Norman Mailer: A Double Life

J. Michael Lennon

• Publisher: Simon & Schuster
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN: 9781439150214
• eBook ISBN: 9781439156209
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Film & Video
• Index: Literature

The “glorious…sweeping, full-scale biography” of Norman Mailer, the famous novelist, journalist, and public figure: “There’s not a paragraph in this enormous book that doesn’t contain a nugget of something you…wish you had known” (The New York Times).

Norman Mailer was one of the giants of American letters, and one of the most celebrated public figures of his time. He was a novelist, journalist, biographer, and filmmaker; a provocateur and passionate observer of his times; and a husband, father, and serial philanderer.

Perhaps nothing characterized Mailer more than his ambition. He wanted not merely to be the greatest writer of his generation, but a writer great enough to be compared to Dostoevsky and Tolstoy. As Michael Lennon describes, although he considered himself first and foremost a novelist, his greatest literary contribution may have been in journalism, where he used his novelistic gifts to explore the American psyche. He would return to certain subjects obsessively: John F. Kennedy, Marilyn Monroe, sex, technology, and the intricate relationship of fame and identity. Lennon captures Mailer in all his sharp complexities and shows us how he self-consciously invented and re-invented himself throughout his lifetime.

Michael Lennon knew Mailer for thirty-five years, and in this definitive biography, he had the cooperation of Mailer’s late widow, Norris Church, his ex-wives, and all of his children, as well as his sister, Barbara. He also had access to Mailer’s vast, unpublished correspondence and papers, and he interviewed dozens of people who knew Mailer. In Norman Mailer: A Double Life he “brings Mailer thoroughly alive in this great wallop of a book…and he captures the entirety of a man who embodied his era like no other” (The Washington Post).

NOTES

In addition to the Appreciations, I would like to reiterate my profound thanks to the Mailer Estate for permitting me to quote freely from Mailer’s published and unpublished work, the latter housed in the Mailer Archive of the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas–Austin. Permission to quote from these materials, especially Mailer’s letters, has allowed me to reveal his inner life as never before. Over the past seven years, the Mailer family and the staff of the Ransom Center have provided encouragement and cheerfully acceded to my every request for information or documents.

In the source notes that follow, I have cited where I have obtained the quotations and facts used in the book. There are three exceptions, namely my interviews, conversations, and e-mail exchanges with the late Norman Mailer, his sister, Barbara Mailer Wasserman, and Lawrence Schiller. Because of the number of conversations with these three key sources over many years—in Mailer’s case going back to the early 1970s—I have not tried to date quotations from them unless their comments have been published. The dates of my conversations with the more than eighty other individuals I have interviewed are given in the source notes.

AUTHOR’S INTERVIEWS

Anna Lou Humes Aldrich, 12-17-10; Peter Alson, 8-19-08, 4-23-12, 9-19-12; Fred Ambrose, 8-16-09; Nancy Ambrose, 8-16-09; Walter Anderson, 4-20-11; John Bailey, 4-15-12; Anne Barry, 5-4-11, 5-8-12, 11-23-12, 11-24-12; Adele Becker, 1-21-07, 4-8-09; Robert Begiebing, 3-3-12; Beverly Bentley, 5-26-11; Mashey Bernstein, 5-24-09; John Bowers, 3-23-10; Brock Brower, 12-30-10; Millicent Brower, 5-14-09; Tina Brown, 5-31-12; Philip Bufithis, 5-17-11; Christopher Busa, 3-14-09; Sal Cetrano, 10-?-12; Michael Chaiken, 4-19-11; Don DeLillo, 3-29-10; Laura Adams Dunham, 1-24-12; David Ebershoff, 3-26-10; Jason Epstein, 6-25-03, 11-6-08; Harry Evans, 5-31-12; Edwin Fancher, 10-18-10; Mia Feroleto, 8-?-12; Eileen Geist Finletter, 4-15-10; Ivan Fisher, 4-14-09; Eileen Fredrickson, 10-15-11, 12-12-11, 5-19-12; Aaron Goldman, fall, 2004; Doris Kearns Goodwin, 12-14-11; Richard Goodwin, 12-14-11; Thomas Heffernan, 5-24-10; Carol Holmes, 4-14-09, 11-29-11; Margo Howard, 5-24-10; Aurora Huston, 1-17-12, 2-10-12; William Kennedy, 8-4-11, 8-5-11; Mickey Knox, 9-15-08, 9-16-08, 9-17-08; Rudy Langlais, 3-1-12; Barry Leeds, 9-27-10; Peter Lennon, 3-14-11; Robert J. Lifton, 9-14-10; Tom Luddy, 3-?-12; Danielle Mailer, 8-20-08, 8-3-11, 10-19-11, 1-11-12, 4-17-12, 5-21-12, 4-17-13; Elizabeth (Betsy) Mailer, 11-29-11; Kate Mailer, 3-11-13; John Buffalo Mailer, 1-29-09, 10-16-10, 4-24-12; Maggie Mailer, 3-27-09; Matthew Mailer, 8-21-08, 12-28-11, 9-5-12; Michael Mailer, 11-1-03, 8-21-08, 12-28-11; Norris Church Mailer, 5-13-08, 11-17-08, 4-15-09, 1-30-09, 3-28-10, 10-16-10; Stephen Mailer, 11-5-08, 11-20-11, 3-22-12; Susan Mailer, 9-5-07, 10-29-10, 5-13-11, 8-18-11, 11-03-11, 1-23-12, 4-18-13; William Majeski, 4-23-12, 6-4-12; Elisabeth Malaquais, 6-10-10; Clifford Maskovsky, 2-5-10; Peter McEachern, 8-22-12; Legs McNeil, 7-19-12; Jeffrey Michelson, 7-24-11, 12-31-11; Adele Morales, 4-?-12; Adeline Lubell Naiman, 8-21-07; Mary Oliver, 9-20-11; Dotson Rader, 3-25-10, 3-8-12; Sam Radin, 5-23-10; Jack Richardson, 4-6-11; Lee Roscoe, summer, 2010; Carol Schneider, 3-24-10; Jack Scovil, 3-24-10; Irwin Shaw, 6-?-83; Robert Silvers, 4-15-09; Barbara Probst Solomon, 5-13-09, 3-26-10, 4-23-10; Richard G. Stern, 12-14-10; Carol Stevens, 3-28-09, 5-15-11, 6-13-11, 6-18-11, 9-21-11, 4-12-12; Richard Stratton, 4-15-09; Gay Talese, 1-23-11; Nan A. Talese, 10-19-10; Bonnie Timmerman, 5-28-12; James Toback, 8-14-10; John T. “Ike” Williams, 10-2...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Dedication
• Epigraph
• Prologue: The Riptides of Fame: June 1948
• One: Long Branch and Brooklyn
• Two: Harvard
• Three: The Army
• Four: Paris and Hollywood: Prominent and Empty
• Five: The Deer Park
• Six: General Marijuana and the Navigator
• Seven: A Felonious Assault and An American Dream
• Eight: Third Person Personal: Armies and After
• Nine: Politician to Prisoner
• Ten: The Turn to Biography
• Eleven: Death Wishes: Gilmore and Abbott
• Twelve: Pharaohs and Tough Guys
• Thirteen: An Unfinished Cathedral: Harlot’s Ghost
• Fourteen: A Merry Life and a Married One
• Fifteen: Old Freighter, Uncertain Sea
• Appreciations
• Books by Norman Mailer
• Photographs
• About J. Michael Lennon
• Notes
• Select Bibliography
• Photo Credits
• Index
• Copyright