The Mailer Review/Volume 1, 2007/Boston State Hospital: The Summer of 1942: Difference between revisions

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{{byline|last=Lucid|first=Robert F.|note=The following excerpt comes from the manuscript of the late Robert F. Lucid’s incomplete authorized biography of Norman Mailer. He died in December of 2006 before he could complete it. The editors are grateful to his son, John Michael Lucid, for granting permission to ''The Mailer Review'' to publish this excerpt. It is taken from chapter 2 of the manuscript, which deals with Mailer’s brief but memorable experience at the Boston State Hospital in the summer between his junior and senior years at Harvard. The title was provided by the editors.|url=https://prmlr.us/mr07luci}}

Norman’s experience at the hospital made an enormous impression upon him, as subsequent events would reveal, but for the moment he had little time to think about it. He moved into a one-room Boston apartment at 4 Otis Place, which he shared with Woolf and another writer-friend, and began canvassing the town for a job. Having been turned down by the personnel offices at Harvard University, the Boston Navy Yard, and every newspaper in town, he finally was hired by the C. F. Hovey Company, a department store, as a counter-attendant in its large soda fountain: 10:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m., Monday through Friday, $18.00 a week and free meals. “Did a full day’s work today,” he reported on June 23, “and found it rather pleasant. Much better than the insane asylum.”

Predictably, Norman didn’t stay long in the soda fountain. Less than two weeks after starting it he quit and went to work for “board” but no salary as a press agent for the Joy Street Playhouse. He wrote home enthusiastically:

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