sound odd—that he is merely a sick man and not a despicable man, and that he has suffered the most. Incidentally, I never met his father, and he rarely talks about him, but his father is apparently or was like the father of Ralph, stern, cold, unfeeling, and it’s quite possible Bernard hated him. One difference, however, is that Bernard started gambling before his father’s death.

The amusing part of the article to me were the various interpretations advanced on gambling (i.e., not by you, but your patients). Psychoanalysis is so often in danger of explaining the soul by listing the features of the soul, so that I suspect on almost all the “delinquency” symptoms—homosexuality, alcoholism, gambling, dope, sex perversion, etc—the explanations are in danger of being merely big-word substitutions for the commonfolk’s little words—which indeed you practically say yourself. I remember that once after Bernard wrote me a chatty little letter in which he asked virtually in passing for several thousand bucks—it seemed that if I didn’t get it to him in forty-eight hours his bank account would explode—I flipped my lid and wrote him back that he had been masturbating all his life, and it was about time he quit. Thus my perception was equaled only by my stupidity, and as an amusing footnote to it, Bernard succeeded in punishing me by running the debt up to five thousand dollars. Also his answer to my letter was livid, the only time he has ever in my memory been abusive in a letter. Well, that for that.

How does your work get along? I’d love to read your manuscript if you ever feel the need or desire. As soon as I’m somewhere on this draft, I would still like you to see my first draft. Let’s get together soon.

My best to you, Bob,
Norman


notes

  1. ↑ A friend of NM’s.
  2. ↑ See Mailer’s discussion of the opportunities and hazards of both points of view in The Spooky Art (2003), 84-88.
  3. ↑ Lindner’s classic article, “The Psychodynamics of Gambling” was published in the Annals of the American Academy of Political Science and Social Science 269 (May 1950).
  4. ↑ An alias for Mailer’s father, Barney.
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