June 13, 2024

Bloody Heels

Today, I wore the wrong shoes, or socks, or both: my heels are bloody from where my Chuck Taylor’s sandpapered my skin for two miles. When did they replace soft fabric with grit and glass? And how am I going to walk the two miles back?

My Norman Mailer’s Short Fiction bibliography is coming along. I figure this will be a good resource for the book.

I received a bit of acknowledgment about my fellowship on the MGA web site, and for some reason, here. There’s a mention of Lipton’s, too. Links would have been nice, but I’m happy for my work to get some mention.

Box 52 has a big folder on “The Last Night,” the last short story that Mailer wrote in 1962 and published in Esquire in 1963. The first handwritten note is titled “The Last Night novel,” which fits, as Mailer considered himself a novelist above all, though I would argue he has some excellent short stories. There’s also an undated letter to “Harold” that appears to be a treatment of the story. I scanned the first three pages only, since it just becomes the story early on page 3. There are also five pages that are preceded by a note that says “OUT”; and yes they are not included in the final story.

This box also contains a large folder on cancer. It’s all pretty outdated research with a few handwritten notes by Mailer. Nothing too interesting, unfortunately.

The final folder is about William F. Buckley, and contains this little gem:

“ Mr. Buckley suggested most adroitly, and most certainly by not putting it in words that I would not watch his debate with Mr. Gore Vidal if I were altogether a gentleman. Well, I can only say to him public[ally] that I am not altogether a gentleman—and most certainly did watch his debate with Mr. Vidal. I must confess I did not think he was altogether a gentleman to suggest I stay away from the television sets that night, for Mr. Buckley has his natural advantages and I have mine. I have seen him on television, which gives me hope to think I will set a match to a blown-up conservative wind or two before the night is out, and he in his turn has had the advantage of preaching conservatism in a country which has been fed on nothing for its mind but the intellectual concentration camps of anti-Communism, anti-Communism, and more anti-Communism for so long that it is impossible to address an American audience on politics without proving to one’s that a half of one’s audience at least is made up of apes. Look around you, my friends. ”

“Intellectual concentration camps.” Great!

The handwritten draft of “The Killer,” 1960.

Box 60 contains the drafts of “The Killer.” Interestingly, the handwritten draft is the first document, and it barely contains any corrections, corresponding pretty closely to the final printed story. That’s impressive. I posted the first page to the right.

Box 61 is mostly about “In the Red Light,” but has an interview called “Talking of Violence,” 1964, 8 pp. Next is three typed pages called “Your Favorite Absurdities,” undated, that appears to be a questionnaire. There’s a short essay on Naked Lunch, 3 pp. undated.

Box 74 has a 45-page interview with Mailer for Playboy, conducted in 1967 and published in 1968. The draft that I scanned seems to skip about 10 pages, but I’m uncertain whether that’s actually the case. Unfortunately, the published interview is not in the archive.

I skipped Box 75 as it contains documents relating to the Short Fiction. I’ll get to those tomorrow, hopefully when I’m more awake.

Box 102 contains a transcript of a speech, “Reflection on the Forms of the Coming Revolution,” 21 pp., dated May 14, 1970. I’m unsure of the context, though it seems to be a fairly lengthy introduction to a reading of excerpts from Of a Fire on the Moon. From the little I read, it’s pretty saucy, almost like he might have had a bourbon or four before being introduced, à la Armies.