The Norman Mailer Society

A second printing of 50 copies of 76 Mailer letters concerning the conception, composition, publication and reception of his 1965 novel, An American Dream, has been made available to The Mailer Society. Bound in maroon buckram, with gold spine lettering, this edition is identical to the first limited edition of 140 copies, except for its binding and the presence of an errata sheet, laid in. It is 123 pages in length with 14 illustrations (ten in color), a bibliography, appendices, a full index and an introduction and notes by the editor J. Michael Lennon. The edition includes letters to Pete Hamill, Diana Trilling, Jason Epstein, Mickey Knox, Don Kaufmann, Roger Shattuck, Willie Morris, Louis Mailer, Vance Bourjaily, John W. Aldridge, Diana Athill, Don Carpenter, Robert F. Lucid, and Mailer’s Japanese translator, Eichii Yamanishi, among many others. To purchase a copy, send a check for $35 (postage included), made out to The Norman Mailer Society, and send to David Light, Treasurer, 75 Jennings Lane, Windham, CT. 06280

Norman Mailer / Ernest Hemingway
Call for Papers: 2010

The Mailer Review is calling for papers on “Norman Mailer / Ernest Hemingway,” a special emphasis in the fourth volume of the Review (Fall 2010) will be devoted to this topic. Papers dealing with any aspect of Hemingway-Mailer are encouraged. We are also interested in essays that focus on other aspects of the life and work of Norman Mailer.

We solicit original (unpublished) manuscripts ranging from 4,000 to 7,000 words, following MLA documentation. Notes are also welcome. Please submit queries, brief abstracts and manuscripts (MS WORD format), as attachments, to psipiora [at] gmail [dot] com.

In today’s Publishers Weekly, Edward Nawotka discusses the legacy of Norman Mailer and Larry Schiller’s mission to keep it alive. “Keeping the Mailer Spirit Alive” looks at Schiller’s efforts in this area: launching the Norman Mailer Writing Awards, organizing the Norman Mailer Writers Colony, and enticing publishers to reissue or repackage some of Mailer’s lesser known works. One prize of $5,000 will go to a high school senior and a $10,000 award will go to a college student. Schiller hopes to expose Mailer’s name to as many young people as possible: “I want students to go out and discover who Norman Mailer was and is,” he said.

Read more at Publisher’s Weekly.

Norman Mailer, Norris Church Mailer, and Liz Smith

Liz Smith, in “Is the American Conservative (Magazine) Dead?” mentions Norris Church Mailer and her upcoming memoir from Random House:

Norris Church Mailer, looking beautiful as usual, was there telling me she has until July to finish her Random House memoir, A Ticket to the Circus, all about her life growing up in Arkansas and then meeting and marrying the famous Norman Mailer. She has suffered mightily since his death, but told me, “I think I’ve finally forgiven Norman for everything!” We had to agree he was one of the most dynamic men we’d ever met. Norris’s book is one I can’t wait to read.

Read the rest in Women on the Web.

In The American Conservative, John Buffalo Mailer recounts how Norman Mailer and Jimmy Breslin, two non-professional politicians, tried to liberate NYC with their 1969 mayoral campaign:

they squared off in the 1969 Democratic primary against four standard-issue liberals. (Pop quipped of one, “I can’t get a grasp on a mind this small.” His campaign manager, Joe Flaherty, called another “eternally starched” and dismissed a third as a “municipal Lazarus.”) Echoing the student slogan raised during the Columbia University crisis of the previous year, “No more bulls–t,” they ran to rescue a “spiritless” city turned into a “legislative pail of dismembered organs.”

Read the rest at The American Conservative.