The Mailer Review/Volume 5, 2011/Tributes to Norris Church Mailer/Remembering Norris: Excerpts from an Unpublished Account of Norman Mailer’s Last Days: Difference between revisions

{{MR05}}

===06–11–05===

NM read all of James Atlas’s 1979 profile of him in ''The New York Times Sunday Magazine'', and NCM leafed through it, admiring the photographs but little else. She felt Atlas was inaccurate in spots, especially the story of NM speaking at Harvard and the audience being bored. “Not true,” she said. NM thought that Atlas had been given some general editorial directions to rough him up a bit. He added that he now liked Atlas. NCM remembered how she got back at him: at a Jean Stein [editor of ''Grand Street''] party, Stein brought him over to NCM, who is somewhat taller than Atlas. She looked right over his head and said, “Oh yes, where is he?” NM decided to go for a swim after Donna told him how warm the water was. He said he just did not feel like starting the novel today. He plans to read it through and then begin writing again. NCM told us that because of her stent, she could never swim in the ocean again, or even take a bath. But then she smiled and shook it off. No complainer, she. None of the Mailers are, a family trait.

===09–05–05===

Arrived in P-Town yesterday and went to dinner at the Mailers’ last night. Steve Mailer, NM’s sister Barbara and John Buffalo were there for dinner. NM was fast asleep on the couch in the TV room until just before dinner at 7:30. I chatted with Barbara and then with NCM. She is going in for her PET scan to check the state of her two tumors, and to see if she has any more. She is remarkably calm about it. Her novel [''Cheap Diamonds''] has gone nowhere this summer because of all the visitors. She told me today that she wants to finish it by year’s end and have it come out next fall, or even the following summer. Today we discussed briefly the possibility that advance excerpts from her novel might be published in ''Mademoiselle'', ''Harper’s Bazaar'', or ''Vanity Fair''. NCM told me that she had once published a piece on how young models should prepare themselves for their career and that her agency, Wilhelmina, used to give it to new models. Need to get a copy.

The first copies of ''The Castle in the Forest'' arrived and NM inscribed one to Donna and me. He also signed some magazines and other books, including a couple associated with ''Marilyn''. He said that it is probably the book that most Americans know him by most, and the first one of his that NCM had read. She got it for joining the Book-of-the-Month Club. When NM was visiting Fig Gwaltney [army buddy] in Arkansas, she called up and asked if she could come to the party that he was having for NM, as she was intrigued after reading ''Marilyn''. Fig wasn’t overjoyed about having this young woman join the party of older faculty members that he was throwing for NM. “He suspected something might come of the meeting of Barbara and me,” NM said. “He was right,” I said. This brought on a big laugh.

===01–16–07===

NCM emailed me that she and NM are thinking of putting the house in P-Town on the market in February 2008. A lot could take place between now and then, she noted. She is considering her own mother (who is in a nursing home in Orleans), her sons, daughter-in-law and grandchild living in Brooklyn, and the rest of the Mailer kids, most of whom she helped to raise in whole or in part. But NM’s asthma is not getting any better, which argues for staying in P-Town. She is torn and anxious about this, wanting to be with NM but also missing her children and granddaughter, not to mention her stepchildren. The loss of signed books is also troubling her, and she has bought a large locking bookcase to store the valuable books now housed in an open bookcase on the second floor of 627 Commercial Street.

{{DEFAULTSORT:Remembering Norris}}

[[Category:Tributes (MR)]]