Lipton’s Journal/Correspondence of Robert Lindner and Norman Mailer/June 12, 1954

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NORMAN MAILER’s Letters
To Robert Lindner
June 12, 1954

Dear Bob,

The trip to Mexico keeps getting put off. I’ve just finished typing my book today after thirteen consecutive days of work—about twice as long as I thought it would take—and then next week is going to be full of the old ripperoo with Stan [Rinehart], so that if all goes well we’ll take off either before or directly after next weekend. And when we get to Mexico I’ll write you again. If something comes up where you want to send me a line, send it care of Beatrice [Silverman] Sanchez,[1] Eligio Ancona 85-12, Mexico D.F. Actually I don’t think we’ll be there before the second or third of July.

Amigo, I’m afraid we’re a couple of alta kakes.[2] (Lippy and Liver). Actually I appreciated your scouting around to find out about my condition which is not bad as you say, and I’ve been dieting very carefully, amazing myself with my capacity to stay off alcohol, sugar, bread, etc. All the things I love so much. I guess the idea of “severity” can be carried over to other things. I winced as you described the lip symptoms. How unpleasant that must be. You know, Bob, part of your depression—obviously large parts [ — ] are the cigarettes, and the aftermath of forty stuff (my after-thirty jag carried on for months), but I wonder if a big part isn’t the author’s equivalent of post-natal depression. I know that every time I’ve finished a novel I’ve been in a state of purposelessness and vague anger and irritability for quite a while afterward. Sometimes it takes a few months to set in, sometimes not, but it’s quite possible that a writer feels unconsciously that his works are his children—I remember you telling me that there’s embryo envy or impregnation envy or something of the sort in the male psyche, and since it takes a man with a big load of the feminine in his nature to be a serious writer, perhaps the depression has to do with some recognition that the literary foetus is finally literary and not a foetus. I don’t know, but since these games are fun, note carefully: swelling of the lip (lip equal to vulva) (vulva terminus of womb) ergo you are still carrying the symbolic pregnancy you hate to relinquish. Forgive me for the above but it was such fun I had to go through with it. Do present it to Arthur Mandey[3] as my latest “contribution” to psychoanalysis. I’m certain it’ll get him agitated enough to chew up an extra box of Dexamyls.

Congratulations on the [Max] Lerner. Despite my mild antipathy to Lerner I’m genuinely glad he gave you a good preface, and as a matter of fact I like him a little better for it.

The problem of the ORGY.[4] Ugh! I ended up cutting the orgy to the bone so that all that remains is a sort of vague idea of what’s going on. And if necessary I’ll cut it completely. The reason for cutting it completely is that the chapter will actually be improved because of the sense of what happened at the orgy will come through in the subsequent Eitel-Elena dialogue, and as a matter of fact it will seem even more evocative and orgiastic that way. I’d do it before submitting to Stan except that if I do, he’s going to demand other cuts, and I need something for bargaining. You’re quite right that I feel the orgy is a failure, but Bob I’ve shot my wad on it—I cannot make it better, I even hate writing the Goddamn thing, and there are times when every author has to recognize that certain things in his book have to remain infirm because he lacks the talent or imagination to up them. Your suggestion that I write the orgy in full I just can’t follow. I don’t even know if you’re right in the abstract, but in the concrete it’s equivalent to having the book either 1) unpublishable or 2) banned upon publication. Now if I had set out to write a book which would be privately printed, that would be something else. The entire book would have been different, in style, conception, everything, and if I’d been a braver bigger writer possibly I would first have conceived it that way. Except I’m not quite sure because finally The Deer Park is about morality[5] and what is love, what is sex, etc. rather than what is fucking. And therefore to stick in one chapter on an orgy which is written to the hilt would be out of line with the rest of the book. I’ve got a strong sense of when I chicken out, and I really don’t feel Bob that I’m compromising here. The book is going to be hated, reviled, stomped on, etc, I believe, because it’s a disturbing book as I wanted it to be, and the orgy is more a function of the plot than a part of the essential meaning. Don’t worry about my compromising with Stan. I’m prepared to walk out of Rinehart if he doesn’t see the light, because although having Ted in my corner is fine, I believe there are better houses for me. This of course is confidential, vieux Lippé.[6]

I don’t know if I follow you on the business of my drinking. Since I’ve been without it at a couple of parties I’ve noticed that my anxiety is if anything greater, and that I feel very withdrawn from people. You’re quite right that a part of me disconnects when I get drunk, but another part connects, so that often I act drunk the way I would like to act sober. Sometimes emotions like love are much easier for me to feel strongly when I’m strong—sometimes of course vast detachment, but as you say this is more to talk over that to write about.

Re: Stan, there’s something very peculiar going on in him. I even have a hunch that in some cockeyed way he sees my portrait of Teppis as a portrait of him, and this hurts all the benevolent pater paternalism on which Stan runs his business, his house, and his heart. He keeps claiming the book will be banned because of the Teppis scene which I think is a little alarmist, but anyway that I’m not going to take out. Even before Stan saw it, I took the descriptive edges off it so that the reader will have no more than a sense that something perverted happened, but whether it was fellatio, urinatio, coming in the pants, or just twitching will be left to the readers own predilections and antipathies which I think is artistically more valid because the essential relation of Teppis to his “love” objects has not been obscured at all, and as Cy[7] said “Why set cock-sucking back ten years?” by which he meant that the connotation of the scene made fellatio the villain rather than Teppis. Anyway, Stan saw the revised version, still hates it, and next week the battle of the blow-hards starts. My guess is that I will gain my points and stay at Rinehart. If you don’t hear from me until I get to Mexico that will be the case. If something more dramatic or final occurs I’ll drop you a line.

There’s a small chance we’ll see you and Johnnie[8] this summer, Bob. If Mexico hits us badly, and if Bea is real bitchy to Adele[9] we may not stay as many months as we planned, but this is all speculation now. Adele is in fine shape albeit a little depressed by her twenty-ninth birthday, today, and sends her love along with mine to you and Johnnie and the kids.

We miss all of you too, hermano.

Love
Norman



notes

  1. ↑ Beatrice Silverman (1922 – 2016) was Mailer’s first wife. They met when she was a student at Boston University and he was at Harvard. They married in 1944 and their only child Susan, was born in 1949. After their divorce in January 1952, Silverman moved to Mexico, married Steve Chavez, and became an M.D. psychiatrist.
  2. ↑ I.e., old farts.
  3. ↑ Unknown.
  4. ↑ There are indirect references in the closing chapters of The Deer Park to the orgies Esposito takes part in with Eitel, Don Beda and his wife Zenelia. Marion Faye also becomes involved after Esposito leaves Eitel and moves in with him.
  5. ↑ Critical opinion has come around to the position that The Deer Park is not pornographic, and that Mailer was “a passionate moralist,” as Brendan Gill put it is his New Yorker review (October 22, 1955). Malcolm Cowley, in his review (New York Herald Tribune Book Review, October 23, 1955), said the novel “is a serious and recklessly honest book about art.” Later criticism of the novel has focused on the weakness of the narrator, Sergius O’Shaugnessey, and the shifting point of view.
  6. ↑ Old lip.
  7. ↑ Mailer’s lawyer, agent and first cousin, Charles Rembar (1915-2000) was involved in several major First Amendment trials, including the one that resulted in the American publication of D. H. Lawrence’s novel, Lady Chatterley’s Lover.
  8. ↑ 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.”
  9. ↑ 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.
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