Mailer

by Dearborn, Mary V.

• ISBN13: 9780395736555
• ISBN10: 0395736552
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 1999-10-01
• Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

Summary

Undeniably one of the most controversial figures of the past half-century, Norman Mailer has also been one of the most influential. Twice a winner of the Pulitzer Prize, once a candidate for mayor of New York City, & the author of thirty-one books, he has both made the news & commented on it with an originality that has permanently altered America's literary landscape. From the peace rallies of the sixties that lead to The Armies of the Night, to the coverage of the "sex war" in The Prisoner of Sex, to the study of violence & punishment in The Executioner's Song, Mailer has observed our culture with unmatched insight - & shaped it as well. The author had unprecedented access to Mailer's friends, relations, & antagonists. With photographs & correspondence never before published, her biography fills in the familiar outline of his colorful personal life - the wives & mistresses, the brawls & arrest - & charts Mailer's brilliant successes & notorious failures. The author comes to her subject uniquely sensitive to Mailer's best & worst sides. Her account is the most clearheaded & balanced evaluation to date. As splendidly told by the author, Mailer's story is, for good or ill, the story of our times.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments	v
Prologue: Cock of the Walk	1	(10)
The King	11	(11)
Harvard	22	(14)
The Army	36	(14)
Paris	50	(15)
Politics and Hollywood	65	(12)
Enter Adele	77	(14)
The Deer Park	91	(17)
Hip	108	(15)
``The White Negro''	123	(14)
Literary Politician	137	(18)
Beyond the Law	155	(16)
The New Journalist	171	(18)
Changing Partners	189	(14)
A Gamble and a New Direction	203	(13)
Projects	216	(14)
The Armies of the Night	230	(17)
1968	247	(12)
The Candidate	259	(14)
The Moon	273	(10)
The Prisoner of Sex	283	(14)
``The Terror of the TV Talk Show''	297	(16)
Mailer and Monroe	313	(13)
Rumble in the Jungle	326	(13)
Into the Heartland	339	(13)
A Reckoning	352	(12)
Egypt, and a Brush with the Law	364	(14)
A Mistress, A Parton, and A Thriller	378	(15)
The Halls of Power: The Cia and Pen	393	(14)
Among the Spooks	407	(21)
Epilogue	417	(11)
Notes	428	(31)
Bibliography	459	(5)
Index	464

Excerpts

PROLOGUE: COCK OF THE WALK He was to go on in ten minutes, and the air in the room was charged. Over five hundred people eddied around the Four Seasons, the legendary dining spot on Manhattan's East Fifty-second Street. Near the buffet tables -- covered with silver trays of Hungarian goulash, quiche Lorraine, pate with hazelnuts -- the jazz harpist Daphne Hellman plucked her instrument, which was nearly inaudible over the party noise. Avant-garde composer and musician David Amram and his quartet played on the mezzanine, and a country and western group called the Foodstamps waited in the wings, to perform after midnight when the guests, it was hoped, would want to dance. At his side stood his assistant, Suzanne Nye, whom the columnists called his "great friend"; Carol Stevens, his mistress and the mother of his youngest child, was elsewhere in the room, as were his current wife, number four, Beverly, and his second wife, Adele, the one he had stabbed and nearly killed fourteen years before. His third wife, Lady Jeanne Campbell, with Paris Review editor Frank Crowther, had planned this evening; four of his seven children, and his mother, Fanny, were present. The buzz in the restaurant was tremendous: invitations had promised an announcement of "a subject of national importance (major)." It was Norman Mailer's fiftieth birthday party, and anything might happen. The suspense had been building for weeks, ever since the five thousand invitations for the February 5, 1973, event, elegantly designed on purple paper, had gone out. The invitation had raised eyebrows: it stipulated an admission fee, to be donated to something called the "Fifth Estate" -- what this might be was not specified -- of fifty dollars a couple, or thirty dollars per person. As Washington Post columnist Sally Quinn later commented, "In Manhattan, nobody who's anybody ever pays to go to a party." In 1973, charity events were staid affairs, drawing mostly established Upper East Siders, and for the art openings that drew the hippest crowds extra passes were always available. Usually the press simply stayed away from parties that charged admission. Many invited guests elected to boycott Norman's party. But as the date approached, checks flooded in to the suite at the Algonquin Hotel where Lady Jeanne and Crowther were managing the arrangements. Norman and Carol Stevens had arrived at the Algonquin from their home in the Berkshires around noon, hoping to rest before the party. But calls kept coming in all afternoon. Some were from theater people who had Monday night off and heard there was to be some action at the Four Seasons. The press, undeterred by the admission fee, was clamoring to get in. Calls came from the New York Times, Newsweek, Women's Wear Daily, the Detroit Free Press, Rolling Stone, the Village Voice, and Oui, and from French, German, Italian, Canadian, and Japanese publications. The Four Seasons called: columnists Leonard Lyons, Suzy, Earl Wilson, and Eugenia Shepherd refused to come unless the entrance fee was waived. Would Mr. Mailer make an exception in their case? (He would.) Shirley MacLaine called to ask if she could bring Jack Lemmon. Actor Alan Bates and filmmaker Bernardo Bertolucci, something of an enfant terrible after the recent release of Last Tango in Paris, were in town and wanted invitations. Senator George McGovern had sent in a check but was forced to cancel after learning that his wife had arranged a dinner party for that evening. Gloria Steinem, who had stood by Norman through the contretemps he created with his 1971 contribution to the dialogue on feminism, The Prisoner of Sex (and whom Norman had once taken to bed, unsuccessfully), called to send her regrets but added, "Tell