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The Mailer Review/Volume 3, 2009/It Takes a Thief to Know a Thief: Biographies of Norman Mailer: Difference between revisions
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Norman Kingsley Mailer certainly warrants biographical attention. Fiery intelligence blazed in his blue eyes, and the American public watched as his slight frame became thick and muscular; only in recent years did his canes foreshadow a frailty strong enough to bring death. The full force of his mind shows in the numbers of over forty books, including eleven novels. Before he died on November 10, 2007, he had written myriad essays, nonfiction narratives, miscellanies, hundreds of articles and interviews, and thousands of letters. The Norman Mailer Collection at the Harry Ransom Center for the Humanities is the largest there of any single author. Mailer is compared either lovingly or with hostility to Ernest Hemingway, John Updike, and F. Scott Fitzgerald; clearly Mailer reigns as one of the foremost writers of the twentieth century. His years of writing, experimenting, philosophizing, brawling, interviewing, and womanizing in both private and public arenas fascinate. He certainly hasn’t escaped biographers’ attention. Four thick, fact laden and rumor intensive biographies have explored the man and the myth of Mailer. He warranted America’s attention and he got it. Through biography a man or woman lives, bestowing greatness or acclaim or ignominy on the biographical subject. In Norman Mailer’s case, biography does all of these and more. | Norman Kingsley Mailer certainly warrants biographical attention. Fiery intelligence blazed in his blue eyes, and the American public watched as his slight frame became thick and muscular; only in recent years did his canes foreshadow a frailty strong enough to bring death. The full force of his mind shows in the numbers of over forty books, including eleven novels. Before he died on November 10, 2007, he had written myriad essays, nonfiction narratives, miscellanies, hundreds of articles and interviews, and thousands of letters. The Norman Mailer Collection at the Harry Ransom Center for the Humanities is the largest there of any single author. Mailer is compared either lovingly or with hostility to Ernest Hemingway, John Updike, and F. Scott Fitzgerald; clearly Mailer reigns as one of the foremost writers of the twentieth century. His years of writing, experimenting, philosophizing, brawling, interviewing, and womanizing in both private and public arenas fascinate. He certainly hasn’t escaped biographers’ attention. Four thick, fact laden and rumor intensive biographies have explored the man and the myth of Mailer. He warranted America’s attention and he got it. Through biography a man or woman lives, bestowing greatness or acclaim or ignominy on the biographical subject. In Norman Mailer’s case, biography does all of these and more. | ||
Biographers have differing motivations for building a life in biographical text: market considerations; respect for a person’s work; the chance to live in the reflected glory of the biographical subject, to interview the famous, to gathering some of the acclaim. Respect for Mailer’s writing certainly drove Mailer scholar Robert Lucid’s attempt to write the “authorized” biography of Mailer, but Lucid’s illness and life circumstance stopped his work and he did not get beyond Mailer at twenty-eight. I do not know what drove Peter {{harvtxt|Manso|1985}}, Hilary {{harvtxt|Mills|1982}}, Carl {{harvtxt|Rollyson|1991}} and Mary {{harvtxt|Dearborn|1999}} to spend years researching and finally writing thick biographies of Norman Mailer. I hope that each biographer tried to penetrate the mystery of Mailer—a man so open, so verbal, so ready to engage the public. But that hope diminishes in light of the biographies themselves. Mailer said biographers “present me as if I have no inner life” and thus far, he was right | Biographers have differing motivations for building a life in biographical text: market considerations; respect for a person’s work; the chance to live in the reflected glory of the biographical subject, to interview the famous, to gathering some of the acclaim. Respect for Mailer’s writing certainly drove Mailer scholar Robert Lucid’s attempt to write the “authorized” biography of Mailer, but Lucid’s illness and life circumstance stopped his work and he did not get beyond Mailer at twenty-eight. I do not know what drove Peter {{harvtxt|Manso|1985}}, Hilary {{harvtxt|Mills|1982}}, Carl {{harvtxt|Rollyson|1991}} and Mary {{harvtxt|Dearborn|1999}} to spend years researching and finally writing thick biographies of Norman Mailer. I hope that each biographer tried to penetrate the mystery of Mailer—a man so open, so verbal, so ready to engage the public. But that hope diminishes in light of the biographies themselves. Mailer said biographers “present me as if I have no inner life” and thus far, he was right.{{sfn|Lennon|2008}} This isn’t to say that the four published biographies do not bring something of value to Mailer scholarship. Each does. | ||
In taking on the reading of four biographies of Norman Mailer, I expected to read as a professional biographer, looking for comparative data, accuracy, the biographer’s sense of the man. What happened was more startling, indeed. I read them as a reader: in airports, on airplanes, during jury duty, in my office, in dentists’ waiting rooms, on sandy beaches, by bedside lamp. And I changed my reader-character as each book seemed to dictate. Each biography moved from Mailer as child to student to acclaimed writer to public celebrity. I followed the biographers’ rhythms, presentations, innuendos—awaiting Mailer’s resurrection into a life I recognized as whole and human. I learned a great deal about Norman Mailer, and much, too, about the effect of the biographer’s shaping of material to form the man. | In taking on the reading of four biographies of Norman Mailer, I expected to read as a professional biographer, looking for comparative data, accuracy, the biographer’s sense of the man. What happened was more startling, indeed. I read them as a reader: in airports, on airplanes, during jury duty, in my office, in dentists’ waiting rooms, on sandy beaches, by bedside lamp. And I changed my reader-character as each book seemed to dictate. Each biography moved from Mailer as child to student to acclaimed writer to public celebrity. I followed the biographers’ rhythms, presentations, innuendos—awaiting Mailer’s resurrection into a life I recognized as whole and human. I learned a great deal about Norman Mailer, and much, too, about the effect of the biographer’s shaping of material to form the man. | ||
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Mills’ lucid, nearly lurid narrative of Mailer’s life subordinates his own sense of himself as first and foremost a writer. He proved that over and over again in the breadth of his subject matter, and the consistent shifting crafting of his style and content. In Mills’ biography, the Mailer who takes a swing at McGeorge Bundy and head-butted and thumb wrestled all takers subsumes the man who published what some critics called the greatest war novel, ''The Naked and the Dead'', at the age of twenty-five, helped found the ''Village Voice'', took literary journalism to new heights, and won a Pulitzer apiece for ''The Armies of the Night'' and ''The Executioner’s Song''. To her credit, Mills gives the reader a great read of an utterly mesmerizing life, supplying “enough graph points of narrative to chart Mailer’s path whole.”{{sfn|Carson|1983|p=10}}{{efn|Carson found Mills’ biography conscientious and avoiding “sensationalism” and “sycophancy.” I cannot agree that she avoided the sensational.}} Mailer, the whole man, remains absent. Absolutely different in form and tone than Mills, Peter Manso’s nearly contemporaneous biography ''Mailer: His Life and Times'' regrettably, also failed to locate a coherent sense of Mailer—the man and the writer. | Mills’ lucid, nearly lurid narrative of Mailer’s life subordinates his own sense of himself as first and foremost a writer. He proved that over and over again in the breadth of his subject matter, and the consistent shifting crafting of his style and content. In Mills’ biography, the Mailer who takes a swing at McGeorge Bundy and head-butted and thumb wrestled all takers subsumes the man who published what some critics called the greatest war novel, ''The Naked and the Dead'', at the age of twenty-five, helped found the ''Village Voice'', took literary journalism to new heights, and won a Pulitzer apiece for ''The Armies of the Night'' and ''The Executioner’s Song''. To her credit, Mills gives the reader a great read of an utterly mesmerizing life, supplying “enough graph points of narrative to chart Mailer’s path whole.”{{sfn|Carson|1983|p=10}}{{efn|Carson found Mills’ biography conscientious and avoiding “sensationalism” and “sycophancy.” I cannot agree that she avoided the sensational.}} Mailer, the whole man, remains absent. Absolutely different in form and tone than Mills, Peter Manso’s nearly contemporaneous biography ''Mailer: His Life and Times'' regrettably, also failed to locate a coherent sense of Mailer—the man and the writer. | ||
Let’s give the devil his due—in this case Manso—for this remarkable book of biography, and for a biographical experiment of compilation that worked wonderfully on many levels. There is the cacophony of voices, over 150 of them. Nearly everyone—from Fan Mailer to Norris Church to Andy Warhol to Gloria Steinem—gets their say about Mailer, telling stories, remembering relationships, giving voice to a man who was so multidimensional, written so much, bedded and wed so many women, loyally forged friendships, seduced publishers, broke with all of them only to come back later a more reasonable, or a more furious combatant. | |||
Mailer complained that Manso’s biography turned him into a “gargoyle,”{{sfn|Mailer|1986}} and Manso’s collection of stories didn’t really make Mailer an ornament, or a grotesque, but a corpse at a wake—an interesting corpse to be sure, and the eulogies and stories about the “dead” fascinating, detailed. The many stories that make up this biography are absolutely essential to any study of Mailer, but curious considering that Mailer was still much alive and “kicking” in the year of its first publication, 1985. Manso does occasionally include a comment or a story from Mailer himself, though they seem like echoes from the grave, clarifying, remedying “faulty” perspectives of those who surrounded the figure in life. If I, as reader, often felt like the outsider at the Wake of a particularly interesting man, sitting stiffly in the back while others brought the subject back to life in memory—and momentarily—I remained riveted to this “rough, synoptic gallimaufry.”{{sfn|Burgess|1985|p=103}} | |||
Nowhere in the other biographies do Mailer’s relationships, for good and ill, come forth better. His best friends, his wives, his sister, his sister’s friends, his literary combatants, his publishers, his boxing combatants—all tell of their Norman Mailer. One or two examples simply won’t suffice; the book is so packed with themes of Mailer’s life, so crowded with the people who surrounded him. George Plimpton explains Mailer’s energy: “Even sitting with him when he’s absolutely at ease, the energy is there, something almost palpable, and I’ve never known a person who had it to such a degree.”{{sfn|Manso|1985|p=577}} Fan remarks after Mailer stabbed his wife Adele: “If Norman would stop marrying these women who make him do these terrible things.”{{sfn|Manso|1985|p=334}} Jules Feiffer reflects: “[T]wo people I venerate very much, Norman and Izzy Stone, seemingly take occasions when people are there to honor and adore them and make certain that the crowd ends up hating them.”{{sfn|Manso|1985|p=532}} Mailer’s appeal, his energy, and his paradoxes burst from the pages as Mailer’s family and friends, literate people with an eye and ear for detail, tell Mailer stories, one after the other, a comment here, and a remembrance there, not a dull word for over 700 pages. Some tellers are surprisingly candid. Alan Kapelner details zestfully his lust for Mailer’s second wife, Adele. Paul Kassner vividly recollects their “falling out” in 1967. “There’s stuff here you never knew even if you’ve read everything that’s ever been written by or about the man.”{{sfn|Lehmann-Haupt|1985|p=20}} | |||
Manso included bits from reviews of Mailer’s work, an occasional Mailer response, and quite wonderfully, excerpts from the letters to and from Francis Irby Gwaltney, Mailer’s army friend, a writer himself. The letters, oddly enough, seem fresher than many of the voices. Perhaps because the letters were not transcriptions of interviews or recollections, they retained the vigor of immediacy. Gwaltney writes in anger: “You seem to think that anything you say—no matter how insulting and crassly adolescent it is—must be taken for an utterance of God . . . So let’s just stop this second-coming-of Christ routine. It bores me.”{{sfn|Manso|1985|p=239}} And Mailer’s voice is never clearer than in the letters he writes to “Fig” or his wife Ecey. “I like a fight between friends, I mean a quick honest one. Maybe I’m pugnacious, but it’s the only thing that relaxes me. . . .”{{sfn|Manso|1985|p=279}} Gwaltney doesn’t want anything, really, from Mailer but his friendship, one who gives undisguised affection and brutal commentary without fear. The letters also provide a narrative line that is easy to follow, and which is lacking in the biography as a whole. The Mailer at the center of Manso’s biography is diffuse—shot out in brilliant sparks that never quite come together—not quite man, not quite spirit. But the people and the stories in Manso’s ''Mailer'' deserve a hearing. | |||
Despite the heady experience of listening in and sorting out all the exhilarating talk, there are difficulties enough to caution readers. One trouble is following Mailer’s life and relationships with a cohesive clarity. Manso brings people in and out of the text to comment, scattering the central subject—Mailer—who seems at times like the “Lion in a Kaleidoscope.”{{sfn|Goldsmith|1985|p=9}} Manso breaks up the stories—dividing the biography’s structure into time chunks of about four years—to better serve chronology, which on the whole is a smart move. He moves the story along, getting competing voices to tell the same story “slant,” in their own way. But the fits and starts of the chronology make the context somewhat confusing and unnerving. As one reviewer complained, “Mr. Manso frequently places opinions of an event before an explanation of what happened.”{{sfn|Goldsmith|1985|p=9}} Another frustrating feature of the book is Manso’s failure to identify the speakers within the text. Unlike a eulogy which usually begins, “Norman Mailer was my friend for forty years,” or “Norman was my great literary rival,” or I “lived down the block from Mailer as he grew up in Brooklyn” the reader is forced to sort out who speaks, asking “Who ARE these people? Sandy Charlebois Thomas, Charlie Brown, Ned Polsky, Glen Nelson or Shirley Fingerhood?” Reading nearly twenty five years after the initial edition, I found that names and persons have faded in the cultural memory, or at least my memory. Voices then seem “disembodied” from the overarching story, though a reader can—and must—check the list of characters in an alphabetized list at the book’s end. As Diane Johnson writes, “Ignoring your general ignorance of the details, the speakers allude to events that you cannot quite pick up on. . . . Time periods converge. You aren’t sure what happened when, or indeed, what has happened, but after a while you begin to figure it out.”{{sfn|Johnson|1985|p=147}} | |||
And then, unfortunately, suspicions and protests about Manso’s handling of the interviews call the facts into question. Manso did all the interviews himself, miles and miles of tape and transcript. He has refused to release the transcripts, resulting in a cacophony of complaints that he altered key portions to fit his themes about both subject (Mailer) and speaker. Norris Church, for example, was appalled when the earlier galleys depicted her swearing—with “shit this” and “fuck that”—and as Mailer said of Norris: “for better or worse, being brought up as a Baptist, she may think such words but she does not utter them.”{{sfn|Mailer|1986}} Apparently Mailer and Church prevailed on Manso to delete the swearing. But how it got there in the first place begs an important question. Just how much did Manso alter of others’ tales to tell Mailer’s story? Mailer said at least twenty people thought their words had been “coarsened, cheapened, rendered base, distorted.”{{sfn|Mailer|1986}} What is said is as widely varied as Mailer’s experience of life and people itself. But how it is said becomes strangely uniform in parts, a curious similarity of tone, what Elizabeth Hardwick called “sanitized diction.”{{sfn|Hardwick|1985|p=3}} Hellman interviews definitely sounded like Hellman, Plimpton’s like Plimpton, James Baldwin sound like Baldwin. But Cus D’Amato, Pete Hamill, Mickey Knox, Walter Minton, and Midge Decter sometimes similarly speak with a flattened tone. So a question that must be answered is how accountable to the truth of the stories, of the voices, is Manso’s book? | |||
Another issue that haunts all biographers of living subjects is one of influence. In 1985, Mailer was not some embalmed body in the middle of the room. Mailer lived. And he had great influence. So while many like Jean Malaquais felt confident enough to criticize Mailer and did, others did not necessarily hold to unmoderated truth. Their complaints about the veracity of the transcript might be fueled by chagrin at what they had said. Few, apparently, wanted to make an enemy of Mailer for life. An example is James Atlas’ remarks about a critical review he wrote. He tells Manso: “I didn’t say enough about his career, lit-crit stuff, which I wish I’d done more of, because I didn’t make sufficient argument for how great I really think he is. . . . Maybe he wouldn’t hurt me, but that that should even cross one’s mind . . . I’m not quaking in fear, I just feel it would be a very unpleasant experience.”{{sfn|Manso|1985|p=599}} Thus, the speakers had three important audiences—Manso and his public ready for a Mailer tell-all, the speakers themselves jockeying for position and aware of others doing the same, and Mailer lurking in the wings, still contentious, competitive. | |||
Yet when all is read, the voices heard, the letters read, the absolute breadth of life and relationships revealed, I find Manso has done something extraordinary. He didn’t, as Mailer fumed, create “a study in squalid sound and fury.”{{sfn|Mailer|1986}} He creatively conceived of biography as a gossipy but zestful poke at speakers to get them to reveal what they know, what they feel. By subordinating his own narrative voice, he lets his book speak—of intricacies revealed, jealousies explained, contradictions forthrightly delivered. If the book is too much a eulogy, too heavy-handed in its editing, too manipulative in its telling the Mailer story—it is still a compelling portrait of Mailer who dominates its center—perhaps a gargoyle, perhaps a corpse, perhaps a heavy breathing presence cajoling those that make his life to tell the “right” story. ''Mailer: His Life and Times''—despite its flaws, its inaccuracies, its mean-spirited, poisonous new afterward, is nevertheless crucial to Mailer scholarship and the ethos of an age. | |||
While I approached the other Mailer biographies with a sense of curiosity, wondering how the story of Mailer would act on Martinson the reader, I approached the third biography, Carl Rollyson’s ''The Lives of Norman Mailer'' (1991) with an attitude: I was the enemy. I had admired his thorough research in his Hellman biography, but despaired when I found no woman at its center. I assumed, then, that Rollyson had also written derivative, uninspiring facts that lead to little understanding of Mailer and his works. The Mailer photograph on the cover, a crabby fifty-something Norman, heightened my vindictive sense that Rollyson would treat Mailer as a cliché. Since he had written a scathing review about my own Hellman biography, I sharpened my knives, hardly the objective reader. After reading Rollyson’s biography of Mailer, however, I courageously, even valiantly, admit that I was mostly wrong; the book has its flaws, but in some ways it surpasses the other biographies in important ways. And it nearly kills me to admit it. | |||
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{{refbegin|30em|indent=yes}} | {{refbegin|30em|indent=yes}} | ||
* {{cite magazine |last=Bikerts |first=Sven |title=Mailer's Head |magazine=Esquire |pages=80–81 |date=November 1999 |ref=harv }} Rev. of ''Mailer: A Biography'', by Mary Dearborn. | * {{cite magazine |last=Bikerts |first=Sven |title=Mailer's Head |magazine=Esquire |pages=80–81 |date=November 1999 |ref=harv }} Rev. of ''Mailer: A Biography'', by Mary Dearborn. | ||
* {{cite news |last=Blades |first=John |date= | * {{cite news |last=Blades |first=John |date={{date|1983-03-06|mdy}} |title=Norman Mailer Buried in Deluge of Literary Biographies |url= |work=Chicago Tribune |location=sec. 7 |page=2 |access-date= |ref=harv }} Rev. of ''Mailer: A Biography'', by Hilary Mills. | ||
* {{cite magazine |last=Burgess |first=Anthony |title=The Prisoner of Fame |magazine=The Atlantic |volume=255 |pages=100–104 |date=1985 |ref=harv }} Rev. of ''Mailer: His Life and Times'', by Peter Manso. | * {{cite magazine |last=Burgess |first=Anthony |title=The Prisoner of Fame |magazine=The Atlantic |volume=255 |pages=100–104 |date=1985 |ref=harv }} Rev. of ''Mailer: His Life and Times'', by Peter Manso. | ||
* {{cite interview |last=Busa |first=Christopher |subject-link= |interviewer= |title=Personal Interview |work= |date=October 17, 2008 |publisher= |location= |url= |access-date= |ref=harv}} | * {{cite interview |last=Busa |first=Christopher |subject-link= |interviewer= |title=Personal Interview |work= |date=October 17, 2008 |publisher= |location= |url= |access-date= |ref=harv}} | ||
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* {{cite book |last=Dearborn |first=Mary |date=1999 |title=Mailer: A Biography |location=Boston |publisher=Houghton Mifflin |ref=harv }} | * {{cite book |last=Dearborn |first=Mary |date=1999 |title=Mailer: A Biography |location=Boston |publisher=Houghton Mifflin |ref=harv }} | ||
* {{cite news |last=Goldsmith |first=Barbara |date=May 19, 1985 |title=Lion in a Kaleidoscope |url= |work=New York Times |location=sec. 7 |page=9 |access-date= |ref=harv }} Rev. of ''Mailer: His Life and Times'', by Peter Manso. | * {{cite news |last=Goldsmith |first=Barbara |date=May 19, 1985 |title=Lion in a Kaleidoscope |url= |work=New York Times |location=sec. 7 |page=9 |access-date= |ref=harv }} Rev. of ''Mailer: His Life and Times'', by Peter Manso. | ||
* {{cite magazine |last=Hardwick |first=Elizabeth |title=The Teller and the Tape |magazine=The New York Review of Books |date=May 30, 1985 |ref=harv }} Rev. of ''Mailer: His Life and Times'', by Peter Manso. | * {{cite magazine |last=Hardwick |first=Elizabeth |title=The Teller and the Tape |magazine=The New York Review of Books |date=May 30, 1985 |page=3 |ref=harv }} Rev. of ''Mailer: His Life and Times'', by Peter Manso. | ||
* {{cite magazine |last=Johnson |first=Diane |title=A Moveable Roast |magazine=Vogue |pages=147–148 |date=June 1985 |ref=harv }} Rev. of ''Mailer: His Life and Times'', by Peter Manso. | * {{cite magazine |last=Johnson |first=Diane |title=A Moveable Roast |magazine=Vogue |pages=147–148 |date=June 1985 |ref=harv }} Rev. of ''Mailer: His Life and Times'', by Peter Manso. | ||
* {{cite news |last=Kendall |first=Elaine |date=November 28, 1982 |title=Rev. of ''Mailer: A Biography'' by Hilary Mills |url= |work=Los Angeles Times |location= |page=1 |access-date= |ref=harv }} | * {{cite news |last=Kendall |first=Elaine |date=November 28, 1982 |title=Rev. of ''Mailer: A Biography'' by Hilary Mills |url= |work=Los Angeles Times |location= |page=1 |access-date= |ref=harv }} | ||
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* {{cite book |last=Malcolm |first=Janet |date=1995 |title=The Silent Woman: Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes |location=New York |publisher=Vintage |ref=harv }} | * {{cite book |last=Malcolm |first=Janet |date=1995 |title=The Silent Woman: Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes |location=New York |publisher=Vintage |ref=harv }} | ||
* {{cite news |last=Mailer |first=Norman |date=January 9, 2000 |title=Just the Factoids |url= |work=New York Times Book Review |location= |page=4 |access-date= |ref=harv }} | * {{cite news |last=Mailer |first=Norman |date=January 9, 2000 |title=Just the Factoids |url= |work=New York Times Book Review |location= |page=4 |access-date= |ref=harv }} | ||
* {{cite letter |last=Mailer |first=Norman |author-mask=1 |recipient=Bruce Dexter |subject=Personal Correspondence (PC) |location=Norman Mailer Archive | * {{cite letter |last=Mailer |first=Norman |author-mask=1 |recipient=Bruce Dexter |subject=Personal Correspondence (PC) |type=TS |location=Norman Mailer Archive |publisher=Harry Ransom Center, The University of Texas at Austin |date=June 13, 1985 |url= |access-date= |ref=harv }} | ||
* {{cite letter |last=Mailer |first=Norman |author-mask=1 |recipient= |work=Provincetown Banner |subject= | * {{cite letter |last=Mailer |first=Norman |author-mask=1 |recipient=the Editor |work=Provincetown Banner |subject=To the Editor |location=Norman Mailer Archive |publisher=Harry Ransom Center, The University of Texas at Austin. |date=May 13, 2002 |url= |access-date= |ref=harv }} | ||
* {{cite letter |last=Mailer |first=Norman |author-mask=1 |recipient=Hilary Mills |subject=PC |location=Norman Mailer Archive | * {{cite letter |last=Mailer |first=Norman |author-mask=1 |recipient=Hilary Mills |subject=PC |location=Norman Mailer Archive |publisher=Harry Ransom Center, The University of Texas at Austin |date=March 31, 1982 |url= |access-date= |ref=harv }} | ||
* {{cite letter |last=Mailer |first=Norman |author-mask=1 |recipient=Hilary Mills |subject=PC |location=Norman Mailer Archive | * {{cite letter |last=Mailer |first=Norman |author-mask=1 |recipient=Hilary Mills |subject=PC |location=Norman Mailer Archive |publisher=Harry Ransom Center, The University of Texas at Austin |date=January 21, 1983 |url= |access-date= |ref=harv }} | ||
* {{cite letter |last=Mailer |first=Norman |author-mask=1 |recipient=Jack Abbott |subject=PC |location=Norman Mailer Archive | * {{cite letter |last=Mailer |first=Norman |author-mask=1 |recipient=Jack Abbott |subject=PC |location=Norman Mailer Archive |publisher=Harry Ransom Center, The University of Texas at Austin |date=January 17, 1983 |url= |access-date= |ref=harv }} | ||
* {{cite letter |last=Mailer |first=Norman |author-mask=1 |recipient=Jean Malaquais |subject=PC |location=Norman Mailer Archive | * {{cite letter |last=Mailer |first=Norman |author-mask=1 |recipient=Jean Malaquais |subject=PC |location=Norman Mailer Archive |publisher=Harry Ransom Center, The University of Texas at Austin |date=April 23, 1986 |url= |access-date= |ref=harv }} | ||
* {{cite book |last=Manso |first=Peter |date=1985 |title=Mailer: His Life and Times |location=New York |publisher=Simon & Schuster |ref=harv }} | * {{cite book |last=Manso |first=Peter |date=1985 |title=Mailer: His Life and Times |location=New York |publisher=Simon & Schuster |ref=harv }} | ||
* {{cite book |last=Mills |first=Hilary |date=1982 |title=Mailer: A Biography |location=New York |publisher=Empire Books |ref=harv }} | * {{cite book |last=Mills |first=Hilary |date=1982 |title=Mailer: A Biography |location=New York |publisher=Empire Books |ref=harv }} | ||