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that decade. The question now is whether to go forward into the 1970s or go
that decade. The question now is whether to go forward into the 1970s or go
back to his earlier work, like The Naked and the Dead. We are having discussions on the schedule, although no conclusions have yet been reached.
back to his earlier work, like The Naked and the Dead. We are having discussions on the schedule, although no conclusions have yet been reached.
I think that there is merit in publishing a volume in 2023, and The Naked
and the Dead strikes me as perhaps the best choice, especially if we can include supplementary materials by Mailer that bear on the novel. By that I
mean two prefaces that he wrote for later editions of the novel, and some of
the unpublished letters that he wrote during the war. When he was in the
Philippines, he wrote numerous letters home to his first wife, Beatrice. I included about ten of them in Selected Letters of Norman Mailer, but there are
many more. They are important because they were essentially planning documents for The Naked and the Dead.
Mailer wrote about four hundred letters during this time and it will not
be difficult to find twenty good ones that could accompany a new edition of
The Naked and the Dead. My wife and I are going through all those old letters right now, reading copies of the original letters, which have to be transcribed. I had not looked at them for over ten years, and was astounded at
how good they are. Norman had some wonderful insights about his wartime experiences, his reading, his plans for The Naked and the Dead, and his time
in occupied Japan. He also talks about his family, reading The Razor’s Edge
by Somerset Maugham, The Decline of the West by Oswald Spengler, Thomas
Mann and others. Norman was a voracious reader, as you know.
'''PS''': Yes indeed. It is surely so critical to keep Mailer’s work and memory alive
as authors, even major writers, seem to come and go. Melville, as I recall,
was not resurrected until the 1920s and F. Scott Fitzgerald was brought back
to life by Malcolm Cowley as a result of his work on Tender is the Night.
There was also resurrection for Kate Chopin a half-century ago.
'''JML''': Yes. It was a slow, slow process for Melville. The Library of America
does a fabulous job. They have a wonderful format and they meticulously
check to make sure that their editions are carefully researched. Textual errors
are noted, Library of America and the volumes include a life chronology.
Lately, they started including introductions, which they did not in earlier
years. It is possible that there would be a new introduction to The Naked
and the Dead. Furthermore, they include notes. They do a beautiful textual
job, and they have this wonderful Smythe binding, a sewn binding. The Norman Mailer Society made a contribution to underwrite the first two volumes, for which I am very grateful.
'''PS''': Serving the primary mission of the Society
'''JML''': Yes, certainly
'''PS''': Let me ask you about Maggie McKinley’s forthcoming Cambridge University Press volume on Mailer. Can you tell us a little about your contribution?
'''JML''': Sure. Maggie’s volume will be an important reconsideration of Mailer.
I believe she has over  contributors. I know that you’ve done the chapter
on Mailer as a literary and film critic. She asked me if I would write on Norman Mailer and John F. Kennedy and I was happy to agree. I was surprised
at how many places Kennedy shows up that I had forgotten. In my essay, I
try to survey all of the major depictions of Kennedy in Mailer’s writing, approximately a dozen.
I looked for the pattern of how his view of Kennedy evolved. His admiration for Kennedy went up and down a little at the beginning, but in the early 1960s, it was always strong. He had a rich, complex view of JFK, and was
intrigued by the question of how his Hollywood leading-man appearance affected his political chances. I don’t think that there is any other historical
figure that Mailer wrote about as often, and with greater penetration, than
Kennedy. He wrote about him, beginning in 1960 , and continuing right up
through Harlot’s Ghost (1991), and even later. Oliver Stone made a movie,
JFK, which Mailer reviewed in a long essay in which he revisited all his earlier ideas about Kennedy. And then, of course, he is a key figure in Oswald’s
Tale. Another key text is An American Dream, where he has an off-stage role.
Kennedy is also in Cannibals and Christians. In fact, he is in all of Mailer’s political books, and two of his novels. Mailer identified with Kennedy to a certain extent; they also had much in common. They were both of the same
generation—World War Two vets—and they were both fascinated with
American politics. Mailer is also the first major writer who wrote about JFK,
back in , in a major essay, “Superman Comes to the Supermarket.”
PS: I find Norman’s review of JFK to be quite interesting and Mailer only
wrote two film reviews, the other one examining, in full unexpurgated rigor,
Bernardo Bertolucci’s Last Tango in Paris. So, reviewing JFK is obviously of
paramount significance, which I discuss in my Cambridge essay that examines Mailer’s criticism. You also mentioned Susan Mailer’s recent memoir
In Another Place, in which she addresses her relationship with her father.
Can you talk about the significance of her book?
JML: Yes, it is a very important book because it is the first memoir by one of
Norman’s children. Susan, the oldest, knew him longer than any of the other
eight. She was born in Hollywood in 1949 when he was living there with Jean
Malaquais, writing scripts for Sam Goldwyn. Susan’s memories go way back.
She saw her father in a range of contexts because he visited her often in Mexico, and he visited her later in Chile, where she eventually married and lived.
I should add that it is not just a story of Norman Mailer—it is also a story of
her own life, which has been bifurcated. Half of Susan’s life was and is spent
in South America, and half of it in New York City. She lived with her father
when she was a student at Barnard in the 1960s, and took part in his mayoral
campaign. Susan worked on the memoir for a long time, over four or five
years. Its genesis began with her memorial tribute delivered at Carnegie Hall,
published in 2008 in The Mailer Review. Susan continued to write a piece here, a piece there, and she finally decided that she wanted to write a book
about her life. She had never written a memoir before, so, it was quite a learning experience for her. She recently gave the keynote address at Wilkes University’s MFA graduation ceremony in January 2020, and talked about what
she had to learn in order to become a memoirist. She has done a superb job
and her book has received excellent reviews. There was a recent profile article about her in The London Times and her book has been written about in
The Wall Street Journal. I am very happy to have had a finger in Susan’s book,
encouraging her, and helping with some factual references.
Susan’s book now joins all of the other important family memoirs about
Norman, including Adele Mailer’s memoir, The Last Party, which came out
in 1997. Norris Mailer’s memoir, A Ticket to the Circus, came out just before
she died in 2010. John Buffalo Mailer has written about his father in various
essays, and he also co-edited a book with his father, a book of interviews
titled The Big Empty, which was published in 2006.
'''PS''': I found In Another Place to be an impressive, exceptionally insightful
memoir and I enjoyed reading it very much. Bonnie Culver (Wilkes University) has written a play, NORRIS, which portrays Norris Church Mailer,
Norman’s sixth wife to whom he was married for over three decades, as I
recall. What does this play tell us—and not just about Norman, but also
Norris?
JML: After Norman died in 2007, Norris Mailer took his place on the advisory board of the Wilkes Maslow Family graduate program in creative writing. She funded a scholarship and became close with people at the university.
Bonnie developed a strong friendship with Norris. After reading Norris’s
memoir, Bonnie was very taken with it. Bonnie came up with the idea of a
one woman play, using A Ticket to the Circus as the underlying structure.
Norris thought that this was a great idea and then, sadly, she died, but Bonnie stayed with the project. Two versions of it have been presented at the annual conferences of the Mailer Society. The script has gone through many
revisions, and Bonnie has received considerable feedback from members of
the Society, from the Mailer family. Norris is going to be performed at a playhouses in Santa Monica and Anne Archer will play Norris. Anne is the right
age, a tall redhead, and likes the script very much. So everything looks very
promising and it appears that the opening of the play will take place in Santa Monica. Bonnie is a professional playwright, as you know, and her work has
appeared off-Broadway as well in other venues around the country. I believe
that Bonnie recently wrote a review of Susan Mailer’s book, right?
'''PS''': Yes, a quite detailed, probing treatment.
'''JML''': I should add something else that is clearly germane to Mailer Studies.
The Mailer Review has become the hub of the wheel for all Mailer activities
and studies. Thanks to you and your team for reviewing every book with
any bearing on Mailer’s life and work, and also publishing such a range of
fine essays on virtually every aspect of his work, and unpublished Mailer
stories and essays, interviews and much more. Each issue you publish contains a detailed annual bibliography on works by and about Mailer that keeps
readers in touch with what is going on within and beyond the scholarly
world. Shannon Zinck, the bibliographer for the Review, does a superb job
locating all kinds of materials, stuff I never knew existed. She is an exemplary
bibliographer. There is no question that The Mailer Review has become an
indispensable journal for anyone interested in Mailer Studies. I have all volumes right next to me on my desk and hardly a day goes that I am not looking up something in the journal. Congratulations, Mr. Editor, for your
perseverance over more than a decade of work. It has really born a lot of
fruit.
PS: Thank you, Mike, for your kind words. The Review would not exist if
not for your indefatigable support from the very beginning. We have not
published an issue that has not been energized—and improved—by your
critical eye and your excellent suggestions for topics, articles, historical projects, contributors, and so forth. The current volume is number 13, (bringing us to roughly 6,000 pages over 13 years), and we strive to do our best. As
you know, we have faced many challenges over time, like all scholarly journals. We are an all-volunteer staff and we certainly make mistakes, mostly my
errata, but we try to devote ourselves to produce an eclectic periodical that
is an ongoing record of relevant developments in all things Mailer. We also
include a range of other kinds of writing, including a section each issue of
high qualitive, creative writing We are very fortunate to have been able to
publish work from well-established poets and fiction writers, who contribute
significantly, we believe, to the overall quality and character of our journal.
I would like to wind up our conversation with two questions. One more general, one more narrow. If you would gaze into your crystal ball, what do
you see as the future of Mailer Studies? Are there things that jump out at
you as being part of strategic evolving trends or new areas of focus?
'''JML''': Yes, there are a few things. First, I think that there are strategic resources
in the archives that have not yet been sufficiently explored. We have talked
about Lipton’s Journal, but there are other items that have not been examined
in detail. There are also many letters in the archive that no one has ever read.
There are approximately 50,000letters in the archives, but only 700 letters
were published in my edition. These letters reveal Mailer’s thinking on his art
and his personal relationships. Further, the archives contain all of the hard
drives and floppy disks that belonged to his longtime assistant, Judith
McNally, who worked for Norman for thirty years. These resources require
advanced technical skills and equipment in order to retrieve a range of texts
from long ago. My understanding is that these resources are now available.
We can finally access the information that Judith had stored. Everything that
Mailer ever wrote was on paper from the late 70s on passed through her
hands—and she had copies of everything. Judith was a real pack rat.
If I had the energy, I would go to Austin right now and start reading as
much of it as I could. I know that Nicole DePolo is very interested in researching these areas. Nicole is a member of the Mailer Board and she is
quite interested because she wants to follow up her earlier work on Mailer’s
Ancient Evenings, which was the topic of her dissertation. Judith, by the way,
was one of Norman’s researchers for Ancient Evenings.
PS: Nicole wrote her dissertation working with Christopher Ricks, as I recall.
JML: Yes, Christopher Ricks at Boston University. Nicole and John Buffalo
have expressed interest in creating a kind of a graphic novel on parts of Ancient Evenings and the work that Judith did on Ancient Evenings would surely
be very important. I should also note again that the Farley Library at Wilkes
has Mailer’s library for scholars to review and attempt to derive a sense of the
contents of his mind. The Farley’s archivist, Suzanna Calev, is doing a terrific
job organizing the library and other materials.
There are some other projects that are in the works as well. Ron Fried has
written a play based on John Mailer’s The Big Empty, The name of the play
is The Two Mailers. The Big Empty is comprised of a series of conversations
between Norman and John in 2003 and 2004, when Mailer was in his early eighties. I have been told that the play is projected to open on Broadway
with F. Murray Abraham playing Norman Mailer. Julian Schlossberg, a film
and theatre producer, will launch the production.
John Buffalo is also working on a TV script based on A Double Life, which
he hopes to turn into a multi-season bio-pic series. He has been writing
scripts based on the biography. So there are several spinoff projects that are
out there, manifestations of Mailer’s life, his work, and how he has touched
so many people during the course of his life. Now we are starting to see the
fruits of these interactions. There is an analogue in what happened in Hemingway studies after he died. Hemingway’s children, siblings, and friends
began generating out books, movies, and memoirs about Hemingway and
his family. And that process continues with books coming out, including
one written by his grandson.
'''PS''': Yes, John Hemingway’s, A Strange Tribe, which I was honored to review
for the St. Petersburg Times. It is a superb memoir, recounting the trials and
tribulations of a very complex multigenerational “tribe.” John has spoken
to our graduate students at USF and he is a particularly engaging person,
infectious with his knowledge, wit, and acute sense of perspective.
'''JML''': I think that the same thing is happening with Mailer. I should also
mention how valuable your omnibus collection of Mailer’s essays is becoming for scholars and critics (Mind of an Outlaw, Random House, 2013).
It is a great resource.
'''PS''': Thanks, Mike. Yes, Outlaw came out concurrently with your biography.
'''JML''': Random House is publishing more of his books in paperback. Mailer’s
presence is clearly not diminishing. It is expanding—both in the scholarly
world, in popular culture, and in the creative world of memoirs and profiles. So much is going on, including the forthcoming Cambridge collection,
which is especially timely because it includes thirty-five different perspectives
on Mailer’s work and Mailer the man. I should also mention your project,
in the Review, of launching a series focused on Mailer and other significant
writers which, I believe, includes Bob Begiebing’s essay on Mailer and Jung.
'''PS''':Yes,the current issue launchesthisseries and includes Begiebing’s work on
Mailer and Ellis, as well as RayVince’s fulsome, comparative article on Mailer,
Fitzgerald, and Hemingway. Future pairings may include Mailer and Conrad,and we are thinking about Mailer and Roth, Mailer and Didion, Mailer and
Science Fiction, and so on.We will notrun out of topics,to be sure, and we are
looking into reaching back in time, perhaps before the Nineteenth Century if
Mailer scholars find topics and connections worth exploring.
JML: Yes, and there is Mailer and Whitman, Mailer and Melville, Mailer and
Henry Miller, and Mailer and Mary McCarthy. I’ve been reading her lately
and the similarities in their outlooks, their passions, are quite remarkable. I
read an early draft of Begiebing’s essay and it is a wonderful patch of writing.
'''PS''': Thank you, Mike. I have saved my best question for last.
'''JML''': Good.
'''PS''': What does the future hold for you?
JML: Well, I guess that as far as Mailer studies are concerned, the first thing
will be to get back to work on Lipton’s with Susan and Jerry, and continue to
collaborate with him on Project Mailer.Another project is my memoir about
Mailer’s last days, which will examine some of the things that I have mentioned in this interview: how I first became involved with Mailer, how I became connected to Bob Lucid, and how I served as a kind of apprentice
archivist.And, of course, how I finally took over the job of becoming Mailer’s
biographer. My memoir will be based in part on the notes that I made during his last ears in Provincetown, his “table talk.” I have about twenty-five
thousand words written, but I have only just started to work on developing
them.It is going to be a long project, but it is something I have wanted to do
for a long time.
'''PS''': Thank you, Mike, for an inspiring and deep reaching conversation. You
have always been a most accessible, collegial encyclopedia of all things Mailer.
And I’m so pleased that nothing has changed.
JML: Thanks, Phil. I appreciate it. It is always good to talk to you about Norman. I really appreciate the chance to address your pertinent questions.
'''PS''': All fine, Mike. You discussed many things that our readers were not
aware of but have a natural interest in and it is important for them to come
out. I am very pleased by that.
JJames
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