No writer plunged more wholeheartedly into the chaotic energies of the 1960s than Norman Mailer, as he fearlessly revolutionized literary norms and genres to capture the political, social, and sexual explosions of an unsettled era.
Published this month by Library of America, Norman Mailer: The Sixties is a double dose of the trenchant writer who—in his fiction, his nonfiction, and in work that famously blurred the distinction between the two—threw himself unreservedly into the most tumultuous era in modern American history.
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.
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 Times Literary Supplement interviews Mike about literary giants and Robert Gottlieb. Listen below.
An interview with Erika Funke of WVIA-FM in Scranton, PA. It concerns Mike’s edition of Mailer’s letters.
Hour 1: J. Michael Lennon on the “Selected Letters of Norman Mailer” — Lennon says Mailer never tossed a single thing he ever wrote.
To celebrate the release of Starve the Vulture — the latest release in Akashic’s Kaylie Jones Books imprint — J. Michael Lennon spoke with Jason Carney about his inspirations, writing a memoir, and the differences between poetry and prose:
Explain how you came to do the biography. ¶ I was the understudy to write the biography of Mailer for a number of years. The original biographer was Robert F. Lucid, a professor at Penn and a friend of Mailer’s going back to the late Fifties. . . .
