The Norman Mailer Center and Writers Colony is inviting you to the Norman Mailer Brooklyn Walking Book Tour hosted by our faculty member and Mailer’s authorized biographer, J. Michael Lennon. Starting in the lobby of the St. George Residence and ending at the Norman Mailer home, Lennon will guide participants through a stimulating narrative of Norman Mailer and other writers experiences in Brooklyn Heights. Lennon will also discuss his authorized biography of Norman Mailer as well as Mailer’s Brooklyn based 1951 novel, Barbary Shore. This inspiring event is open to you and other Norman Mailer Center participants.
Mike discusses the publishing process. Video 3 of 3.
Barbara Wasserman, ML, and NM, 2006 (Photo: Donna Lennon)
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Mike discusses the publishing process. Video 2 of 3.
DID YOU KNOW? In 1976, Mailer published a screenplay based on Joris-Karl Huysmans’ novel of decadence and Satanism, Là-Bas (or “down there”). The English translation was published as The Damned. The protagonist, a novelist named Durtal, is researching the life of the 15th century nobleman and madman, Gillies de Rais, who killed scores of children and practiced various forms of sorcery, including a Black Mass. The novel is set in fin-de-siѐcle Paris, and was a sensation when it appeared in serial form in 1891. Mailer’s screen play appeared in Playboy in December 1976, and has never been reprinted. It won the magazine’s annual award for best piece of fiction.
Mailer spoke French fairly well, having studied it in high school, college and at the Sorbonne on the GI Bill in 1947-48. He said that “the French novel has always been more congenial to me than the English, and much of what I learned as a young novelist came from Stendhal, from Proust, and from Malraux.” He went on to say that he also enjoyed the writing of Flaubert, Zola, Gide, Huysmans, Baudelaire, Sartre, George Simenon, and the writing of his great friend, Jean Malaquais, who Mailer met in Pairs in 1947.
Mike discusses the publishing process. Video 1 of 3.
Barbara Wasserman and Norris Church Mailer, 2009 (Photo: Donna Lennon)
Susan Mailer took this photo in mid-September 2007. With Mailer are, center, Bill Majeski (former New York City detective responsible for capture of Jack Abbott), and, right, Marco Colodro (Chilean economist who is married to Susan). Mailer left Provincetown for Brooklyn on September 22, and died at Mt. Sinai Hospital on November 10.