The Mailer Review/Volume 5, 2011/Tributes to Norris Church Mailer/Remembering Norris: Excerpts from an Unpublished Account of Norman Mailer’s Last Days: Difference between revisions

The first copies of ''The Castle in the Forest'' arrived and NM inscribed one to Donna and me. He also signed some magazines and other books, including a couple associated with ''Marilyn''. He said that it is probably the book that most Americans know him by most, and the first one of his that NCM had read. She got it for joining the Book-of-the-Month Club. When NM was visiting Fig Gwaltney [army buddy] in Arkansas, she called up and asked if she could come to the party that he was having for NM, as she was intrigued after reading ''Marilyn''. Fig wasn’t overjoyed about having this young woman join the party of older faculty members that he was throwing for NM. “He suspected something might come of the meeting of Barbara and me,” NM said. “He was right,” I said. This brought on a big laugh.

===01–16–07===

NCM emailed me that she and NM are thinking of putting the house in P-Town on the market in February 2008. A lot could take place between now and then, she noted. She is considering her own mother (who is in a nursing home in Orleans), her sons, daughter-in-law and grandchild living in Brooklyn, and the rest of the Mailer kids, most of whom she helped to raise in whole or in part. But NM’s asthma is not getting any better, which argues for staying in P-Town. She is torn and anxious about this, wanting to be with NM but also missing her children and granddaughter, not to mention her stepchildren. The loss of signed books is also troubling her, and she has bought a large locking bookcase to store the valuable books now housed in an open bookcase on the second floor of 627 Commercial Street.