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Lipton’s Journal/Introduction: Difference between revisions
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{{DISPLAYTITLE:<span style="font-size:22px;">{{BASEPAGENAME}}/</span>{{SUBPAGENAME}}}}__NOTOC__ | {{DISPLAYTITLE:<span style="font-size:22px;">{{BASEPAGENAME}}/</span>{{SUBPAGENAME}}}}__NOTOC__ | ||
{{byline|last=Lennon|first=J. Michael|last1=Mailer|first1=Susan|last2=Lucas|first2=Gerald R.}} | {{byline|last=Lennon|first=J. Michael|last1=Mailer|first1=Susan|last2=Lucas|first2=Gerald R.}} | ||
{{dc|dc=T|he | {{dc|dc=T|he mid-1950s was a difficult time for Norman Mailer.}} {{NM}}, who had been a literary phenomenon at the age of 25 with his first novel ''[[The Naked and the Dead]]'' (1948), was now at thirty-two the author of an unsuccessful second novel which had been brutally dismissed by the critics. There was much at stake with his third novel, ''[[The Deer Park]]'' (1955), about to be published by Rinehart. Mailer felt it was his chance to redeem himself, to believe once again that he was not an impostor but a true novelist. Mailer recalls this time in his 1959 essay, “[[59.14|The Mind of an Outlaw]],” Mailer’s ego-bruised, comic-caustic account of how he peddled ''The Deer Park'' accumulating rejections like barnacles, he mentions a journal that he kept during that unhappy time. Titled “Lipton’s” (tea = marijuana), the journal was “a wild set of thoughts and outlines for huge projects.” The ideas “came so fast,” he wrote, “that sometimes I think my mind was dulled by the heat.” He began “Lipton’s”{{efn|The original typescript is in the Mailer archive at the Harry Ransom Center, University of Texas-Austin. This edition was prepared from the carbon copy, which Mailer gave to Lennon in the early 2000s.}} on December 1, 1954 and made entries sporadically, usually on Mondays and Tuesdays after a weekend of smoking pot and going to Harlem jazz clubs with his new wife, [[w:Adele Morales|Adele Morales]]. After 13 weeks, he put the journal aside in order to begin a final revision of ''The Deer Park'', which Putnam’s—the seventh publisher to consider it—accepted for fall publication. | ||
“Lipton’s” is Mailer’s unsparing assessment of his intellectual resources, literary abilities, personal relationships, and psycho-sexual well-being at age 32. It is also a record of the effects of marijuana, one similar to [[w:Thomas De Quincey|Thomas De Quincey]]’s ''[[w:Confessions of an English Opium-Eater|Confessions of an English Opium-Eater]]'' (1822) in its celebration of the salubrious effects of a drug, and the drawbacks. Mailer drew on the cavalcade of ideas in “Lipton’s,” some of them only partially birthed, and many delivered via the cumbersome jargon of psychology and sociology, for the remainder of his writing career. “[[The White Negro]],”{{efn|First published in ''Dissent'' (summer 1957), it was reprinted in ''Advertisements''. In both it contained the same subtitle: ''Superficial Reflections on the Hipster''. City Light Press in San Francisco published it as a pamphlet in 1959, and reprinted it perhaps a dozen times into the 1970s. The cover was a reverse negative shot of an archetypal hipster, rumored for years to be Paul Newman, but identified as photojournalist Harry Redl. See {{harvtxt|Bishop|2012|p=295}}.}} his most celebrated and debated essay, published in 1957, was the first and perhaps most important outgrowth of “Lipton’s,” but its influence can be seen in subsequent books as disparate as ''[[Cannibals and Christians]]'' (1966), ''[[The Armies of the Night]]'' (1968), ''[[Ancient Evenings]]'' (1983), and ''[[Harlot’s Ghost]]'' (1991).{{efn|The conflicting forces in ''Cannibals and Christians'' mirror the homeodynamic-sociostatic opposition in “Lipton’s.” The Cannibals are the forces of reaction stretching from the Republican Party to “the ghosts of Nazis; the Christians are the party of revolution and change, and cover the spectrum from L.B.J. to Mao Tse-tung. ''The Armies of the Night'' is as searching a self-analysis as “Lipton’s,” and the best presentation of Mailer’s ultimate political identity as Left-conservative. The nice Jewish boy from Brooklyn is again the “despised” self-image. ''Ancient Evenings'' is among other things, a further exploration of Mailer’s interest in the double or hidden meanings of words, first essayed in “Lipton’s.” ''Harlot’s Ghost'' presents an elaborate rethinking of the duality of human identity, discussed at length in “Lipton’s,” as the Alpha-Omega theory of Kittredge Gardiner, a CIA analyst.}} | “Lipton’s” is Mailer’s unsparing assessment of his intellectual resources, literary abilities, personal relationships, and psycho-sexual well-being at age 32. It is also a record of the effects of marijuana, one similar to [[w:Thomas De Quincey|Thomas De Quincey]]’s ''[[w:Confessions of an English Opium-Eater|Confessions of an English Opium-Eater]]'' (1822) in its celebration of the salubrious effects of a drug, and the drawbacks. Mailer drew on the cavalcade of ideas in “Lipton’s,” some of them only partially birthed, and many delivered via the cumbersome jargon of psychology and sociology, for the remainder of his writing career. “[[The White Negro]],”{{efn|First published in ''Dissent'' (summer 1957), it was reprinted in ''Advertisements''. In both it contained the same subtitle: ''Superficial Reflections on the Hipster''. City Light Press in San Francisco published it as a pamphlet in 1959, and reprinted it perhaps a dozen times into the 1970s. The cover was a reverse negative shot of an archetypal hipster, rumored for years to be Paul Newman, but identified as photojournalist Harry Redl. See {{harvtxt|Bishop|2012|p=295}}.}} his most celebrated and debated essay, published in 1957, was the first and perhaps most important outgrowth of “Lipton’s,” but its influence can be seen in subsequent books as disparate as ''[[Cannibals and Christians]]'' (1966), ''[[The Armies of the Night]]'' (1968), ''[[Ancient Evenings]]'' (1983), and ''[[Harlot’s Ghost]]'' (1991).{{efn|The conflicting forces in ''Cannibals and Christians'' mirror the homeodynamic-sociostatic opposition in “Lipton’s.” The Cannibals are the forces of reaction stretching from the Republican Party to “the ghosts of Nazis; the Christians are the party of revolution and change, and cover the spectrum from L.B.J. to Mao Tse-tung. ''The Armies of the Night'' is as searching a self-analysis as “Lipton’s,” and the best presentation of Mailer’s ultimate political identity as Left-conservative. The nice Jewish boy from Brooklyn is again the “despised” self-image. ''Ancient Evenings'' is among other things, a further exploration of Mailer’s interest in the double or hidden meanings of words, first essayed in “Lipton’s.” ''Harlot’s Ghost'' presents an elaborate rethinking of the duality of human identity, discussed at length in “Lipton’s,” as the Alpha-Omega theory of Kittredge Gardiner, a CIA analyst.}} | ||
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===Notes=== | ====Notes==== | ||
{{Notelist}} | {{Notelist}} | ||
===Citations=== | ====Citations==== | ||
{{Reflist|20em}} | {{Reflist|20em}} | ||
===Works Cited=== | ====Works Cited==== | ||
{{Refbegin|indent=yes|30em}} | {{Refbegin|indent=yes|30em}} | ||
* {{cite journal |last=Bishop |first=Sarah |title=The Life and Death of the Celebrity Author in Maidstone |url=https://prmlr.us/mr12bish |journal=The Mailer Review |volume=6 |issue=1 |date=2012 |pages=288–309 |access-date= |ref=harv }} | * {{cite journal |last=Bishop |first=Sarah |title=The Life and Death of the Celebrity Author in Maidstone |url=https://prmlr.us/mr12bish |journal=The Mailer Review |volume=6 |issue=1 |date=2012 |pages=288–309 |access-date= |ref=harv }} | ||