2019-12-14: The Society is saddened at the passing of Dr. Wilbur Hayes, an original member of the Society and friend of Mailer’s.
2019-12-13: Jason Miller discusses 2019’s conference in the November issue of Revise This!
2019-12-02: Susan Mailer and J. Michael Lennon will appear at an event at the 92Y on May 20, 2020 at 7pm. See the 92Y’s event page for more information and tickets.
2019-11-21: Walter Minton, US publisher of ‘Lolita,‘ dies at 96. The Washington Post reports: “Walter J. Minton, a publishing scion and risk taker with a self-described ‘nasty streak’ who as head of G.P. Putnam’s Sons released works by Norman Mailer and Terry Southern among others and signed up Vladimir Nabokov’s scandalous Lolita, has died at age 96.”
2019-11-09: Via The Nation, “Lauren Michele Jackson Wants to Change How We Talk About Appropriation”: “I honestly can’t remember when I first encountered Mailer’s essay, but it was in the back of my head as I was compiling this project and thinking of a name for it. In some ways, the connections between these two works are fairly loose: I’m borrowing a term and elaborating upon it for my own purposes. But because I am borrowing, too, I want to actually acknowledge the essay and do a close reading of it in a way that feels meaningful.”
2019-11-04: Via Deadline, “Mailer Tuchman Media Debuts Film And TV Slate Anchored By Norman Mailer Drama”: “Mailer Tuchman Media has launched with an initial slate of film and TV projects anchored by Mailer, a drama series about the late author/provocateur. Mailer’s son, John Buffalo Mailer, is creative director of MTM, which is both producing and financing. Joining him are Martin Tuchman, the company’s executive producer, and Jennifer Gelfer, executive director.”
2019-10-27: Via New York Times: “Steal This Archive? Abbie Hoffman’s Papers Become a College Collection.” There are notes and letters from other icons of the 1960s. Cards from John and Yoko. A letter from Allen Ginsberg, the poet, offering to help him raise defense money. A plea by Norman Mailer to the governor of New York, seeking executive leniency on his behalf.
2019-10-13: Nnedi Okorafor on influential books: “The book that changed my mind: The Executioner’s Song by Norman Mailer. I’d always been against capital punishment and that was that; this novel made me truly think it through. I remain against capital punishment, but I have clearer reasons now.”
2019-09-10: Via Variety, Toronto Film Review: “The Capote Tapes”: The people on the tapes include Mailer, who tells a terrific story about drinking with Truman in an old Irish bar and realizing what adrenaline (and courage) Capote must have lived with at every moment, and a friend who says that Capote swore by the motto, “Don’t ever let the truth get in the way of a good story.”
2019-08-14: From John Buffalo: “We are releasing a movie that I have the pleasure of playing the male lead in on Friday, with an NYC premiere on Monday night. We still have some seats left that we can give out to those who would like to attend the premiere. The movie will also be available on Amazon nation wide starting Friday, so those who are not in New York or LA can also watch it. With these indie movies, the opening weekend makes a huge difference in its success or failure, so we are praying for a good turn out this upcoming weekend.” Click the image to the right for more information.
2019-07-19: For The Hedgehog Review, Greg Jackson writes “Hipster Elegies”: The death and life of the great American hipster offers an alternative history of culture over the last quarter century.
2019-07-13: J. Michael Lennon reviews Douglas Brinkley’s American Moonshot: John F. Kennedy and the Great Space Race in the Times Literary Supplement. Reprinted on his site.
2019-06-26: From The Atlantic: James Parker, in “‘A Work of Art Designed by the Devil’”, writes “Dispatched by Life magazine to cover the Apollo 11 mission, Norman Mailer saw the lunar landing not as a triumph for mankind but as evidence of our hubris.”
2019-06-19: From The Geek Herald: NASA Moon landing: These are the Apollo 11 secrets no-one ever told you about . . . except of course that Mailer did: “[O]nly a few individuals knew the secret of the mission. Journalist and American author Norman Mailer has unveiled some lesser known facts about the mission in his book titled Moonfire: The Epic Journey of Apollo 11.”
2019-05-24: Via the New York Post, “Esquire editor-in-chief Jay Fielden to step down.” The magazine, now 86 years old, has been owned by Hearst since 1986. During its heyday from 1961 to 1973 under legendary editor Harold Hayes, it was renowned for both discovering young up-and-coming writers and publishing some of the greatest names in letters — from Ernest Hemingway to Norman Mailer and Tom Wolfe.
2019-05-10: Via GoErie: “Author Norman Mailer, who had previously pleaded guilty to 3rd degree assault in the stabbing of his wife, Adele Morales, leaves general sessions courtroom May 10, 1961 after Judge Mitchell D. Schweitzer put off sentencing until November 13, 1961. Mailer is accompanied by court officer Pat Gormley, at left in rear. Mailer was countinued in $2,500 bail, and ordered to report at intervals to the probation department. In putting off sentencing, Judge Schweitzer hinted that if Mailer behaved himself he might receive a suspended sentence.” See photo 5.
2019-05-05: Fifty years ago today the Pulitzer Prize was awarded to Mailer for his “nonfiction novel” Armies of the Night, an account of the 1967 anti-Vietnam War march on the Pentagon. (Via History Net.)
2019-04-27: In “One giant leap for mankind: 50 years on, the epic journey of Apollo 11,” Taschen writes “When three astronauts accomplished the first moon landing half a century ago, science fiction became reality. Their achievement, and the decade of work that made it possible, is recalled in a 50th anniversary edition of Norman Mailer’s classic book Of a Fire on the Moon. In Independent
2019-04-25: MGA Graduate Students Publish Digital Humanities Project About Norman Mailer. Students in Dr. Gerald Lucas’s graduate course, “Writing and Publishing in Digital Environments,” helped construct a digital humanities project, “An American Dream Expanded”, published on Project Mailer, part of the Norman Mailer Society.
2019-04-13: In “The Fight (1975) by Norman Mailer: Feel the punch of a heavyweight,” Rob Doyle argues that “Mailer is no ‘bad joke’ – he writes with a reckless candour foreign to today’s nice guys.” Thanks, Rob! In The Irish Times
2019-04-05: The Village Voice has published “Norman Mailer Runs for Mayor” from their archives. Joe Flaherty writes: “As radical as the program sounded, it made complete sense to me, and I also realized there wasn’t a politician in New York who would dare run on such ideas. Mailer was now my man.”
2019-03-22: Emily Temple of LitHub shows that Mailer’s career spanned 59 years, just shy of Borges’ 62.
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