J. Michael Lennon

Archivist, Biographer, Educator

Mike Marches in October

Mailer’s Last Interview: On the Village Voice

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.

Honoring ‘Moby-Dick’ and the Art of Letter Writing

Two Westport residents with long ties to Provincetown, J. Michael Lennon and Donna Pedro Lennon, recently donated a rare copy of that Harper’s issue to the Provincetown Public Library to mark the town’s establishment of an annual public reading of “Moby-Dick.’’ Lennon, author of the acclaimed biography “Norman Mailer: A Double Life,” received the volume as a birthday gift from his brother about 30 years ago.

Review of Barbara Feinman Todd’s Latest

To lead off, a few facts: the three journalists Todd worked with are Bob Woodward, Carl Bernstein and Ben Bradlee, the trio responsible for bringing down Richard Nixon by revealing his complicity in the Watergate break-in cover up. The first lady was Hillary Clinton.

TLS Voices

Editor, Edit Thyself

As an editor-in-chief at two American publishing houses, Simon and Schus­ter and Alfred A. Knopf, from the mid-1960s through the late 80s, and as the Editor of the New Yorker from 1982–97, Robert Gottlieb has coddled and hectored more important American writers (and some British) than anyone since Maxwell Perkins dealt with the distinctions and deficiencies in the prose and egos of F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, James Jones, Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings and Thomas Wolfe.

Norman Mailer Society to Hold Annual Conference at Monmouth University, Sept. 29-Oct. 1

WEST LONG BRANCH, N.J. – (Sept. 16, 2016) –  The Norman Mailer Society, in partnership with Monmouth University’s Wayne D. McMurray School of Humanities and Social Sciences, will hold its 14th annual conference on campus from Sept. 29 to Oct. 1.  Barbara Mailer Wasserman, Long Branch native and sister of the late Norman Mailer, will provide the keynote address, “Mailer Roots in Long Branch.” Also included in the conference will be a reading by Monmouth Assistant Professor of English and Creative Writing Alex Gilvarry from his upcoming novel, Eastman Was Here and a performance of the one-woman play, A Ticket to the Circus, by Bonnie Culver, based on the memoir of Mailer’s wife, Norris Church Mailer, performed by K.C. Leiber.

Art Installation in Torrington Is a Colorful Reflection of a River, and a Community

Danielle Mailer enlisted local volunteers to help create a mural-like work, with enormous fish covered in bright patterns, along the Naugatuck.

Study Creative Non-Fiction at Wilkes

Follow your passion, write your story, and work to get published with the Maslow Family Graduate Program in Creative Writing at Wilkes University.

Special Friends

Young in Springfield, Lincoln enjoyed a deep relationship with Joshua Speed.

In 1834, Joshua Speed, an ambitious young man from a well-to-do Kentucky family, set up a dry goods store in a two-story brick house on the corner of Fifth and Washington Streets in Springfield. Located on the town square in the commercial and governmental heart of what would become the state capital five years later, Speed’s store thrived financially. By 1839, it was also a gathering place for the male “lights” of the community, men who sought a congenial spot for coffee and cider, professional exchanges and gossip, political discourse (sometimes sharp-edged), and storytelling (often comic). Stephen Douglas, later an Illinois senator, often joined the group, as did several prominent judges, businessmen, lawyers and legislators. But Abraham Lincoln, who had only recently been admitted to the bar, was the magnet, the charismatic speaker who drew the intellectuals and politicians to the regular evening meetings.

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