A man of letters

Siuteraru aiant'd corredfiondence on Jffouuwood, cek/zritu JSr . dodetu dncwd him to ve a critic ana crudaaer, /uuziiidt g hoet

To Lillian Ross September 2. 1952

Dear Lillian,

...I'm l>uck from vacation, suntanned, fat and pretty, with a hole in my heel and piles in my bottom. The piles I pot from not writing for two weeks, and the hole in my heel by trying sand-skiing on a sand thine, sitting on a plank. So I limp and qvetch and people say, what a poor gimp, so young__

I read the Hemingway thing with a chip due mainly to Hemingway's letter about it in Life. I know what it is about him I can't stand. He is always saying in effect 1 am a man who happens incidentally to be a great writer. I know that all of you will be interested in my good noble, strong, and beautiful attempts to exercise myself as a great man. and will be happy when I suc­ceed except for professors, other writers, and assorted cocksuekers.

Anyway. I thought it was good ami would have been better if it hadn't been so full of shit. I thought the best thing about it was the conception of the story, but I just can't l>ear his prose. It sets my teeth tin edge. At least Hemingway's prose of 1952 which has lost all of the simplicity it used to have. I

think if he had written the story twenty years ago it would have been half as long and twice as good. Finally land who will listen to me) I know that if I had gotten the idea and knew as much about fishing as he did. I would have done it better, because it's the sort of story that needs only to be written without affectation, and I never would have made the mistake of assuming that Norman Mailer as a fisherman is more interesting than the Cuban fisherman him­self. 1 feel very nastily competitive, but it's his own Goddamn fault. There's a kind of strong child (like my daughter) whose will one feels always forced to combat, and the end of it is to be as childish as the child.

Anyway, let me know what you thought.

When are you coming back? I miss you__

Love,

Norman

To Marlon Brando August 25. 1955

Dear Marlon.

First my apologies on the mysterious letter and telegram business. I don't usu­ally go in for that sort of thing, and I'd

explain it to you now, except that it would

take too long for its importance in retro­spect, and if anil when we see each other. I'll tell you ahout that over a drink.

Anyway, what this letter is about, is that I'd like to send you a copy of The Deer Park which is coming out in Octo­ber. There's no operation behind it. at least not consciously. The book could never make a movie, and to ask you for comment on it would be unfair to you. because the shit is going to hit the Hol­lywood fan when it comes out.

It's just that I'd like you to read it. and to know your private reactions to it. I've learned a lot about a great many things from some of your work, and I don't sup­pose there's more than three or four actors I would say that of. and so just frankly and simply. I have the feeling that maybe you in turn would learn something from this novel which I think is my best book.

So if you'd like a copy—they'll be ready about Sept. 7—drop me a line (or a telegram) and I'll send it to you. and any comment you have on it. I'll keep in confidence.

My best to you,

Norman

To James Raldu In October 17, 1»56

Dear Jim.

I've been in a fog for a week or so, and if your book came out then, then I missed the review for sure. Vi hat happened wit I) [Francis] Brown was that he wrote to me the hook was already assigned to another reviewer (which I doubt) and then asked me to lunch to "explain the Veil- York Times Hook Review position on things. Well, he was one of those pleasant men who pretend to l>e dumber and simpler than they are with only the cut of their gray flannel suit to deny them, and the lunch went nowhere in particular since each time I started to get a real gripe off. he was quirk to admit that there was something in what I said, but then by most artful implication that after all weren't most writers just "bleeders" when you got down to it. So. no decision.

Anyway. I finally got off my ass. and wrote a medium paragraph for George Joel fat Dial Press,

Baldwin'- puhlisher]. anil I haven't heard from him. so perhaps hi- wont usr it. (I did nut mrntion that I knew you.) I'm enclosing it here for your interest, anil if you think of it. mail it hark to me. Perhaps you won't like it. heeause I know it spells out something you might prefer others to arrive at hy implication, hut what the hell, Jim. it was the way I felt, and for that mat­ter I felt it should he said.

.. .Otherwise. New York has heen stinking. Jesus I in heginning to hate this rold eold town. On the street one night I got into a fight with a hoodlum and the sonofaliitrh started to gouge my eyes. I think I would have taken him otherwise, hut then his gang got into it.

anil I was clouted around a hit. I had a Mind spot in one eye for a few days, and what was worse a whole |>eriod of working my nerve hack to walk the street again. Any­way I wrote Jean [Malaqnais] about it in detail, so next lime you're in Paris and see him. he might still have the letter. What relieves me is that I bought the house before this happened, or I always would have been wondering, you know?

I was really sorry. Jim. to hear about your bad personal news. I admire

you getting into a book so soon. I in still aetin<! like a virgin trying to get ready to begin my new one. Anyway, when you're in the mood, let me hear about Corsica.

Norman

P.S. If you see anyone who knows me, don t mention the eye-gouge episode— you and Jean are the only ones who know in Europe. & I don't want it to get buck to my family.

Td Jean >lnlaquaiN September 20. 1958

...The Milked and the Dead came out here as ;i movie—not too much fan-

fare—four weeks at the Capitol (on Broadway) fair reviews on the order of "It's a good picture but not as good as the hook." I went to see it. A catas­trophe—about as had as a hig noisy gory war movie can be. Altogether taste­less. No mood. Just shit. Here and there a scene which caught the hook. And then inanities and cli­ches and psychic horror. There are places where it is so had it is almost surre­alistic in its lack of sequi-tur. And the real waste is that the screenplay was not too awful—as these screenplays go. it was fairly hrave and outspo­ken. But the casting and direction were atrocious. I could swear the director never read the hook. As you know there are direc­tors who feel that react­ing a hook confuses the clarity of their cinematic intent. Brother—not one critic (they are all wined in mild little ways by the movie studios) not one critic came out and said. "This was a crime—a good

liook which could have made an extraor­dinary movie was turned into a piece of crap. The director should be shot, the producer, and the author—for selling it." The irony is that in the end they were all afraid of savin;: what \akerf had to say. and yet the best movie of the year. The Bridge On The River Kwai says the same tiling—it rather defiantly—it ends with the one flood and pen tie character in the movie exclaiming, "Madness... madness." And of course audiences love that—because they know by now—they know the plans of all the leaders are really just that...madness.

Eh. liien—what have you clone of the

good lately to deserve such a fine Ion;: letter. Don't lmtlier to answer at length if you are working now on your thesis, just do it. vieux jeton [old slug], and like we Ameri­cans say, "Merde."

Love to you and to Galy,

Norman

To Truman Capote IN'ovember 13. 1959

Dear Truman,

Thank you for your good and properly oliscenc let­ter. And l>v all means let us

Truman baby, we are petting old. \ears a^n. with a piece of crumpled cellophane in my mouth. I used to be able to imitate Marlon Brando. Meilleurs [best] .sentiments. Norman

{jet together. My

phone is AL 5-3513. and yours I fear is lost in the general slovenliness of my per­sonal hahits. Would yon drop me a card with the secret information?

I woke up the other day with a had handover, ilisajsreeulilt* tension, and a constriction of the throat. As I walked around in this cafard. I found that your spirit had inhuhited me and your voice came issuing out of my throat, nasal, precise and hrnokinj; no argument. "I do not know iSorman Mailer very well," said your voice, "hut I like him. He is of course as sweet as a fat old uncle hut in his way he's a hallsy \»« jrn\." L'nd so weiter [and so forth |. I found this a most rcmarkahlc therapy for my throat and for my general condition, and when I see you if the devil {jives me courage for the art. I will treat vou to this imitation.

To Enilr ••Mlk*- tapouva. Tfc«» Vnlion May 26. 1962

Di-ar Mike,

II there's still time and if you're going to print Gore's letter. I think I'll like to comment on u few points in it.

Yidal ought to know me well enough to know that when I use ;i word I use it heeaiise I think it is the l>est word avail-alile to me anil not heeaiise people will therehy he encouraged to suppose I mean another word. \\ hen I implied that Gore's worst vice as a writer might he narcissism I was not talking about homosexuality. He has written very well ahout that par­ticular suhject. modestly, soherly and with instinctive good taste. It is precisely in his more (continued on puge 142)

Norman Mailer

(continued from page 72)

ambitious books like The Judgment of Paris, some of which I did read and did like, that this narcissism is most present and most defeating to the potential reach of his talents which are considerable. The difficulty of writing in a narcissistic vein is that one's heroes are hermetically sealed in upon themselves. They may rant, rage and roar, or stand aside bur­nishing their wit, but either way nothing dramatic passes between them and other persons in the novel. The result is inevi­tably a study of lonely decomposition. One may attempt to struggle against this. Hemingway, who was a terribly narcis­sistic writer, was forever violating the hermetic logic of his characters and so dropping them into love affairs which were unbelievable and all too often seri­ously maudlin. Certainly this is true of all the romances written after To Have and Have Not. Gore in his turn avoids this trap and remains true to the logic of his characters which is that they have a tendency to find less and less happening to them as their adventures continue. It is a truthful way of writing and one could say that Vidal was reflecting the time except that I've always found him dis­proportionately fond of the way in which his characters are isolated. If a man stops to pick a rose in his garden every morn­ing, this is probably as respectable an action as taking a brisk ten-minute walk, but when the man who picks the roses says, "I am the only gardener in this part of the world who knows a good rose when he sees one," then the beginning of a small distaste may be legitimate.

"No one reads (Mailer). They hear of him." Nobody Gore knows reads me. That's true. Nobody in Hollywood, Broadway or Washington has been read­ing me for the last ten years. When occa­sionally they stumble across a magazine piece they are overcome. "Why, he's such a good writer," they say. But then each to his different audience. Sometimes I like to think I am read fairly carefully by some of the people who go to college now and take the writing courses, or at least that is my illusion. Any established

writer who wishes to continue a feud or perchance start one with me is advised to attack on this line. It is the weakest link in my military dispositions.

Mike, I'll give you a ring next week and let's see if we can Figure out where to meet.

Sincerely,

Norman Mailer

To Patricia Hardewly April 19. 1963

Dear Patricia Hardesty,

I met Henry Miller at the Edinburgh Festival last summer. He has a simplicity of manner which is not easy to describe. One gets the feeling of talking to a man who always tells the truth as he is see­ing it and tempers this exceptional vir­tue only by his desire not to hurt anyone needlessly. So one is drawn to him. I was startled by the gentleness of his manner precisely because Mr. Miller has always been the kind of lion in his books who devours everything he sees while throw­ing away the remains of what he does not like. But on reflection, it seemed fit­ting that a man who has told the truth all his life in his writing should now be so free a personality and have such a natu­ral affection for the men and women he encountered. I just hope these fulsome words don't embarrass Mr. Miller.

Cordially,

Norman Mailer

To Don Carpvnler November 5. 1963

Dear Don,

Give my best to Bob Miller, and what comes below is a new page from my fast-increasing notebook of treasured quota­tions:

"I gave her a fuck the equivalent of a fifteen-round fight."

—Rocky Marciano

"I gave her a fuck the equivalent of a fifteen-round fight."

—Henry James

"I gave her a fuck which was the equiva­lent of seven rounds, two minutes, thirty-eight seconds, a moment, and the intimation of my sentiment that on the ascent of the nuance a toenail had torn, thus tearing the perfection of our mutual comprehension

which realized for the first instant, a pause." —Marcel Proust

"I gave her a fuck the equivalent of a twelve-round fight won by Stanley Ketchel over One-Eye Indian Bill Joe Bradish in Duluth, Minn, on the night of a blizzard which was cold in 1909."

—Ernest Hemingway

"I gave her a fuck which made me an old

man and it wasn't even a very good fuck."

—Norman Mailer

"I gave her a fruition which was fertile, and gorgeous in its breath as fifteen mad Burmese terraces of loblolly."

—William Styron

"I gave her a fuck that got me fucked, it's all that fucking shit with women."

—James Jones "Fuck fuck fuck."

—Granville Hicks

Yours, Don for the tree of a pencil and the bed of a notebook, Norman

To Gordon IJ«h. Enquire January 9. 1970

Dear Gordon Lish,

Somebody better explain the facts of life to you. Esquire pays birdshit for fiction com­pared to its friendly competitor*

You gotta tough job ahead.

Happy New Year,

Norman Mailer

?playboy

To Editor. Women'* Hear Daily November 7. 1970

Gentlemen,

In your issue of November 2 you quote Gore Vidal as saying, "Norman Mailer often sounds like the deranged commander of an American Legion post, particularly about women, whom he doesn't like very much.'

Vidal's indictment may possibly be enriched by the following statistics: mar­riages, Vidal-0, Mailer-4; children, Vidal-0, Mailer-6; daughters, Vidal-0, Mailer-4.

This of course proves nothing. It is most likely that Gore neither wed nor bothered to sire because he put womankind in such high regard that he did not wish to injure their tender flesh with his sharp tongue.

Cheers,

Norman Mailer

To Henry Miller April 2. I»7I

Dear Henry Miller,

I was delighted to get your letter, I guess because 1 had so much pleasure in going through your novels again. It was really the bonus in writing that long piece [The Prisoner of Sex] because I was down in the mouth all the way working on it until that point and feeling sorry for myself and thinking I'd gotten into a trap and that it was a big mistake to write anything about women except in a novel. And then when I started examining what she [Kate Mil-lett] was doing to you and the old love for your books came back, well, jesus, the juices began to (low thanks to the incom­parable and immortal style that just gives life to anybody who reads it and deserves to get a little life. So I guess I'm delighted to hear from you, just because it gives me the opportunity to say this again.

God bless and all mutual good wishes.

Your friend from Brooklyn,

Norman Mailer

To John Leonard. The ><»!«• York Tina's Hank Itcrii'ic June I. 1!»72

Dear John.

We all know the Times is still living in 1951 and wouldn't print Fuck You to save the State of Israel. Nonetheless, expurga­tion must never suck. If you will look at the fourth column of Mel Watkins' review [of James Baldwin's] No Name in the Street, Neu' York Times Book Rei'ieu', May 28, you will come across the following:

"And perhaps because Baldwin and the civil-rights movement had demanded from Americans a generosity, a clarity, and a nobil­ity which they did not dream of demanding from themselves' or perhaps because of his promise of an apocalypse in The Fire Next Time or because of Mailer's admonition that

Baldwin 'seems incapable of saying__you,' it

is the explication of that presumably harsher judgment' for which one looks throughout the remainder of the book."

The reader is left with the thought, according to Mailer, that good old articu­late Jimmy can't even say, "You__you__."

Listen, I think the Times ought to steel up and enter the big breach with an F.

John, this letter is so nice I would ask you to print it, but Times readers have a curious enough idea of me by now without forcing them to the confusion of undertak­ing any first sentence of mine which reads, "We all know the Times is still living in 1951

and wouldn't print__you to save the State

of Israel."

Humbly, as ever,

Norman

To >lickev Knov M.ir.li 25. I»7I

Dear Mickey,

A lot of news here, and curiously good and bad at the same time. For months I've been working out an arrangement with Lit-lle Brown for a huge contract which would enable me to write my big novel which is going to run—and this is even slated in the contract—for 500,000 to 700,000 words, to

be written over the next five, or six years: for which in turn Little Brown will pay me a sum, over the whole, of one million smackers. Not a bad contract, but ironically it actually comes in at less than my going word rate, which is probably up to about two dollars a word now, from publishers for a single book. At any rate, it was cer­tainly nothing to complain about and 1 was happy with it because it would give me a little stability in my professional life, with a chance to really dig in and see if I can write this book that I've been talking about for all this period.

But lo and behold the word gets out. Not from Little Brown, not from me (I sus­pect the Meredith office wasn't necessarily trying to keep it the biggest secret in the world, since they come off looking good in the deal) and it hit the Times. Now every­body thinks of me as a no-good rat-fuck millionaire who's going, since the story was of course not quite precise in all its details, to pick up his cool million by sitting on his ass for half a year. And people I've owed money to for eighteen months were on the phone before dark. The thing I regret in it all is that we could each think of 10 or 15 good American writers (obligatorily I must include Mr. Vidal in this list) who earn considerably more than I do per word, per year, per decade, and their fucking finances are never anyone's interest. God, it burns my ass. Now everybody is walking around saying there's Mailer the radical who sold out. It isn't that I mind what people say, it's just that a general increase at this point in the average animosity toward me is some­thing that the ether might not quite be able to bear up under, and I don't want it to cave in on me, you know what I mean pal__

As for you and Joan and the divorce, there's nothing 1 can say. It's just loo unhappy and I know how you feel. It's like passing blood through one's orifices—one doesn't have the certainty one's necessarily going to get through it. The consolation is that the kids grow up, but there's no kid­ding oneself, something always gets lost in them, some little numbness in their affect, some little pinching off of some of their higher possibilities, whatever it is, I don't know. I think I've come to comprehend at last why my mother never broke up with my father....

So the only consolation I can offer you is one you know already. We learn to walk around with a few more pieces of death inside us, and discover that, given all the waste areas and the burned-out pits, sur­prisingly now and again some little piece of oneself does come to life for a while. Shit, man, another twenty years and you and me are going to be thinking about what's back of the barn. I hope we never get to the point where we got to talk about specialists.

Stay close to Vidal on this one if it isn't too late. He is the one guy in the whole world that I wouldn't ever want to count on for my own good fortune, since I've suspected for a long time that with every­thing else in him his happiest thing is to get a man who has more virile worth than himself and slowly torture that virility out of him. So I'm dubious that any property

that he considers of any value whatsoever is going in any way to pass over to you unless he figures he can double the torture by putting a screw up your ass, and I mean a metal screw, over the next six months to a year. Watch yourself around him. Don't ever trust in his good will. It may be there and if it is, I'll be pleased for you. I really believe that, and I will admit that for once 1 was wrong about Vidal. But I think if you go in forewarned, the double cross, if and when it comes, will be less painful.

Anyway, keep working, and I'll give half a cheer to myself. I've finally written you a letter which is two-thirds decent.

Love,

Norm

To !\riiian l><-4<-nih<-r I. 197-1

Norman, I guess I still think enough of you to tell you the truth. I just don'i have the heart to start stirring the works for your new book. That long dull dreadful business with Marilyn left a bad taste. This will prob­ably come like a thunderclap to you, but it did seem to me at the time as if, granting the couple of occasions I'd had agreeable things to say about your book, that I might be allowed to take a quote from something you had already published, and pay you what by any conventional standard is a

large permission, without having to do the stations of the cross five times over it. I can recognize why you felt some understand­able pique that Marilyn, who was after all so much your material lor so, many years, was being taken over by me. But for Christ's sakes, Rosten, you'd had your ten years to write something about her and never did, it was only when everybody else got into the act that you suddenly felt cheated and got off your ass and made yourself a little money. I find it distasteful to even get into these details, but came to recognize gloom­ily in the course of the rotten year which followed the publication of Marilyn that you really did not feel toward me the emo­tion of what 1 consider a friend. So let's let a couple of years go by to cool things off. Unless, as I say, you feel an overwhelming desire to come up here and box. That we could always do. In the meantime—work, suffer, curse the stinginess of the fates.

Your old blurb-bapper,

Norman

P.S. If you want to know the truth of what really got me pissed off, it w-as that you finally had so little that was new to say about Marilyn after that marvelous piece you wrote that was already in print. If you're going to be stingy about all your material in order to write something that really was exciting, fine. But the book you

did was ju.sl a rip-ofl on what had been originally a lovely and luminous essay. What the hell did all thai stinginess get you in the end? You didn't even make the money you could have if you'd written a better book. And you know and I know vou kissed [Arthur] Miller's ass.

To \il Kratlfonl. Ml lie. Broun Jun. l?>7.»

Dear Ned,

This is how I can't write a memo.

1. Finally Norman Mailer has given us a minor book, and what a joy.

2. Six million people read The Fight in playboy. Those two installments came to 45,000 words. It has now been published in 75,000 words and has an added store of material on Africa, magic, and the mental­ity of the fight game which contribute to some of the best reading you will have this summer.

These are just ideas, facts and thought, possible directions to take. Nothing final in my mind.

Norman

To Mickrv Knnx AuUiikI 28. l!>7.>

Dear Mick.

...In the mail to you is a copy of The Fight, which I hope you'll enjoy. I've gotten some

of the very best and some of the very worst reviews I've ever received on anything with this book, and the irony to me is that it's kind of a nice book and one I look upon as a relatively minor effort. You know, in the sense that there s less of me invested there than in almost anything I've written. Still I guess it is as good as just about anything that's been done on prize-fighting, which ol course is not saying much at all__

Of course I could always borrow the money from Gore Vidal! Incidentally, do me a boon. |ust mention in passing to (lore that I hap­pened to say to you recently that I am truly looking forward to when I run into him per­sonally again. Between us, I can tell you that I have decided to take no more literary cracks at him. I'd rather have the anger stored in my muscle. Man, am 1 looking forward to making a few improvements in his physiog­nomy. Of course, he's such a turd that it will probably end by his suing me. It may prove the only consolation I have in being broke!

All for now, and cheers,

Norman

T<» Jimiiiv .laiiuarv 27. 1977

Dear Jimmy,

I finally caught up with your New Year's resolutions column and couldn't believe it. With all the lucking turds in this city you had to single out one of the nicest and most decent women I've ever had anything to do with. I tiled to call you but you're out of town, but I can give you the message in a letter just as well. You are now part of my New Year's resolution for 1977 not to speak to Jimmy Breslin.*

Cheers,

Norman

*In Brcslin's January 2, 1977 column in the New York Daily News, titled "People I'm Not Talking to This Year," Breslin claimed that Mailer's sixth wife, Norris Church Mailer, (old her husband thai Breslin had said "something ungentlemanly" to her at a New York cocktail parly. This prompted Mailer to butt heads with the columnist— literally. The tussle gave Breslin a detached retina. As a result he put Norris Church Mailer at the top ol his list. The two men didn't speak for a year and then became friendly again. Ms. Mailer says the whole thing is a "mystery" to her.

To Hon. Itrt'iiila Soloff IVItruarv 21. l»»l

Dear Judge Sololf.

1 understand that Abbie Hoffman is to be sentenced* by you on March (i, and that this sentence can come to any term between zero and five years in prison. I write this let­ter on his behalf to request your clemency. Once, many years ago. in I9o() I was up for sentencing on a lelonious charge to which I had pleaded guilty, ll was assault, and I could easily have laced two years in jail. The judge, however, made a point of saying he was going to lake a chance on me, and gave me two years of probation. It can be said that I am a product of the probation system of New York, and when all is said. I think it worked for me. It may even have worked better than a jail sentence, since there was not the trauma of prison and the feeling of society's weight

upon one, which can encourage sentiments of rebellion. On the contrary, there was a quiet and depressing realization that one was a malefactor, and seeing my probation agent ever)' two weeks had much more effect than I would otherwise have supposed. It chastened me in ways I cannot even name, and left me, willy nilly, more a member of society at the end of the two years than I was at the start. It is interesting that no matter how 1 search my memory at this moment, I cannot recall the name of the judge or the parole officer. But both of them had a powerful, and from the point of view of society, a civilizing effect on me. Perhaps that is the price the)- pay, that I do not wish to remember their names, but in any case, they had their effect. While I would not presume to intrude any further than this on your deliberations, I would say that I know Abbie Hoffman pretty well, and that we are not unalike. I believe he has gone through one period in his life and is ready to enter quite another. Sending him to prison could throw him back on his pride, and close off his desire to become part of the community. I believe he has learned his lesson, that is, he has learned I he exorbitant price one pays for going outside the law in terms of anxiety, and the inability to express the best part of one's practical dreams in any reasonable fashion. I think for this reason probation would be an effective punishment for him, as it was for me. and he'd be able to return among us and make his contribution.

Yours sincerely.

Norman Mailer

•For a drug charge dating back to the 1970s.

To Morgan Fnlrpkin >l.-iv :i. I!»82

Dear Mr. Kntrekin,

Kurt [Vonnegutj and I are in the mar­velous position of going out to dinner together often because our wives are great friends. So we sit there as bookends; each pleases the part in us which is still mod­est. We like each other but are diffident with one another. We talk about relatively impersonal matters. We never speak about each other's work. This is either because we do not like I he other's work, or because we do, and are afraid that the colleague can­not reciprocate in good heat. Since we find each other reasonably agreeable in every other respect, we do not mind the evenings. In lad, we sometimes enjoy them. Indeed, I confess I've come to enjoy these dinners immensely ever since I came to recognize that Kurt Vonnegut is almost a dead ringer in physical appearance for Mark Twain. You take your pleasures where you find them.

Cheers,

Norman Mailer

I'S.: This is my contribution. If you wish you can excise the salutation and the sign-off, and put il forth as my olfeiing.

To .liifk Abboll

Dear Jack.

You're right, 1 was kind of exercised over that piece in Neu> York magazine (inci­dentally, it's New York magazine, not The

New Yorker). I don't know if you're aware of it or not, but my favorite remark is once a philosopher, twice a pervert (which is attributed to Voltaire) but I figured that after you allowed yourself to be shafted by 60 Minutes, you'd be a little wary of the press, but in fact, your naivete in relation to them can probably be equaled only by your evaluation of my naivete in relation to prison situations, prisoners, etc. When are you going to get it through your head, Jack, that any media representative, if they want to fuck you, have more oppor­tunities than a prison guard, and to pour out your heart and say what you think to a media representative whom you have not checked out from asshole to appetite is equal to a pretty boy stepping into a tank for the first time and saying, "Gee, do any of you fellows have a light?" The point is, you can be talking about any subject, me or the moon, Marxism or your mother, and say 97 nice things and 3 bad things about the subject, and if it's to the pur­poses of their story, all that will ever get reported are ugly items number 99 and 100. Put that on a piece of tape and stick that in front of you the next time you talk to a reporter. They are not interested in nuance. They are not interested in your mind. They are interested in screwing you; they are interested in getting a story. Since you pretend to be a Marxist, may I point out to you that they're interested in getting a story that will reinforce the cap­italist class consciousness of the reader, and you set yourself up for a hit every goddamn time. Then you compound the assininily of it by believing religiously what they have other people saying. For example, it may interest you to know that [Scott] Meredith called me after this dame Sharon Churcher of New York called him, and warned me there was going to be a bad story because he could tell by the style of her questions that nothing good was going to come up. He then told me what he had told her. First question she asked him was whether he had sent you a hundred bucks. He then confirmed it, and did it very quietly, downplaying it. Period. I know his style. He talks gently, he downplays, he does not brag. That's number one. Two, he's not the kind of guy who is very impressed by his gener­osity because he gives a bill to somebody. He's bailed me out to the tune of tens of thousands of dollars over the years and sometimes more than that, and never done me once. So I'm telling you, he's not the kind of guy to carry on about a hun­dred dollar bill. Sharon Churcher made up the fucking dialogue. She made you to look like an asshole, and Meredith to look like an asshole into the bargain. Jack, can't you get it through your head that these newspapers, this capitalist press you fulminate against, is served by a bunch of fiction writers, but like everybody else, it doesn't matter what your ideas are. Deep down, like a little boy, you believe that what you read there is true, except when it involves you, because then you can see­the lies. So, yes, do me a favor: don't talk about me any more to the papers, and I'll do my best not to talk about you any

more to the papers, and if you do, for God's sakes, check out who you're talking to first. And recognize that while there may be hours when I will rue the day I met you, I will never repent. One of your fucking troubles is that you think you're the only stand-up guy in the world, and you're not. Moreover, if you want to know what my ideas are about the police, try reading my books. I've had a lot to say about the police. There's an interest­ing passage in one of my works where I discuss how their psychopathy is quite the equal of any criminal's, and then go so far as to say that when you get a good policeman, he's a work of art because he defies all the rules that go into the making of the average policeman. But that's what I mean: if you're ever going to amount to anything as an intellectual and as a writer then stop shooting off your mouth, stop trying to dominate the world with your unadorned, naked intelligence unsupported by any use­ful information, and do some digging. Read the facts. If you want to talk about me, then read my work. Fine. Read it carefully and then blast shit out of me. I don't care if you've read the work. But please don't interpret what the hell my

understanding of the world is when you haven't done the reading.

Finally, on Meredith and the 80 thou­sand bucks. I checked it out. He is not sit­ting on your money. He is not holding your money. He does not own your 80 thousand bucks. He'd be very happy if he could get it to you, or to your lawyers. But as it stands now, any foreign money that comes over here will go immediately into a court-held fund and you'll never see it and your law­yers will never see it. Scott said to me that if one of your lawyers will write a letter prom­ising him, assuring him that he is break­ing no rule and is not legally responsible, he'll be very happy to have the monies go directly to your lawyers. Before you go around accusing everybody around you who is trying to work with you, why not try to lind out again what the facts are instead of trying to deduce the nature of existence with your bare brain-power alone.

Jack, this is the toughest letter I've ever written you, and my guess is you'll say, "Well, Mailer's trying to get out from under. He wants to sever relations with me. " I don't. Quite the contrary. I'd be delighted if you could get your head together under the incredibly difficult conditions of your life right now and I'd also be happy if we

don't end up, both of us, serving the capi­talist delight, which is to have us Fighting each other in public. Because ask yourself who benefits, brother. It don't help you, and it don't help me, bin it sure helps J. Edgar Hoover, wherever he's resting now. So ponder that for a while, pal, and when you come down from reading this letter, I'll await your reply.

As ever,

Norman

To (linl ICasI w ooil ¦»mlM-r 21. l»a.'t

Dear Clint,

I'm glad you liked the piece ["All the Pirates and People: Norman Mailer Dis­covers the Man Who Is Clint Eastwood," Parade, October 23, 1983].

Listen, it wasn't that hard to write—all I had to do was tell the truth. It's the phony pieces that throw out one's literary back.

Merry Christmas.

Cheers,

Norman

To Hill . March 22. I!MM

Dear Bill Morgan,

You may use this for the Festschrift: Years ago I wrote a poem about Allen [Ginsberg] which went something like—I quote from memory—

Sometimes I think, "That ugly kike,

That four-eyed faggot,

Is the bravest man in America."

Well, over the years, Allen's gotten con­siderably better looking and has doubtless become that [unreadable word] position of being a major and near to elder statesman in homosexual ranks and his poetry, bless it. goes on forever. That is always major, or next thing to it—even when it's verbose, it's grand, and even when it's elevated, it's too obscene for audiences. Allen has even learned to sing, and his Hinduism is as deep and vast as the sea, and he has no ego that he does not share with us, yet still I'd say 1 subscribe to the poem. Doubtless he's not the bravest man in America, but he sure has got to be among the ten or twenty that one can argue about, and that is why I love him from afar, and to get pious about it, will always esteem him.

Cheers.

Norman Mailer

Tit >lickf>v Khov October 23. I»K I

Dear Mickey,

...If I haven't written, it's because I'm gravely overextended, indeed, I'm wor­ried about it. I accepted the presidency of the American chapter of P.E.N. for reasons I don't (juitc understand, and it involves a prodigious amount of work since we're trying to have the International Congress in New York in 1985 and for I hut we've got to raise tons of money, which is not my first talent, as you can well suppose. That plus the constant pressure to get out more work and a real sense, which I get from my body, that I am turning older, has me nervous within these days. I race around a great deal inside—not the inner

state for contemplation. Anyway, this is not to complain, but to tell you I'd love to see you. If you come to New York, for God's sakes, don't feel there's any cool­ness on my part or that any long silence from me has added significance.

One last thought: now that I'm working so hard lor I'E.N., I'd like to get Core in on it loo rather than feud with him. You know, we now have the same editor, Jason Epstein, who's a great friend of his, and I think Jason, for his own self-interest, if nothing other, would like the feud to end. 1 would too. There's enough right-wing madness going on in the world without Gore and me satisfying all the people who sit on the benches. 1 don t know if you're still speaking to him, or still see him, but if you do—I certainly don't want you to approach him; I'll do that myself when

the time comes—but I would be serious on your opinion as to whether he's cooling clown or whether his hatred for me is still essentially one of his first passions.

Cheers, now,

Norman

To (ion> Yidnl .Inmmrv 17. l»8.»

Dear Gore,

Yes, we must do our best to outlive one another. The Egyp­tians think the dead man only retains 1/7 of the strength he knew when alive. Fearful for each of us to contem­plate the other seven times stronger.

Let me tell you of one reluctant change P.E.N. has made. We were going to have fifteen authors lor ten evenings, five nights in the spring, live in the fall. Now, owing to theatre costs and a late start, we're down to eight evenings, all in the fall....

The next prob­lem is to avoid egre-

gious maneuvering. I'd like to draw the authors by lot, but given our tenuous truce, would rather offer you a perk. Do you have someone you'd like to go on with?* Here, in alphabetical order, is the complete list of the others: Woody Allen, William F. Buckley, Joan Didion, John Irving, Norman Mailer, James Michener, Arthur Miller, I.B. Singer, Susan Son-tag, William Styron, John L'pdike, Gore Vidal, Kurt Vonnegut, Eudora Welty, and Tom Wolfe.

Also, you suggest, "I'm not sure any­one will like the result" (of what you, G.V., will say). Fine. Be lugubrious, be scalding and appalling, be larger than Jeremiah. I will doubtless feel wistful at my pulled fangs.

Anyway, let me know if you have a pref-

erence for a stable mate, and lor a particu­lar date. (As I have always feared, I am now reduced to doggerel.) Norman

•Gore chose Mailer.

To Jruui \fiol September 20. l»».1

Dear Jerome Agel,

I wouldn't take Truman's [Capote] account of meeting Lee Harvey Oswald too seriously. He was a fabulous story-teller, was Truman, which is a nice way to describe a guy and much to be preferred to declaring he was full of shit.

The oddity was that Truman, w ho had close to a divine talent when it came to the beauty of his sentences, had the heart

(at his worst) of a splenetic gossip col­umnist, and it was impossible for anyone to come to the attention of the media without Truman inserting a claim years later that he had met them. I'm almost happy he's not alive when I think of all the inside stories—none of them based on anything much—that he would have had to tell about the O.J. Simpson trial.

Cheers,

Norman

To llouiiril Suiincs \vr 27. !»»«

Dear Howard Sounes,

I remember the evening well with [Charles] Bukowski because at a certain point he said to me, "You know, Norman, you and me may have to go outside to

fight." It so happened that at the time I was in good shape and had still been box­ing, and Bukowski, by then, was in awful shape—huge belly, bad liver, all of it. I remember that I felt such a clear, cold rage at the thought of what I'd be able to do to him—there are preliminaries to fights, mental preliminaries, where sometimes you think you're going to win and sometimes you think you're in trouble, and once in a while you think you have no chance. But this was one occasion when I felt a kind of murderous glee because 1 knew he had no chance, I was that ready to go. So I leaned forward and said to him, "Hank, don't even think about it." And he got the message.

I have no idea what would have hap­pened if Bukowski and I had met when we were both younger and in our own

special kind ol half-shape. But in any event, if there are 5 or 6 people in all the world who are interested, I can only say 1 have no idea. What I do know is we met too late and indeed, I was annoyed at him, for he shouldn't have gotten all that adrenaline going in me.

Cheers,

Norman Mailer

To Editor. f*r<»!*iii<*<'fott*n

May 13. 2002

Some years ago, when Peter Manso did his oral biogra­phy of me, I heard countless complaints from the people he interviewed once ihe book came out. He had put all kinds of words and speeches into their mouths that they never uttered. When I asked Manso to see the transcripts, he refused.

I will now state that every remark or action he has attributed to me that I have read about in the New York Post and in Sue Harrison's review of his latest book in The Banner (May 9) is wholly and totally untrue. For example, 1 have never called any woman ever a "cancer-hole." I must say, however, that Manso is psychic if somewhat skewed, for as I came to know him well, that became my private term for him. I do not know that it is accurate. A label closer might be "poison-drip."

I have my faults, my vices, and my unat­tractive side, but I'D. Manso is looking for gold in the desert of his arid inner life where lies and distortion are the only cactus juice to keep him going.

Yours,

Norman Mailer

To Deborah IHvon October l«. 2003

Dear Deborah,

Here's Norman's tribute for tomorrow's memorial. Best. Judith McNally

I only came to know Elia [Kazan] after his great years of success and after his fall. By the time we came in contact, the horrors of his testimony were behind him, but I think it did something to him forever. He was a modest and honest man by then—perhaps it takes a Greek to be capable of regaining his honor by living slowly but completely with his sense of personal shame.

In any event, we became friends and I learned a great deal about theater, acting, and stage direction by being at the Playwright's Unit on many an afternoon when he was moderating. He still had a certain dynamism that woke us up. The intensity of his presence helped to give us a fundamental understand­ing of drama—it was important in the theater never to settle for mediocrity. We all knew

that, knew it sort of, but Gadge made us rec­ognize that to be easy on himself in this kind of work was equal to sin.

I could go on for quite a bit, but let me compress it into an anecdote. One day in the middle of speaking to us. he said, "Here at the Studio, we are always talking about The Work. The Work, we are always saying, and outside, they mimic us, they laugh at us, they deride the way we keep saying The Work. Well, let me say to you, it is exactly about that here at the Studio; it is all about work and that is what we do, and at our best we work hard, and it is there at such times we can recognize that we feel a little blessed. This is exactly what we must never forget because this is one time when we are right." He stopped, he glared at all of us, and said, "Never forget! Work is a blessing!"

Those are four of the most useful words I ever heard, and it is one of the reasons I wanted to be part of this salute to him today. My best to you all.

Norman Mailer

If you're ever going to

amount to anything as an

intellectual and as a writer

then stop shooting off your

mouth and do some digging.

Read the facts.