Talk:The Mailer Review/Volume 13, 2019/Interview with Susan Mailer, author of In Another Place: With and Without My Father, Norman Mailer

#1) As a practicing psychoanalyst, you have published professional papers, but this is your first creative work. Why did you decide to write a memoir? SM: In 2013 I was invited to be the keynote speaker at the Norman Mailer Society Conference. I decided to write a personal vignette that would shed light on an unknown aspect of my father's life. Immediately, I remembered those months Dad had spent in Mexico when I was a small child and had taken me to the bullfights. I hadn't thought about the corridas in more than 40 years, but the images were all there, waiting to be retrieved: the music, the atmosphere, the smell of beer and Mexican snacks, people cheering, and most of all the black bull running, panting, fighting for his life, and finally dying.

Before the Norman Mailer Conference, I had participated in psychoanalytic conferences and written papers that were published in journals. Thinking about my life and setting down on paper was a new experience. I dug into my memories, waited for my unconscious to work through the gray areas, and a piece of my life with Dad appeared. The writing flowed, and I enjoyed it. I thought I want to do more of this. And I also thought, many books have been written about Dad, but few people know what he was like as a father. I decided to plunge into unknown territory and began writing the memoir.

#2) You have spent half your life, or more, living in Mexico and Chile. Can you talk about how your bifurcated life has affected your outlook, your perspective on things, and specifically, how it influenced the writing of the memoir? SM: I've actually spent about 70% of my life in Latin America. I'm totally bilingual and feel comfortable in both cultures. I think growing up in two very different places, with two languages and cultures and with Mom in one and Dad in the other, gave me a sense of culture colors and nuances from an early age. Home was Mexico-New York, but I still had to make emotional adjustments as I moved from one place to another. In order to belong, I only spoke the language of the land. So, when I was in New York, it was English, and when in Mexico only Spanish. All of this was part of my life and I didn't question it until I got married and went to Chile at the age of 30. It was not an easy change, but on the upside, this situation gave me the opportunity to look at the United States and Mexico from a distance and think about who I was and where I belonged.

While I was writing the memoir (in English, not Spanglish as I would've liked) I thought of my life with and without my father through the prism of my multiple identities. The title, In Another Place, tells the story. I was either with my mother and without my father, or with the Mailers and without the vibrant Mexican atmosphere I loved. While I was in one place, I wanted to be in another and when I went back, I dreamed of returning. I could never have the two at the same time. This split colored my life, gave me a sense of not quite belonging and at the same time belonging everywhere.

#3) Did your professional work as an analyst affect the way you depicted your parents, and others, in the memoir? SM: I've been an analyst for almost 30 years. Everything I've read, added to years of clinical experience, was an asset while I was writing the book. It's not that I psychoanalyzed my family. Rather, I would say it was a second analysis for me. And I was going through it, of course, I had lots of new insights about my parents and our life together.

#4) During the first ten or twelve years of your life you saw your father ir-regularly; please describe how much time you spent with him up to 1960. SM: When my parents separated and my mother moved to Mexico when I was two, the arrangement was that I would spend half the year with her and the other half with Dad. What actually happened was that for at least four years, until I was about six, Dad spent three months in Mexico City and would take me back with him to New York, by car, for another three months. Those road trips were his way of strengthening our bond. When I was seven, my parents considered I was old enough to fly alone. From that moment on, I took a plane to New York at the beginning of November and left at the end of February. Sometimes Dad, Adele and I lived together, others I stayed with his mother, Grandma Fanny.

#5) Tell me about your immediate family-your husband, children, and grandchildren. SM: Marco, my husband, is Chilean born from Sephardic parents who arrived in Chile in the early 1920's from Turkey. We met in Mexico where he was exiled, during the Pinochet dictatorship. Later in 1980 we moved to Chile, in large part, to live close to his children, Max, Daniela and Ivan, who were eleven, seven and five years old at the time. Soon my first daughter, Valentina was born, followed by Alejandro and Antonia. Unlike me, our three kids were born in Santiago and grew up in the same house. Yet, I suppose the wanderlust is in their cultural DNA. Valentina lives in Valparaiso, is married and has two girls. Alejandro's wife is Colombian, they live in Cali and have two boys. Antonia has become a New Yorker. So, my gypsy life continues. All my kids are now in another place.

#6) Tell me about your relationships with your eight siblings-you are the eldest, the senior sibling. SM: Actually, I am the eldest of nine siblings. I have a brother, Salvador, born to my mother and Salvador her second husband. We grew up together until I was 18, so we have the easy familiarity that comes with living in the same house during all our childhood.

My Mailer siblings are eight. I am eight years older than Danielle, the next in line, and 28 years older than my youngest brother, John. I spent fragmented time with all of them during my childhood, adolescence and adulthood. Yet, thanks to my father's efforts, we are close as a family. Nothing to sneeze at considering we're the offspring of 6 different mothers.

My father had many faults, and too many times he wasn't the most supportive father. But, eventually, family became very important to him. Starting in the mid 60's Dad gathered his children to spend a couple of months in Provincetown. In the early 70's a month in Maine was added. I wasn't always present, but I was there enough times to feel a growing tie with all my siblings. In Maine we were thrown into communal living, had to share with the house-hold chores and only had each other for entertainment. And it was this summer month every year which bonded us as siblings. I suppose that as the oldest, some of my siblings looked up to me. But, on the other hand, I wasn't around enough in their everyday life to know them intimately. I think it wasn't until I was living in Chile, that I fully grasped how important they were to me.