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The Mailer Review/Volume 3, 2009/It Takes a Thief to Know a Thief: Biographies of Norman Mailer: Difference between revisions
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While I approached the other Mailer biographies with a sense of curiosity, wondering how the story of Mailer would act on Martinson the reader, I approached the third biography, Carl Rollyson’s ''The Lives of Norman Mailer'' (1991) with an attitude: I was the enemy. I had admired his thorough research in his Hellman biography, but despaired when I found no woman at its center. I assumed, then, that Rollyson had also written derivative, uninspiring facts that lead to little understanding of Mailer and his works. The Mailer photograph on the cover, a crabby fifty-something Norman, heightened my vindictive sense that Rollyson would treat Mailer as a cliché. Since he had written a scathing review about my own Hellman biography, I sharpened my knives, hardly the objective reader. After reading Rollyson’s biography of Mailer, however, I courageously, even valiantly, admit that I was mostly wrong; the book has its flaws, but in some ways it surpasses the other biographies in important ways. And it nearly kills me to admit it. | While I approached the other Mailer biographies with a sense of curiosity, wondering how the story of Mailer would act on Martinson the reader, I approached the third biography, Carl Rollyson’s ''The Lives of Norman Mailer'' (1991) with an attitude: I was the enemy. I had admired his thorough research in his Hellman biography, but despaired when I found no woman at its center. I assumed, then, that Rollyson had also written derivative, uninspiring facts that lead to little understanding of Mailer and his works. The Mailer photograph on the cover, a crabby fifty-something Norman, heightened my vindictive sense that Rollyson would treat Mailer as a cliché. Since he had written a scathing review about my own Hellman biography, I sharpened my knives, hardly the objective reader. After reading Rollyson’s biography of Mailer, however, I courageously, even valiantly, admit that I was mostly wrong; the book has its flaws, but in some ways it surpasses the other biographies in important ways. And it nearly kills me to admit it. | ||
Before finding the stomach to actually praise Rollyson—and I will have to—I will attend to the reservations I have about the book. Critics have noted that the book is derivative. And that is certainly true. Rollyson himself admits it in his Afterword: “a very different biography could be written, almost carved out of Mills’s and Manso’s labors . . . [to] take a much closer look at Mailer’s writing than they had, and conduct additional interviews.”{{sfn|Rollyson|1991|p=370}} Any biographer writing the third major biography of a public figure will rely partially on previous work. Rollyson openly does so—with correct citation. And he endeavors to dig for new material, adding new interviews, but none from Mailer (who declined) and none from other close friends or family members. He, for example, interviews Mailer Harvard friends, John Aldridge, William Styron, Norman Rosten—and others knowledgeable but peripheral to Mailer’s life. Rollyson perhaps accepts too readily their view of events in order to give a new sense of Mailer, to write with a different spin. | |||
More importantly, Rollyson seems not to understand the central Mailer. Rollyson, better than the other biographers, provides a clear and compelling narrative sequence of Norman Mailer’s life. But in depicting Mailer as having “lives,” a cohesive Mailer eludes him. Rollyson’s insistence that Mailer is a man of self-invention, is, of course, true of nearly everyone.The evidence he cites throughout the book of Mailer’s slipping into his “accents,” whether black-hip, Brooklyn or Texan does bolster Rollyson’s claim. And it must be said, an occasional comparing of Mailer to nearly everyone he wrote about makes for some interesting, insightful if reductive Mailer analysis. Rollyson suggests, for example, that O’Shaughnessy of ''The Deer Park'' represents Mailer when he says, “I was never sure of myself. I never felt as if I came from any particular place, or that I was like other people.”{{sfn|Rollyson|1991|p=93}} Less convincing are Rollyson’s full blown Mailer identity swaps. Rollyson has a point in comparing Mailer with Mohammed Ali: “both aging champs with self-reflexive styles designed to triumph over their faults and weaknesses.”{{sfn|Rollyson|1991|p=269}} But Rollyson’s suggestion, for example, that Mailer and Marilyn Monroe share identity characteristics is less convincing, as when he suggests that Mailer wrote about Marilyn Monroe “to respond to the qualities in her that he found in himself . . . so Monroe paints herself into the camera lens as an instrument of her own will.”{{sfn|Rollyson|1991|p=254}} In insisting on Mailer’s self-inventions, Rollyson misses finding the man the reader can love and hate and feel chagrin and victory for, a man alive in the muck of our society, and writing his way through it. Rollyson’s depiction of the multiplicity of Mailer identities is interesting, but Mailer is more than the sum of his parts. | |||
While Rollyson does not find the essential Mailer, Rollyson’s narrative line is strong throughout, and his choice of anecdote is also perspicacious. He surprised me in his ability to tell a good story, using just the right bits to make Mailer and his circumstances come alive. Not one of the other biographers, for example, depicted better Mailer’s life with Lady Jeanne who could “do the twist with great abandon and accommodate the meanest and wildest of his companions.”{{sfn|Rollyson|1991|p=145}} Mailer’s comment that if had stayed with her he might have become “Mr. Lady Jeanne” perfectly captures Mailer in the moment. Mailer’s life with Adele was told with subtlety: “Adele had neither the desire nor the power to check Norman’s excesses.”{{sfn|Rollyson|1991|p=93}} Relationships seem more real than Mills’ scandal-centered telling. Rollyson doesn’t make any apologies for Mailer’s more egregious actions. When explaining Mailer’s psychic break, Rollyson understood the man enough to avoid assuming that Mailer somehow stabbed Adele in pure experiment—though Rollyson quotes critics who do. Rollyson avoids hype, letting the action and the work or Mailer himself speak. This is particularly evident in Rollyson’s analysis of the events—and the texts—of ''Deaths for the Ladies (and Other Disasters)'', noting that Mailer worked for a narrative voice that “openly addressed this nexus between violence and individuality.”{{sfn|Rollyson|1991|p=143}} Rollyson makes no apology for disparaging Mailer’s “wacky” medical ideas: his regret at his daughter Maggie’s inoculation against diphtheria because it would enter her into the {{" '}}technological chain of being{{' "}};{{sfn|Rollyson|1991|p=238}} his theory that cancer is America’s concession to its own cowardice; his feeling that birth control is technological and theological anti-life. Rollyson presents Mailer’s eccentricities without hype or understanding, but integrates better than the other biographers Mailer the father into the narrative in ways that show the love and care Mailer gave to his children, always a stable patriarch. | |||
What Rollyson does best, and what turned me from an enemy combatant to a respectful fellow-biographer, making good on his labeling the book a “literary biography.” His thoughtful tales of the vicissitudes of Mailer’s writing life give the reader—even an enemy reader—a greater sense of the writing professional that is consummate Mailer. Rollyson takes even Mailer’s very early Harvard undergraduate works seriously, analyzing the strengths and weaknesses of the texts, looking at their seminal nature: “The Greatest Thing in the World,” “Maybe Next Year,” “No Percentage,” “A Calculus at Heaven,” ''A Transit to Narcissus''. In writing “A Calculus at Heaven,” for example, Rollyson notes that Mailer “found in the subject of war the crucible of his conviction as a novelist. In order to know what he really believed, he had to know what was worth dying for.”{{sfn|Rollyson|1991|p=28}} In Rollyson’s analyses of “The White Negro” and ''Advertisements for Myself'', he integrates Mailer, his philosophy, and his literary intent into the texts. Rollyson manages to look at the texts themselves, to see what is there. In Advertisements, for example, Rollyson writes “in a word, Mailer becomes his own critic/promoter, combing the seemingly contrary functions of creation and criticism.”{{sfn|Rollyson|1991|p=117}} Then he begins the detailed analysis of the work. I was most impressed with Rollyson’s reflective and thoughtful analysis of ''An American Dream'', as he connects the literature to its author. Devoting a full twenty pages to the novel, Rollyson strives for insight, using what he knows of Mailer, literary criticism, and chunks of the book itself to address its complexity. Perhaps other critics deliver more provocative readings, or more innovative interpretations, but Rollyson writes sound literary criticism and has a respectful, intellectual sense of Mailer’s work. | |||
Rollyson evokes Mailer’s range as a writer as no other biographer did. If his retelling of Mailer’s involvement in The March on the Pentagon pales beside Mills’ and Manso’s lively accounts (and it does), his analysis of ''The Armies of the Night'' itself is first rate. A key assertion about part two of the novel is a telling example: | |||
{{quote|‘The Novel as History’ is indispensable, for Mailer is able to display his authority by assessing other sources, probing both their strengths and limitations, demonstrating an impartiality in his scrutiny of both the leftist and the establishment press. Thus Mailer achieves an objective historical voice that complements his third-person treatment of himself in the first part.{{sfn|Rollyson|1991|p=204}} }} | |||
This isn’t brilliant analysis, but it is sound and analytical. He goes on to suggest that ''Armies'' and ''The Naked and the Dead'' are “maps . . . metaphors . . . of campaigns and of armies moved by great conflicting forces of history.”{{sfn|Rollyson|1991|p=204}} Because he is a biographer as well as a critic, Rollyson is especially interesting in Mailer’s relationship to Marilyn Monroe and his writing of her biography. Rollyson’s Chapter 10: “Marilyn (1972–1973)” not only supplies a strong link in his narrative line, but reflectively looks at Mailer the man, writer, friend—focusing on Mailer’s complicated relationship to his biographical subject, Marilyn, and her husband Arthur Miller. Rollyson seriously looks at Mailer’s method and purpose in ''Marilyn'', a work often dismissed or overlooked by both biographers and critics. Quoting Monroe’s last interview, {{" '}}You’re always running into peoples’ unconscious,{{' "}} Rollyson suggests that “This is, in fact, Mailer’s point. . . . Anyone who has read Monroe’s last interview and carefully studied her movies realizes that Mailer is on very solid ground indeed”{{sfn|Rollyson|1991|p=256}} To further emphasize Mailer’s insight, Rollyson next regales the reader with the events and textual explorations of ''The Fight'' (1975) bringing Mailer the man to Mailer the writer in an exemplary way. As Rollyson says, ''The Fight'' “contains all of the virtues and none of the vices of his best work. As in ''Miami and the Siege of Chicago'', there is his superb traveler’s evocation of environment.”{{sfn|Rollyson|1991|p=264}} In retelling Mailer’s journey in ''The Executioner’s Song'' (1979), he notes that Mailer “found he could not explain Gilmore and that it was ‘more interesting not to.’ Guided by the words of the witnesses, he used ‘very little invention.{{' "}}{{sfn|Rollyson|1991|p=286}} Rollyson’s subsequent analysis shows insight into the book and the writer. Rollyson delivers sharp critique through the entire Mailer canon (up to 1990), although he does give shorter shrift to Mailer’s later work. | |||
While I am unable to give Rollyson’s ''The Lives of Norman Mailer'' a rave review, it is the biography I would recommend to the person wanting an overview of Mailer and his work; it is sound, fair, and readable. If I cannot give high marks for original material or startling insight, I can honor him for taking Mailer seriously on his own merits, and for endeavoring to give life to the man through his writing. Rollyson respected Mailer and his work and it shows. He writes, “Mailer, of all writers, has made his personality an issue, and his impact upon me has been profound—often dictating my choice of subjects and my approach to biography.”{{sfn|Rollyson|1991|p=370}} The approach of Mary V. Dearborn in ''Mailer: A Biography'' (1999) that followed Rollyson’s, had a different edge, often more brilliant, but not as evenhanded. She wrote a biography where Mailer “struts like a Balzacian demigod, a harlot of high and low.”{{Sfn|Birkerts|1999|p=80}} | |||
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===Works Cited=== | ===Works Cited=== | ||
{{refbegin|30em|indent=yes}} | {{refbegin|30em|indent=yes}} | ||
* {{cite magazine |last= | * {{cite magazine |last=Birkerts |first=Sven |title=Mailer's Head |magazine=Esquire |pages=80–81 |date=November 1999 |ref=harv }} Rev. of ''Mailer: A Biography'', by Mary Dearborn. | ||
* {{cite news |last=Blades |first=John |date={{date|1983-03-06|mdy}} |title=Norman Mailer Buried in Deluge of Literary Biographies |url= |work=Chicago Tribune |location=sec. 7 |page=2 |access-date= |ref=harv }} Rev. of ''Mailer: A Biography'', by Hilary Mills. | * {{cite news |last=Blades |first=John |date={{date|1983-03-06|mdy}} |title=Norman Mailer Buried in Deluge of Literary Biographies |url= |work=Chicago Tribune |location=sec. 7 |page=2 |access-date= |ref=harv }} Rev. of ''Mailer: A Biography'', by Hilary Mills. | ||
* {{cite magazine |last=Burgess |first=Anthony |title=The Prisoner of Fame |magazine=The Atlantic |volume=255 |pages=100–104 |date=1985 |ref=harv }} Rev. of ''Mailer: His Life and Times'', by Peter Manso. | * {{cite magazine |last=Burgess |first=Anthony |title=The Prisoner of Fame |magazine=The Atlantic |volume=255 |pages=100–104 |date=1985 |ref=harv }} Rev. of ''Mailer: His Life and Times'', by Peter Manso. | ||
* {{cite interview |last=Busa |first=Christopher |subject-link= |interviewer= |title=Personal Interview |work= |date=October 17, 2008 |publisher= |location= |url= |access-date= |ref=harv}} | * {{cite interview |last=Busa |first=Christopher |subject-link= |interviewer= |title=Personal Interview |work= |date=October 17, 2008 |publisher= |location= |url= |access-date= |ref=harv}} | ||
* {{cite magazine |last=Carson |first=Tom |title=The Time of his Prime Time: Mailer's Greatest Hits. |magazine=Village Voice Literary Supplement |page=10 |date=February 1983 |ref=harv }} Rev. of ''Mailer: A Biography'', by Hilary Mills. | * {{cite magazine |last=Carson |first=Tom |title=The Time of his Prime Time: Mailer's Greatest Hits. |magazine=Village Voice Literary Supplement |page=10 |date=February 1983 |ref=harv }} Rev. of ''Mailer: A Biography'', by Hilary Mills. | ||
* {{cite magazine |last=Crain |first=Caleb |title=Stormin' Norman |journal=New York Times Review of Books |page=7 |date=December 19, 1999 |ref=harv }} Rev. of ''Mailer: A Biography'', by Mary Dearborn. | * {{cite magazine |last=Crain |first=Caleb |title=Stormin' Norman |journal=New York Times Review of Books |page=7 |date=December 19, 1999 |url=https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/books/99/12/19/reviews/991219.19craint.html |access-date={{date|2021-07-02|ISO}} |ref=harv }} Rev. of ''Mailer: A Biography'', by Mary Dearborn. | ||
* {{cite book |last=Dearborn |first=Mary |date=1999 |title=Mailer: A Biography |location=Boston |publisher=Houghton Mifflin |ref=harv }} | * {{cite book |last=Dearborn |first=Mary |date=1999 |title=Mailer: A Biography |location=Boston |publisher=Houghton Mifflin |ref=harv }} | ||
* {{cite news |last=Goldsmith |first=Barbara |date=May 19, 1985 |title=Lion in a Kaleidoscope |url= |work=New York Times |location=sec. 7 |page=9 |access-date= |ref=harv }} Rev. of ''Mailer: His Life and Times'', by Peter Manso. | * {{cite news |last=Goldsmith |first=Barbara |date=May 19, 1985 |title=Lion in a Kaleidoscope |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1985/05/19/books/lion-in-a-kaleidoscope.html |work=New York Times |location=sec. 7 |page=9 |access-date={{date|2021-07-02|ISO}} |ref=harv }} Rev. of ''Mailer: His Life and Times'', by Peter Manso. | ||
* {{cite magazine |last=Hardwick |first=Elizabeth |title=The Teller and the Tape |magazine=The New York Review of Books |date=May 30, 1985 |page=3 |ref=harv }} Rev. of ''Mailer: His Life and Times'', by Peter Manso. | * {{cite magazine |last=Hardwick |first=Elizabeth |title=The Teller and the Tape |magazine=The New York Review of Books |date=May 30, 1985 |page=3 |ref=harv }} Rev. of ''Mailer: His Life and Times'', by Peter Manso. | ||
* {{cite magazine |last=Johnson |first=Diane |title=A Moveable Roast |magazine=Vogue |pages=147–148 |date=June 1985 |ref=harv }} Rev. of ''Mailer: His Life and Times'', by Peter Manso. | * {{cite magazine |last=Johnson |first=Diane |title=A Moveable Roast |magazine=Vogue |pages=147–148 |date=June 1985 |ref=harv }} Rev. of ''Mailer: His Life and Times'', by Peter Manso. | ||
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* {{cite news |last=Lauerman |first=Connie |date=December 20, 1982 |title=Norman Mailer: A Life that Reads Like a Bad Novel |url= |work=Chicago Tribune |location=sec. 5 |pages=1+ |access-date= |ref=harv }} Rev. of ''Mailer: A Biography'', by Hilary Mills. | * {{cite news |last=Lauerman |first=Connie |date=December 20, 1982 |title=Norman Mailer: A Life that Reads Like a Bad Novel |url= |work=Chicago Tribune |location=sec. 5 |pages=1+ |access-date= |ref=harv }} Rev. of ''Mailer: A Biography'', by Hilary Mills. | ||
* {{cite letter |last=Lennon |first=J. Michael |recipient=the author |subject=Email to the author |location= |publisher= |date=September 9, 2008 |url= |access-date= |author-mask= |ref=harv }} | * {{cite letter |last=Lennon |first=J. Michael |recipient=the author |subject=Email to the author |location= |publisher= |date=September 9, 2008 |url= |access-date= |author-mask= |ref=harv }} | ||
* {{cite news |last=Lehmann-Haupt |first=Christopher |date=May 13, 1985 |title=Books of the Times |url= |work=New York Times |location=sec. C |page=20 |access-date= |ref=harv }} Rev. of ''Mailer: His Life and Times'', by Peter Manso. | * {{cite news |last=Lehmann-Haupt |first=Christopher |date=May 13, 1985 |title=Books of the Times |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1985/05/13/books/books-of-the-times-047317.html |work=New York Times |location=sec. C |page=20 |access-date={{date|2021-07-02|ISO}} |ref=harv }} Rev. of ''Mailer: His Life and Times'', by Peter Manso. | ||
* {{cite book |last=Malcolm |first=Janet |date=1995 |title=The Silent Woman: Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes |location=New York |publisher=Vintage |ref=harv }} | * {{cite book |last=Malcolm |first=Janet |date=1995 |title=The Silent Woman: Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes |location=New York |publisher=Vintage |ref=harv }} | ||
* {{cite news |last=Mailer |first=Norman |date=January 9, 2000 |title=Just the Factoids |url= |work=New York Times Book Review |location= |page=4 |access-date= |ref=harv }} | * {{cite news |last=Mailer |first=Norman |date=January 9, 2000 |title=Just the Factoids |url=https://www.nytimes.com/2000/01/09/books/l-just-the-factoids-152170.html |work=New York Times Book Review |location= |page=4 |access-date={{date|2021-07-02|ISO}} |ref=harv }} | ||
* {{cite letter |last=Mailer |first=Norman |author-mask=1 |recipient=Bruce Dexter |subject=Personal Correspondence (PC) |type=TS |location=Norman Mailer Archive |publisher=Harry Ransom Center, The University of Texas at Austin |date=June 13, 1985 |url= |access-date= |ref=harv }} | * {{cite letter |last=Mailer |first=Norman |author-mask=1 |recipient=Bruce Dexter |subject=Personal Correspondence (PC) |type=TS |location=Norman Mailer Archive |publisher=Harry Ransom Center, The University of Texas at Austin |date=June 13, 1985 |url= |access-date= |ref=harv }} | ||
* {{cite letter |last=Mailer |first=Norman |author-mask=1 |recipient=the Editor |work=Provincetown Banner |subject=To the Editor |location=Norman Mailer Archive |publisher=Harry Ransom Center, The University of Texas at Austin. |date=May 13, 2002 |url= |access-date= |ref=harv }} | * {{cite letter |last=Mailer |first=Norman |author-mask=1 |recipient=the Editor |work=Provincetown Banner |subject=To the Editor |location=Norman Mailer Archive |publisher=Harry Ransom Center, The University of Texas at Austin. |date=May 13, 2002 |url= |access-date= |ref=harv }} | ||