The Mailer Review/Volume 3, 2009/Long Legs, the American Tolstoy, Oswald and the KGB: A Conversation with Lawrence Schiller: Difference between revisions

{{Byline|last=Lennon|first=J. Michael|abstract=[[Norman Mailer]]’s authorized biographer explores the complex background and circumstances of ''[[Oswald’s Tale]]'' with [[Lawrence Schiller]], who accompanied Mailer to Russia on several occasions. The discussion covers the entire project, from Schiller’s earlier Russian contacts made during the filming of his 1986 NBC mini-series, ''Peter the Great'', through the complicated and exhausting negotiations with the KGB, the interviews Mailer and Schiller had with Marina Oswald after they returned, and ending with an assessment of the final work and its place in Mailer’s literary legacy.|url=https://prmlr.us/mr09lenn}}

The editor of ''{{MR}}'' asked me to continue the series of conversations begun with Lawrence Schiller on his literary collaboration with Mailer, which extended over three decades. Schiller’s conversation with Jeffrey Severs focused on ''[[The Executioner's Song|The Executioner’s Song]]'' (1979) — from conception to the Emmy-winning television mini-series (1982). My assignment was to interview Schiller concerning his foundational work on ''Oswald’s Tale'' (1995), with a focus on the successful effort to obtain access to the long-sealed KGB records of Lee Harvey Oswald’s time in Moscow and Minsk. Schiller graciously agreed to discuss the project and we met twice, once at his home in Woodland Hills California on September 18, 2008, and on June 7, 2009 at the Mailer home in Provincetown, now the headquarters of The Mailer Writers Colony. Our discussion ranged over the entire project, from Schiller’s earlier Russian contacts made during the filming of his 1986 NBC mini-series, Peter the Great, through the complicated and exhausting negotiations with the KGB, the interviews Mailer and Schiller had with Marina Oswald after they returned, and ending with an assessment of the final work and its place in Mailer’s literary legacy. Schiller and I tightened and organized the transcript of our talks, adding and correcting details but the final version, which follows, is generally faithful to the original conversations.

In 1989, I decided to make a third film on Chernobyl, with a screenplay based partly on Frederick Pohl’s book [''Chernobyl'', 1987], which I’d optioned. Pohl is a science fiction writer, highly regarded. So, I’m in East Germany, before the wall came down, looking at all the photographs of Chernobyl, taken within 24 hours of the actual event. I’m thinking of how I’m going to recreate it — at the same time the Soviets are also giving me photographs of other plants in the Soviet Union. And my translator Ludmilla Peresvetova was there. The Soviets had assigned her to me on ''Peter the Great'', but I fired her after the first day, so now almost six years later, I don’t know why, I decided to hire her again as my translator on the Chernobyl project.

'''Schiller''': Late ’91. So I go to Norman and talk to him about it. I tell him I believe if we spend enough time in the Soviet Union we can eventually get the files. I explain to him how I met with Bakatin and Ludmilla. I said I was pretty sure that Bakatin would not have told me that the files were divided if he had no intention of cooperating with me. Also, I told Norman, that there will be one immediate difficulty: most of the agents that dealt with Oswald had all retired years before. My plan, I say, is to find these agents and hire them. I lay out a plan for Norman. Then I go to see Jason Epstein, Mailer’s editor at Random House. I tell Jason what Norman has said, that he’d like to go there and investigate. I then tell Jason that I want Random House to cover all start-up expenses. That doesn’t seem to be a problem. I’m not saying he said, “Yes, $25,000 is not a problem.” But he is interested, especially since Norman wants to do the book. Of course, something else is happening at Random House, although at that time Jason doesn’t reveal it to us — for good reasons — Gerald Posner is well into the writing of his Oswald book, ''Case Closed'' [1993]. At roughly the same time, I do learn from Ludmilla, who has gone to Belarus for me, meeting with the assistant to the head of the Belarus KGB, that it appears we will eventually get access to the Oswald material. And also at about the same time, ABC Television puts out the word, obtained through some leak, that the Oswald files are there. That little story on ABC says to me that the files are obtainable. Of course, one of the assets and the liabilities of Larry Schiller is that I believe something is possible before I have the foundation to prove it. Then Random House gives us $25,000 for the trip.

'''Schiller''': Exactly, this is an introductory trip. I ask, not Bakatin himself, but Bakatin’s right hand to make a phone call to the head of Belarus KGB, to tell them we’re coming. The call is to Alexander Sharkovsky, the head of the KGB, Belarus. So, we go to Belarus. We’re supposed to meet Sharkovsky at the KGB office. In Belarus, we take a taxi over, get out of the taxi and start up the steps. There’s a guy, with two others just off to the side, coming down the steps, coming toward us. At this moment, Ludmilla, who has gone a few steps ahead, a little bit, falls on the steps. I don’t know if she fell on purpose, or what. Who do you think it is — it’s Sharkovsky’s assistant who leans over and picks her up. And, of course, she introduces Norman right on the steps of the KGB building to the guy who maybe winds up being maybe more important than Sharkovsky himself. I don’t know if he really came out to meet Norman; I don’t know. But it was a very funny incident. Falls right on the steps, her long legs and everything.

'''Schiller''': Well that’s because Random House didn’t want to do Norman’s Picasso book [''[[Portrait of Picasso as a Young Man]]'', 1995] because John Richardson was writing the authorized biography for them. But with Oswald, they do want to do it. And Norman says he still wants to do it. I don’t know if all this affected Norman; it certainly affected me. So it takes us quite a while to sort all this out and prepare. We have to find the right people, hire translators, drivers and so forth.

'''Schiller''': Well, don’t, you don’t have to … .

'''Schiller''': Is that what he called it? Yeah. I do realize that in every interview I never walk in with questions. I never have a piece of paper. Maybe the interviews would be better, I don’t know. Maybe they wouldn’t be as good, I have no idea. Anyway, at the lunch we order the best caviar, the best of this, the best pancakes, the best boiled potatoes, you know, it’s just like, and you wouldn’t believe it. So, we’re going through all the pleasantries, and at some point, I decide to make my move. It’s very important to understand that we’d already been in the KGB library, seen all the books in all languages; we’d already been in the KGB offices; we’d actually already seen some of the files, by now, you know, they’d shown us some things in a room. We know the files are just down the hall from where we were shown them. So, it isn’t like I’m going into this meeting without a certain amount of knowledge. I’ve got enough foundation under me. I think you understand that in all these conversations, I’m the one that does all the talking, you know. Norman is, even in public, it’s “Mr. Mailer.” I don’t call him Norman. Mr. Mailer. He’s the great writer. And we may have even done a couple interviews with Russians by this point, but Norman and I haven’t started fighting at the interviews yet. So in the meeting, at a strategic moment, I say, “You know, if you give these files to any Russian journalist to write this important history of Oswald’s years, nobody will believe it. If you give these files to Italian TV or ABC Television, the story will be on the 6:00 news throughout the world. Then it will be replaced on the 11:00 news by some other event, maybe a shooting. The next day, it’ll be forgotten. You give it to the ''New York Times'', ''London Times'', ''Figaro'' — give it to any of the major newspapers in the world, it will be headlines the first day, the next day, and everybody will have wrapped their garbage and their fish in it. But if you give it to a writer, such as Mr. Mailer, whose works are on the shelves of every library in the world, including your own KGB library, you are giving the information to history. You’re preserving it with an independent voice that will establish the credibility of the fact that the Soviet Union was not involved in President Kennedy’s assassination.

'''Schiller''': Right. I’m saying it with the same cadence, maybe a little slower. “You give it to a writer who’s not only, his works are on shelves all over the world, a writer who ranks with Pasternak or Solzhenitsyn” — I named one of these two writers, but Ludmilla, of course, being as brilliant as she was, changes it, as I find out later when I read the transcript of the conversation. She says, “You give it to a writer who, under his photograph, in the Soviet encyclopedia says of Mr. Mailer, ‘a writer who dares write what he thinks’.” That’s what she adds. She knew that fact; I didn’t. I was trying to say the same thing, with Pasternak or Solzhenitsyn, I forget which, but she does it much better without naming a Soviet writer. Sharkovsky looks at me, and he says, “I’m not going to give you the files. I am prepared to do the following.” Very interesting. He actually leaned over the table. Let me go back. I just remembered that I had also said to him, “Mr. Mailer is prepared to stay here as long as it takes, a man who has a heart condition. He is a man who takes five years to write a book, and has maybe only has three or four books left in his life. He is willing to spend the time; he believes he owes it to history.” So he says, “I’m not going to give you the files. But if you are prepared to stay here, I will allow you rent an office in the building and every time you ask a question, we’ll bring you that part of the files that answers your question. If you stay long enough, and if you’re smart enough to ask the right questions, you will learn much.” And I have to tell you that after that many, many of our discussions, ones that took place among Ludmilla and I and Norman, was how to ask the questions. So, we rent an office for a thousand U.S. dollars a week, an office with, a very, very plush room with a big, long table. That’s where we had all our meetings with the KGB people.

But several things happened as we started to do the interviews. First, the FBI shows up. One day we’re in a meeting with Sharkovsky’s assistant, the one who did all the work, you know, and all of a sudden, he hands us a letter and says, “I thought you’d like to read this.” Signed by, I believe, the President of the United States. Hand-delivered, by the FBI to the head of the Belarus government, asking for the Oswald files saying the government is aware that you’re speaking to certain writers, but doesn’t name Norman Mailer. And we believe — I’m just paraphrasing the letter — that the climate is right, that this is the moment that you should share this information with the United States government first; our representatives are there, you know. You understand that eventually Yeltsin (years later elected to be the president of Russia) gives President Clinton the Oswald files. And the assistant looks at us and says, “How should we answer this?” He actually says that to us! It just blows my mind, how should we answer this? And I came up with something that made everybody laugh. I just said, “First come, first served.” (laughter). And everybody just laughed, you know. So I’m told they replied that they did not feel that this was the right time to, etcetera. And, of course, when we had dinner with Ambassador Swartz, he said, “Oh, you really shaped a reply to the letter, didn’t you?” I said, “I don’t know what was said.” And then I told him about my line, first come, first served. It was kind of funny.

'''Schiller''': And, of course, the big, one of the big, the last fights we had on ''Marilyn'', was when I turned to him and said, “You know, thank God you never fucked her.” He almost hit me, almost hit me. This was after the interview he did with Mike Wallace. You know, I had more power in a way, in ''The Executioner’s Song'', or I had more strength — power’s the wrong word — I had more strength in ''The Executioner’s Song'', to win a battle with him than I did for some reason with the Oswald book. The way the contract was written with Random House really weakened my position as the owner of the book.

'''Schiller''': Yes. I remember him saying about ''Ancient Evenings'', “Larry, I wrote this book for people to read 100 years from now, not now. I don’t care about the people who read it now.” Look, my whole concept was that you end ''Oswald’s Tale'' and the reader says one thing: “Just tell me enough about the man who pulled the trigger.” Okay? Now, the other thing, which was very, very important is this, Norman warned me going into this, he said, “I believe that Oswald is part of a conspiracy. I’m not saying a Russian conspiracy, Larry, but don’t expect me to write a book” — this is before we even knew about Posner — “that argues that Oswald did it alone.” Because he knew that’s how I felt. Because I had done ''The Scavengers and Critics of the Warren Report'' [with Richard W. Lewis, 1967]. You’ve seen that book. Right. And I’d made ''The Trial of Lee Harvey Oswald'' and I’d done other things. So I felt that Oswald may have been politically motivated, because of the General Walker shooting, and when he didn’t succeed in the Walker shooting … I always felt the motivation for Kennedy was he that failed once, and wasn’t going to fail again. It had nothing to do with Kennedy’s political point of view. It was Oswald wanting to be recognized in some way.

'''Schiller''': Right. At the Embassy Suites. She could have a girlfriend there, but she could not leave the premises — she couldn’t run home. Norman and I would interview her in the morning for three hours, after breakfast, in the afternoon for three hours, and then two hours in the evening if we wanted to, five days a week. So, there were kind of two things that made her go through with the deal: one, she was being paid $15,000 and maybe, just a little, to help the “American Tolstoy” — and then there was Valya. Valya, by the way, did eventually come to the United States and stayed with Marina, but didn’t like the U.S. and decided to go back.

When all the transcripts were finished, Norman and I then independently read them carefully while we set the date for the interviews. There were certain key things that we knew we really had to find out. Even though we now had strong indications that she was not a virgin when she married Lee, we needed to hear that from her. Because you cannot write a book like this based on hearsay. And that was very crucial because, you know, when Lee married her he went around the radio factory with a piece of a sheet with blood on it — the Russian tradition, as you know. If she was not a virgin, had she masqueraded on her marriage night with him? Had she had pre-marital sex with him? We didn’t know, even though her girlfriends had told us no. What was that wedding night like and how did it irrevocably affect him? Did it change his attitude if he learned that she was or was not a virgin? Now all of this was important to a writer like Norman Mailer. It allowed him to develop his character. It allowed him to write with authenticity and creditability. My responsibility—I don’t know if I ever said this before — was to give Norman more than he ever dreamed he needed.

'''Schiller''': Well, non-trained interviewer. Non-educated interviewer. At one point, I asked her a question and she turned to me and she said, “Why are you even asking me that question? What does it have to do with Lee?” And I said to her at another point, “Who in your family taught you how to curl your hair and perm your hair?” Now, I don’t ever come with a list of questions — I know that surprised Norman — and I often go home after an interview and want to kick myself in the ass about all the questions that I didn’t ask, that I should have asked, that I wanted to ask, but didn’t because I didn’t have a list of questions. A list of questions inhibits me.

'''Schiller''': Or, I trust the fact that I’m letting the subject educate me. But in Marina’s case, I’m probing for two things: facts we don’t know and, as I’ve said before, more skin on the bones, more revealing detail. And for the first day and half that really worked very well. Then I made a decision, without discussing it with Norman that I was going to enter the area of sexuality. I don’t know to this day if I made the right decision. Norman was upset with me when I went into Marina’s years in Leningrad much faster than we had originally discussed. All of a sudden, we were talking about her previous boyfriends in Minsk. I said to her, “But before that you had a very close relationship with so-and-so.” And she looked at me — “You’ve spoken to him?” It was like I opened the door to Leningrad. I immediately said, “No, I haven’t spoken to him, I couldn’t even find him, Marina, but I knew that you had to have had boyfriends and I was told that he was fond of you by somebody in Minsk.” So, I got out of it. The question opened about half a day too soon the fact that we knew some things about Leningrad inside out. She was smart enough to understand that. But then, I think on the third day, we opened the door as Norman and I had planned. I said, “Well how did you feel when your uncle locked the door and wouldn’t let you into the apartment and you had to sleep on the landing?” Well, I saw really hatred in her eyes and that’s when she shouted and screamed. I don’t remember if Norman was in the room or not, because sometimes I would ask questions when Norman was out and sometimes he was there and I wasn’t, but usually we were together. She said, I don’t remember her exact words, “You’re worse than the Secret Service; you’re worse than the FBI.” I said, “What do you mean, I’m worse than them?” I could just tell where this was going. So at that point I went in pretty strong and I said, “Look, whatever your relationships were in Leningrad, as a young girl growing up, you were experiencing life or exploring sexuality, like a lot of young people,” something like that. It wasn’t like I said that she was a hooker, which of course she wasn’t. I tried to put it, to couch it, in language that suggested she was in an educational situation, a growth situation.

'''Schiller''': Yes, right. Every night we had such joy — we got it out, we got it out) And Norman would say, “All right Larry, all right.” And I would say, “No, Norman, you never know.” I get excited about it; I still get childish, then and now, about little things succeeding.

'''Schiller''': Her fingers were stained. Thanks for reminding me. It was just unbelievable. You know, two, three packs — unbelievable. She was divorced from Porter, but living with him for the sake of their children.

'''Lennon''': I have read all the reviews of the book and I can say right now that there is great admiration for the first part of the book, and there is less admiration for the second part. But a lot of reviewers are taken with the conclusion of that book — “The Three Widows.” Nobody else who looked at that material could have come up with that kind of an ending, only Norman Mailer.

'''Schiller''': Yes. Let me tell you about something else. When the lawyers and editors from the ''New Yorker'' arrived at my house in California to do fact checking for the excerpt — this would be in the winter of 1994 — or early 1995 — I was in the middle of the Simpson case. So we’re sitting in my dining room. They actually brought the galleys. And as I looked at the galleys, I read the subhead in which my name was used and I was called Norman Mailer’s collaborator, something like that. I turned to the representative from the ''New Yorker'' and said, “How dare you do this, you don’t have Norman Mailer’s permission. You don’t have the right to say I’m his collaborator; only Norman Mailer can say what he wants to say in regard to his relationship with me.” She looked at me and said, “Norman’s the one who wrote the line.” So that was the time I felt a sense of accomplishment.