44.1

“A Calculus at Heaven.” In Cross-Section: A Collection of New American Writing, edited by Edwin Seaver, 317–353. New York: L.B. Fischer, April.

Novella of Pacific combat, written for Robert Hillyer’s English A-5 class in Mailer’s senior year at Harvard. Mailer says in Advertisements for Myself (59.13) that it “does make an interesting contrast” to The Naked and the Dead (48.2). Original working title: “The Foundation,” drawn from a line in André Malraux’s Man's Fate: “All that men are willing to die for, beyond self-interest, tends . . . to justify that fate by giving it a foundation in dignity.” Mailer’s first book appearance.

Rpt: An excerpt titled “The Captain,” in The Artesian, with Mailer, bearded on the front cover. This quarterly was published in Ann Arbor, Mich., where John W. Aldridge, presumably, made the arrangement for publication. Aldridge, then a close friend of Mailer’s, taught at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor; 59.13, 67.11, 82.19.