Lipton’s Journal/Correspondence of Robert Lindner and Norman Mailer/February 26, 1954
| NORMAN MAILER’s Letters |
- To Robert Lindner
- February 26, 1954
Dear Bob,
I’m answering this immediately because I’m going away skiing from March 5 to about March 16, and I’d like to get an answer from you before then. The first thing is your mention of coming into New York sometime in the “next three weeks,” and I write this to ask you if it’s possible to make it after the sixteenth because Adele[1] and I would love to give a party for Johnnie[2] and you, and also have you as our guests if you don’t mind our place. (I mention the place because as I may have told you it’s situated in a slum, and the building itself is a tenement. In our apartment it’s rather pleasant—although a little deficient on privacy since the rooms are partially partitioned rather than separated by walls—but there are beds for you and it’s really nice. However, a great many of our friends are kind of appalled by the neighborhood, and it may be that Johnnie or you might be also—sans façons as Don Beda[3] says—What I’m trying to say is that honest and clean I’m not trying to discourage you from staying with us because I would love that, and on the other hand am also trying to say that I will not be offended if you would prefer something a little less extraordinary. But, anyway, staying with us or not as you choose, could you make it for after the sixteenth?
The other thing I’d like an answer on is your warning that “a new coat is not sufficient.” I’ve been going over the prose of the book with a really fine comb, and that makes a big cumulative difference. Also, I’ve added a few little bits. But I take it that the criticism you have is more one of lacks in The Deer Park than of excesses. So far as I can list them, the things you felt should be improved were (apart from the beginning on which I intend to do work) a larger role for Dorothea and more resolution of her action; the presence of Pellito as the “stereotype of evil,” fixing the orgy, and improving Sergius’ character.[4]
I agree with all those criticisms you have, but up to now with the exception of orgy which has to be redone and the last two chapters (I read it over again today), I just don’t have any ideas on how to improve, enrich, and just generally spark up the things we talked about in the above paragraph. But what I also felt in your letter is that there are many other criticisms which you felt and did not have time to express when we [were] running to the train. And if they are definite in your mind, Bob, I would appreciate your telling them to me no matter how discouraging I may find them. It may be that I need a little shock to generate my imagination, but whether that be so or not, and even possible or not, I have the feeling on the book that while on the whole it’s very good there is something missing in it which keeps it from having real stature. This could come of course from the boredom and patience and depression of going over the thing sentence by sentence, but I did sense a somewhat similar feeling in your last letter, and if you feel explicit about it, I’ll appreciate what you have to say no matter how severe.
Neville Brand[5] is out of town now, but he ought to [be] back sometime in the month, and we plan to get together. I’ll be only too happy to sic him on to Rebel. What I feel may be worth considering is to have him read the screen-play. He’s extremely intelligent for an actor as I’ve said, knows a lot about prisons as a layman, knows a lot about analysis, having been analyzed these many years, and so if he liked your script as I’m certain he would, he would be anxious to get Wanger to do it, possibly with the idea of him playing the part. (Although he’s very big and brawny, perhaps too much so.) I saw Riot in Cell Block 11 the other day, and it is really good, Bob, amazingly good. One cannot call it great because there is finally not enough penetration into character, but I had the feeling it was one of the most honest movies ever made, almost completely without sentimentality, and its emotion impact I found enormous. Make sure to see it from the beginning for it’s a picture which builds all the way. If you want Neville to read the screenplay, should I tell him to call up Ivan Von Auw,[6] or for that matter I can do it myself. But let me know.
I have an article coming out in the next Dissent[7] which ought to get things cooking a bit on the magazine. Did you get a copy of the first issue? [ . . . ]
- My love to you and Johnnie,
- Norm
- My love to you and Johnnie,
notes
- ↑ Adele Morales (1925 – 2015), who he married in April 1954, was Mailer’s second wife. The mother of his daughters Danielle (b. 1957), and Elizabeth Anne (b. 1959), she separated from Mailer in early 1961 a few months after he stabbed her with a penknife, just missing her heart. He pled guilty to felonious assault and was given a suspended sentence. They divorced in 1962.
- ↑ Johnnie Lindner, Robert Lidner’s wife, who Mailer described as "a sort of pepper pot blonde, pepper pot fire . . . full of strong feelings, full of love, full of lust, full of fire, full of the inability to pardon.”
- ↑ Character in The Deer Park who organizes and participates in orgies.
- ↑ Sergius O’Shaughnessey is the narrator of The Deer Park; Dorothy and Pellito are minor characters.
- ↑ A WWII war hero, Brand (1920-92), made a score of films and television programs.
- ↑ Literary agent (1903-91) at the Harold Ober Agency who represented Lindner.
- ↑ “David Riesman Reconsidered,” a review of Riesman’s Individualism Reconsidered (1954), appeared in the autumn 1954 issue of Dissent; rpt. in Advertisements for Myself.
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