The Mailer Review/Volume 13, 2019/On the State of Mailer Studies: A Conversation with J. Michael Lennon: Difference between revisions

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 more stable identity of either insider or outsider might not encounter?
-...
+'''JML''': : Oh, I think that there were definitely losses that came from him jumping back and forth across that fence. But, overall, I think that it was a plus.
+It enabled him to maintain his singular critical perspective. For example,
+giving up two years of his life leading PEN meant he wasn’t writing much
+during that time, and he had regrets about that. But once he was in it, he
+stuck to his commitment, including organizing and hosting the  International PEN conference, and rewriting the bylaws of the organization. Gay
+Talese told me that Norman came in and organized numerous committees,
+and this required rewriting the bylaws. They were needed, so Norman just
+sat down and personally re-wrote them. Gay Talese could not believe it. Well,
+that was Norman; he threw himself right into things.
+He lost a lot of time, however, doing things like that. Another example
+was running for mayor of New York with Jimmy Breslin. He gave away a big
+chunk of time in 1969 on that campaign He said that, if elected, he would
+give up writing. I think he must have had his fingers crossed when he said
+that. All of these forays, including filmmaking, cost him a great deal of lost
+time and he had regrets. But, on the other hand, there was a part of him that
+rebelled against the grind of writing six hours a day, six days a week, and felt
+the need to get out in the world and get roughed up. Right to the end he was
+seeking new experience, which he once called “the church of one’s acquired
+knowledge.”
+As a novelist, he was an ethnographer, and studied the ethos of a society,
+the main currents and obscure corners of its identity. That was something
+that he never stopped doing. He felt the need to out there, get immersed,
+and get roughed up, and then he’d jump over the fence, hide away and write.
+If you look at all the places where he lived, you see that New York City was
+always his primary residence. But he also had Provincetown, Vermont, New
+Hampshire, Stockbridge, and Bucks County, country places to which he
+could retreat when New York was driving him crazy with all the demands for
+him to appear on talk shows and go to social events. At a certain point he would get sick of that scene, and had to get away to get some work done.
+The insider-outsider identity was something that he cultivated. When he
+was living in Stockbridge, in western Massachusetts, with his fifth wife, Carol
+Stevens, he would get bored and say, “I have to go to New York City. I need
+some action.” Consequently, he moved fairly regularly between New York
+City and quieter, bucolic places, where he could write in peace. For a writer
+of his sensibilities and ambition, this alternation was a wise strategy.
+'''PS''': The past few years have surely been pivotal for Mailer Studies. After the
+publication of A Double Life, you and your wife, Donna Pedro, returned to
+Works and Days, a groundbreaking resource that not only chronicled what
+Mailer said and did from the beginning of his creative life, but also cataloged commentary on him and his work, as well as his numerous appearances. You published the first edition in 2000 (Sligo Press) and then, in 2018,
+you, Donna and Jerry Lucas brought out an expanded, revised edition. But
+let me go back in time. How did you become acquainted with Norman?
+'''JML''': At first, it was an epistolary relationship. In December 1970, I wrote to
+him after he appeared on The Dick Cavett Show where he had his infamous
+encounter with Gore Vidal and also interacted with Janet Flanner (and
+Cavett, of course). I wrote him a long letter about the show, and about the
+ideas in the dissertation that I was then writing, and right away I received a
+long letter back. I was very surprised that he answered me so quickly. That
+led to a series of letters with him before I actually met him in the flesh in October 1972 (parenthetically, the same month he first met Larry Schiller),
+when he was on a speaking tour during the McGovern-Nixon campaign. He
+was speaking at Western Illinois University, and I was teaching at the University of Illinois, Springfield, about 100 miles away, so I took my Mailer
+seminar up there to hear him speak. .I met him, and he remembered our correspondence. After he spoke, we spent the whole evening at a bar talking
+and closed the bar down about 1:30 in the morning.
+That meeting established our relationship. In the summers after that, when my wife and my
+family would go back to New England, we would visit him either in Maine
+or in Provincetown. This went on for many years until finally in 1997 we
+bought a condo in Provincetown So, our relationship began in a scholarly
+way, with my writing about Vidal and Cavett, and about my ideas about the shift in his writing to what we now call creative nonfiction. Over time, it
+grew into a personal relationship, a friendship.
+PS: How did your scholarly interest and then your personal relationship
+with Norman evolve into archival work, which you have been known for
+over many decades?
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