June 25, 2020

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Works and Days Pandemic Update covid-19: day 107 | US: GA | info | act

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Uncovering new materials about Norman Mailer is one of the pleasures of our work. With J. Michael Lennon’s attention to detail in crafting each entry and Donna Pedro Lennon’s meticulous archives that allow him to do so, we have updated Norman Mailer: Work and Days with 45 new entries spanning six decades. Mostly from uncovered or forgotten interviews, these entries show Mailer’s breadth of interests, ideas, and happenings from the time he was removed from a television program in the late-fifties to familiar concerns like architecture, technology, totalitarianism, and the decline of American greatness. I have selected a handful of entries that give a taste of this interstitial Mailer, show the variety of his interests and activities, and hint as to what might still be out there to discover. I think you will be struck by the insightfulness and contemporaneity of his comments over the years, many of which seem just as relevant today. For the complete entries and additional updates, see Project Mailer.

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58.4a

“ABC-TV Bars Norman Mailer from the Ben Hecht Show.” Article-interview by Malcolm Logan. New York Post, 13 November. Scheduled to appear on this television program on this date, Mailer was removed by Al Hollander, the station program manager, who said he wanted guests from outside the literary and theatrical worlds. Mailer said he believed he was removed because he and Hecht were planning to discuss “The White Negro” (57.1), the beat generation and sex. “My guess,” he said, “is they decided the article was just too hot to handle, but I’m just guessing.” Mailer told Hollander that he was not taking himself off: “Well, let’s have it clear. You’re disinviting me. I’m not taking myself off the show.”

61.21c

“Mailer Slashes American Apathy.” Article-interview by Bill Hamilton. The Daily Texan (University of Texas-Austin), 8 December. Report on Mailer’s address, “What I Think Is Happening to American Minds,” at the University on 7 December. He spoke of “a very subtle deterioration” in the American idea of greatness. “There is general apathy, a lack of enthusiasm in politics, no desire, no hero,” he said, adding that the country needed a hero like Roosevelt, Churchill or De Gaulle. Eisenhower was a hero “only to those persons who were most proud of their lack of imagination.” Of the 1960 presidential race, he said that Nixon represented “psychic security,” and Kennedy “originality, thought, and glamour,” but he wondered if Kennedy’s narrow winning margin had hampered his boldness.

63.27a

“Mailer Brings Existentialism to City.” Article-interview by Hoke Norris. Chicago Sun-Times, 12 May, 58. Speaking at the University of Chicago on 11 May, Mailer said that totalitarianism was taking over the country, pointing to architecture and air conditioning as examples. He also commented on his September 1962 Chicago debate with William F. Buckley, Jr., describing Buckley’s debate tactics as “unspeakably churlish invective,” but adding that offstage Buckley was “the best fellow you ever met.” He spoke at length about the nature of existentialism. “That which makes me feel good is good,” was his shorthand description of the philosophy.

67.9a

“Mailer: Critic Or Actor?” Article-interview by R. H. Gardner. Baltimore Sun, 10 April, B4. Account of Mailer’s 7 April speech at Goucher College. His theme for the evening was the dangers of the status quo, and he related this to comments on the situation of “the Negro,” saying that if their influence of continued to increase, it might change most institutions. He attacked President Johnson for the Vietnam War, and said Johnson might have continued the War as a way of diverting attention from the civil rights movement. Asked what liberal program he would advocate in place of President Johnson’s agenda, Mailer said it was a difficult question, adding “I have begun to suspect that there is a chasm not just between liberal political thought and political realism, but between liberal political thought and realism itself.”

72.3b

“Norman Mailer Visits Gaston Hall.” Article-interview by Emily Durso. Georgetown Voice, 15 February, 12-13. At Georgetown University on 11 February, Mailer spoke to an American literature class and then debated Barbette Blackington, a professor of sociology at American University. The title of the debate (which Mailer did not care for), was “Can Norman Mailer Find Happiness During Male Menopause?” He said that if he had tried “to hold a debate on the menopause of Barbette Blackington, her praetorian guard would have run him out of the auditorium.” Mailer listened to Blackington’s comments on male menopause, and replied that if people got the idea that he was a chauvinist pig from Kate Millett’s attack on him in her study Sexual Politics (1970), then they didn’t know how to read. He stated that Millett had extensively quoted him out of context and wondered how she got a doctorate from Columbia for a dissertation that was inaccurate. Further, he said that he found the Women’s Liberation Movement both exciting and frightening: “The one thing I can’t stand is that we must always have respect for women in all circumstances. What kind of totalitarian hogwash is that?”

78.3a

“Jackie Squares Off with Norman Mailer.” Palm Beach News, 10 October. Account of a magazine launch party in Manhattan attended by Jacqueline Onassis and Mailer. Asked if she was “The Bitch Goddess” mentioned in his essay, “Some Children of the Goddess” in Cannibals and Christians, he denied it, and went on to say that “the Bitch Goddess is a metaphor, which reminds me,” and then explained that the metaphoric muse of his creative imagination sometimes crowded him as a journalist, adding, “when I interviewed [presidential candidate] Jimmy Carter, my head was filled with so many things that I started talking and then discovered, to my horror, that I’d gone on for 20 minutes.” Carter “just kept smiling.”

79.33a

“Night of the Norman Conquests.” Article-interview by Paul Slansky. New York, 3 December, 6. Account of Mailer’s exchanges with a line of people at a Manhattan B. Dalton bookstore where he signed copies of The Executioner’s Song. One woman in the long line said, “This is like going to communion.” Mailer replied, “You must have sinned a lot.” Asked if he was writing another book, he said, “Always. That’s how I make my living.”