The Mailer Review/Volume 13, 2019/On the State of Mailer Studies: A Conversation with J. Michael Lennon: Difference between revisions

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 And most of them are signed and inscribed to the library. That was the
 start.
+When Mailer died, Norris donated all of his library to the Norman Mailer
+Center, which had been established by Larry Schiller. Larry’s hope was to establish Norman’s library, of approximately 7,000 volumes, at a university where they would take good care of it. For years Larry tried to find a good home and he struck out. Harvard didn’t want it. The Ransom Center at University of Texas, where Mailer’s papers are located, didn’t want it. Finally, Bonnie Culver, the director of the Maslow MFA Program, and I worked with the Farley library at Wilkes, where we already had a foothold, and they were
+very interested. All of Mailer’s library will eventually be there; three quarters of it is already there. About four or five thousand volumes have been transported, waiting to be catalogued. Larry also packed up Norman’s study in Provincetown, including his desk, chair, lamp, pencils, pens, and various paraphernalia, as well as all the books, dictionaries, and thesauruses that surrounded him in his third-floor study in Provincetown. Bonnie organized the moving of these items from where they were stored in Massachusetts, got them trucked to Wilkes. Donna and I were there for a day helping. His study has now been re-established in a room in the Farley, one approximately the same size as Norman’s study in Provincetown. When you walk in you see the bookcases, the books, the desk, and photos on the wall, including the green Bellevue sign, which was Norman’s reminder of the 17 days that he spent in Bellevue Hospital in 1960 after stabbing Adele, his second wife. The Wilkes collection is a great adjunct to what is archived at the Harry Ransom Center, but it can never exceed it, because Texas has all the manuscripts. Wilkes, however, has the complete Mailer library, which one might say represents the contents of his mind.
+The Texas archive does includes Mailer’s research volumes and papers for
+several of his books, a few hundred books. Mailer also had about 1500 books
+in a writing room he had in another building in Brooklyn, all of which will
+eventually be located at Wilkes. The only life portrait ever been painted of
+Norman is now also in the Farley collection. It was painted by a fine Cape
+Cod artist, Nancy Ellen Craig, when Norman sat for her in the late 1960s. It
+is very large, four feet by four feet, approximately. Mailer’s daughter Danielle
+and her husband Peter McEachern bought and then donated the painting.
+I recently received papers associated with Mailer’s house in Brooklyn, ownership papers, remodeling papers, permission forms from the zoning boards,
+and documentation to allow them to sell the house. These also came from
+Danielle and Peter, and are going to Wilkes. So not only will we have his
+study from Provincetown, but we will also have documents related to his
+Brooklyn residence, which accumulated over the half-century he lived at 142
+Columbia Heights.
+'''PS''': That is quite a chunk of authorial history. In relation to the archival
+work that you have already mentioned, there is the forthcoming publication of his ''Lipton’s Journal'', written in 1954–55 and edited by you and Jerry
+Lucas, and Susan Mailer. What can you tell us about the gravity of ''Lipton’s
+Journal''?
+'''JML''': The manuscript is in the Ransom Center.I have the carbon copy, which
+Mailer gave me years ago. Lipton’s is a 110,000-word marijuana journal. He
+wrote it over a four-month period from the end of 1954 to the beginning of
+1955. It is a pivotal piece of work, yet it was never edited or published. He just
+wrote it and put it away. It became the clearinghouse for his mind in that period, and a stalking horse for The ''White Negro''. It also anticipates many of
+the ideas in his columns in The ''Village Voice'', the newspaper that he cofounded in 1955. Most important, it is the last remaining major piece of
+Mailer writing that has not been published (there are two very brief excerpts
+from it that appeared in small magazines back in the 1970s and 1980s). Susan
+Mailer, Norman’s eldest child, a practicing psychoanalyst, became very interested in it, because it is, among other things, Norman’s self-analysis. Once
+she read it, she recognized its importance. She and I then began editing it,
+eliminating considerable repetition, adding clarifying notes, to turn it into
+a readable document. As written, it is quite difficult to read. The repetitions
+and abbreviations are maddening. There are about 600 numbered entries,
+but they are mis-numbered and disordered. Susan and I did a preliminary
+edit and cut it down by approximately forty percent.
+Jerry Lucas is now going through the manuscript, editing it as needed.
+He will be a co-editor with Susan and me when it is ready for publication.
+Accompanying it will be Mailer’s contemporaneous correspondence with
+psychoanalyst Robert Lindner, who Mailer sent copies of many of the journal’s entries for comment. Some of Mailer’s letters to Linder, who was a close
+friend, have been published in my edition of Mailer’s letters, but not all.
+Donna located Lindner’s daughter, who also happens to be a psychoanalyst,
+and Susan got in touch with her and obtained permission to publish her father’s letters to Norman. They will be in an appendix to the journal manuscript.
+'''PS''': It’s great to hear that you are winding up the ''Lipton’s Journal''. When do you anticipate publication?
+'''JML''': I’m not sure. Much of that will be up to Jerry and his editing, after
+which Susan and I will go over it one more time. It has been held up a little
+because Susan was immersed in completing her memoir, ''In Another Place:
+My Life with and without My Father, Norman Mailer''. We would like to publish Lipton’s in Mailer’s centenary year, 2023.
+'''PS''': After a long, long time, the Library of America finally began publishing
+Norman Mailer. Why is this development so important for his stature in the
+future?
 ...