June 18, 2024

First Review

Lipton’s has received its first “review” from Donald H. Harrison of San Diego Jewish World: “Norman Mailer’s Self-Reflections on Weed.” While Harrison’s interest in Mailer seems to be about Mailer’s Jewishness, and he has picked out this items in Lipton’s that address this, he seems disappointed that Mailer did not spend more time reflecting on this part of his identity. So, it’s not much of a review, but it is some press. Similarly, Mike and Sue spoke with Talk Louisiana a few days ago. I hope these are first of many to come.

Right out of the gate, Box 338 has a letter to People magazine addressing a blurb they ran about his directing Tough Guys Don’t Dance. The article quotes Mailer as saying:

“ “It’s a miracle they gave me two big-name stars like Ryan O’Neal and Isabella Rossellini,” said Mailer, adding “I get on fine directing stars from Hollywood. O’Neal is an actor who lets you mold him, and the women—the women just have to be beautiful. I’ll take care of the rest.” ”

Lordy, I thought, that’s just awful, Norman. However, based on Mailer’s response, he never said any of it:

“ The story was written by an Italian journalist who never had an interview with Norman Mailer, and so made one up. . . . Then the quick fiction, put quotation marks around the made-up quotes. This so impressed the representative of People Magazine in Rome that he translated the story back to English, and sent it on here to New York where it was put into print. ”

Jeez. I’m glad he didn’t let it go, but I wonder if the editors even acknowledged their mistake? “The Norman Conquest” is a two-page literary autobiography reprinted from AFM that Mailer wrote about his success with The Naked and the Dead,” in Memories, Spring 1988.

A short intro to Lipton’s.

Also in this box is a selection from Lipton’s with a short intro. These are 20 entries that Mailer picked for Antaeus, no. 61, 1988.

In folder 338.9, Mailer has collected some items about the Rushdie Affair, including a three-page reaction to the fatwa, a PEN press release about a meeting between writers who support Rushdie and the American Moslem Action Committee, Mailer’s statement for this meeting, and the Moslem response. I’m uncertain whether I saw these documents when writing my master’s thesis, but I think not. Yet, I’m sure I read about them.

Finally, there’s a short essay on “What’s Wrong with America?” (ca. 1990) that has subsequently been published in the Review.

Box 359 begins with a letter to Salman Rushdie about the dangers and moral responsibility of being a writer. Mailer encourages Rushdie to “come up with a major piece of literary work” that it will help to “rejuvenate all of us, and literature, to that degree, will flower.”

Box 467 contains “Great in the Hay,” Mailer’s story from 1950 (published in AFM in 1959), but also, and more interestingly, a “short-short script for the Internet” based on the story for his son Michael.

Back to Box 459 and the screenplay of “The Last Night.” I continued reading the latest draft (Version 5, April 10, 1997), but decided just to scan the darn thing. OK, I scanned through pages 62, but then pages through 70 are missing in this draft. I wonder if that means Norman and Norris cut them? They are in the draft (folder 459.3) dated February 11, 1997, so I will scan them from that one. . . . After looking at both, I don’t think anything is really missing on version 5—I just think there were cuts. Dang, there’s another 9-page gap from 89–97, but it looks, again, like cuts. There is at least one more number discrepancy, but I’ll not worry about it. I’ll try to read the whole script soon, so if I need to consult the archive again, I can do so in the next couple of weeks.

OK, Thursday, I’ll start combing through the letters.