J. Michael Lennon, Norman Mailer’s archivist, editor, and authorized biographer who teaches creative writing at Wilkes University, talks about the two-volume boxed set, “Norman Mailer: The Sixties,” issued March 27, 2018, by the Library of America.
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“No one in the literary world told us more about what was going on in the 1960s politically, socially, and sexually than Mailer.”
Purchase Norman Mailer: The Sixties: A Library of America Boxed Set on Amazon.
Writer Michael Lennon on the 95th anniversary of the birth of two-time Pulitzer Prize winner Norman Mailer and his Wilkes University colleague Jeff Talarigo on his work, “in the Cemetery of the Orange Trees.”
With Stig Abell and Thea Lenarduzzi – 500-plus years since Thomas More coined the term “Utopia”, denoting a too-good-to-be-true land, Chloë Houston considers the relevance, and importance, of Utopian thinking, and asks if we feel more at home in dystopia; prompted by a magisterial new biography by Jonathan Eig, J. Michael Lennon describes the transformation of Cassius Clay into Muhammad Ali (and tells us what it was like to meet Ali at Normal Mailer’s seventy-fifth birthday party).
What clearly distinguishes Ali: A Life from the score of biographies preceding it – including even the best of them: Thomas Hauser’s Muhammad Ali: His life and Times (1992), David Remnick’s King of the World and the Rise of an American Hero (1998), and Gerald Early’s Muhammad Ali Reader (2013) – is the analysis of the number and kind of punches Ali gave and received, round by round, over the long arc of his career.
October 1967 March on the Pentagon On October 21, 1967, an estimated 100,000 Vietnam War protesters rallied in Washington, DC. More than 35,000 demonstrators marched to the Pentagon in Arlington, Virginia, and many remained there overnight. More than 600 protesters, including author Norman Mailer, were arrested. The Vietnam Peace Commemoration Committee hosted a panel discussion on the March on the Pentagon. Many speakers were activists who participated in the Washington, D.C., protest.
Mike says: The Times Literary Supplement (London) asked to post an excerpt from Norman Mailer’s last interview (September 2007) with yours truly to its website. The interview concerns the VILLAGE VOICE, which announced a few days ago that it was suspending print publication after 62 years. Mailer speaks of the newspaper’s origins—he helped fund it, and also came up with the name. Please pass on to interested people. The piece first appeared in The Mailer Review a couple of years ago.