The Mailer Review/Volume 3, 2009/Washed by the Swells of Time: Reading Mailer, 1998–2008: Difference between revisions

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 Those who are interested in Mailer’s life, work, and cultural milieu will also be interested in J. Michael and Donna Pedro Lennon’s ''Norman Mailer: Works and Days'', a thorough bio-bibliographical study that documents all Mailer publications, reviews, and major critical statements. The witty annotations make this volume an enjoyable read, and ''Works and Days'' also includes many unpublished photos and useful apparatuses such as the “ratings of Reviews” of Mailer’s twenty-seven key books. Lennon has assigned a numerical value to all reviews of the main Mailer books and has charted them from most to least successful. Where does ''Oswald’s Tale'' show up on this list? Just slightly above the center mark. Where is ''Of a Fire on the Moon'' within Mailer’s ''oeuvre''? It is the seventh book from the top, following ''The Executioner’s Song'' (1979). In a factoid world where many believe “there are no facts, only interpretations,” it is important to preserve the value of facts: ''Works and Days'' is the sort of tool that helps us keep a complex record straight.<sup>5</sup>
+The inaugural issue of The Mailer Review (Fall 2007), expertly edited by Phillip Sipiora, was a much-anticipated publication by members of The Norman Mailer Society.<sup>6</sup> It is an eclectic collection: there is a piece by Barbara Mailer Wasserman, Norman’s sister, on the years they spent together before
+he became famous; an analysis of Mailer’s work in films by William Kennedy entitled “Norman Mailer as Occasional Commentator in a Self-Interview and Memoir”–an homage to Mailer’s own ludic approach to
+interviews. Jonathan Middlebrook anticipates the reconsideration to come in “Five Notes Toward a Reassessment of Norman Mailer,” and Alan Petigny’s “Norman Mailer, ‘The White Negro,’ and New Conceptions of the Self in Postwar America” argues for the centrality of Mailer’s polemical definition of the hipster for anyone who wishes to understand the shifts that characterize postwar American culture.
+“Boston State Hospital: The Summer of 1942” is an excerpt from Robert F. Lucid’s unfinished authorized biography of Mailer, and it is accompanied by an excerpt from Mailer’s ''play'' “The Naked and the Dead,” written in 1942 after Mailer’s experience as an employee in the of Boston State Hospital. J. Michael Lennon presents a selection of Mailer’s letters entitled “‘A Series of Tragicomedies’: Mailer’s Letters on ''The Deer Park'', 1954–55,” which chronicle Mailer’s extraordinary effort to complete and publish his third novel. There is also Philip Bufithis’ reconnaissance, “''The Executioner’s Song'': a Life Beneath Our Conscience,” Jeffrey Severs’ interview with Mailer comradein-arms, entitled “The Untold Story Behind ''The Executioner’s Song'': A Conversation with Lawrence Schiller,” and Morris Dickstein’s typically clear and
+authoritative “How Mailer Became ‘Mailer’: The Writer as Private and Public Character.”
+A variety of interesting visuals (including pages of his notebooks, plot charts, royalty statements, etc.) from the Mailer Archive at the Harry Ransom Center, appear courtesy of Cathy Henderson, Richard W. Oram, Molly Schwartzburg, and Molly Hardy: “Mailer Takes on America: Images from the Ransom Center Archive” is a museum show that comes to you. Donald L. Kaufmann’s “''An American Dream'': The Singular Nightmare” is a reprint of an influential essay on Mailer’s most cohesive novel, and there are five preliminary considerations of Mailer’s last novel ''The Castle in the Forest'' by renowned Mailer readers Christopher Ricks, Robert J. Begiebing, Barbara Probst Solomon, and Phillip Sipiora. Finally, Constance E. Holmes and
+J. Michael Lennon update Lennon’s essential Works and Days with a “Supplemental Bibliography Through 2006.”
+Mailer readers will find ''The Mailer Review'' at once indispensible and a whole lot of fun. Clearly it would not be possible to maintain this level of excellence, and of course Phillip Sipiora could not do this, so he exceeded it. The second volume of the ''Mailer Review'' (Fall 2008) was published after Mailer’s death on 10 November 2007, and is a tribute to Mailer’s towering achievement with contributions from the heavyweights of American writing and expression. It is twice as long as the inaugural volume and contains
+an entire section of tributes read during his memorial at Carnegie Hall in April 2008. This eclectic group of guests, which included Don DeLillo, Sean Penn, all of Mailer’s nine children, Günter Grass, and Lonnie Ali (wife of Muhammad Ali), shared personal anecdotes and reminisces of their encounters with Mailer. More of such remembrances continue in the next section of the journal; there are written tributes by writers like Gay Talese, Richard Lee Fulgham and filmmaker Dick Fontaine.
+Three works by Mailer are also included; a hitherto unpublished essay “What’s Wrong With America: Five Proposals,” the acceptance speech he gave at the National Book Foundation Award ceremony, and my favorite- the lyrics to a blues song he wrote called “The Bodily Functions Blues,” which is everything you would expect from its title.
+In 2005, the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center at the University of Texas at Austin acquired the archive of Mailer’s papers for $2.5 million, making it the go-to place for Mailer scholars, students and the public to study his papers first-hand. This collection was opened to the public in January 2008. The more than 1,000 boxes of materials include handwritten manuscripts and typescripts of his books, their galley proofs, drafts of every single one of his literary projects (published and unpublished), personal
+papers including business and financial records, and audio and video tapes.
+But it is Mailer’s nearly 45,000 letters with more than 3,500 correspondents, including friends and family, that should prove the most interesting primary material for researchers looking to find additional context to all his works as well as insight into the man himself. As Steve Mielke, lead archivist for the project, explains in Gillian Reagan’s article in the ''New York Observer'':
+{{quote|Correspondence within an archive often reveals unexpected insights that aren’t obvious in manuscripts or elsewhere .... From the 1940s to the 1980s, Mailer’s letters with Japanese literary translator Eiichi Yamanishi, for example, record a fascinating discussion between author and translator about the composition and meaning of Mailer’s works.}}
+Mailer corresponded with some of the most important American figures in his time, including Allen Ginsberg, Aldous Huxley, Truman Capote, Muhammad Ali, John Lennon, Don DeLillo, Joyce Carol Oates, Diana Trilling, James Jones and William Styron.