J. Michael Lennon

Archivist, Biographer, Educator

Can Utopia survive 2017?

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).

Mr. Mailer Goes to Washington

David Denby writes:

In recent years, Mailer has been grievously out of fashion, but in February the Library of America is bringing out a two-volume set of his work from the Sixties, one volume devoted to fiction, the other to essays and journalism, and Mailer may be due for reappraisal and revival.

Read the rest of his review of the Library of America’s new Mailer collections at Harper’s.

LOA’s Mailer: Collected Essays of the 1960s

Available for preorder.

LOA’s Mailer: Four Books of the Sixties

Now available for preorder.

Craftsman of Violence

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.

Vietnam Peace Commemoration

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 with Colum McCann and Mark Olshaker

At the latest conference of the Norman Mailer Society, Sarasoata, FL. Photo by Jerry Lucas.

The Private Thoughts of a Public Man

The Ambitions and Insecurities of Literary Giant Norman Mailer

Mailer: the 60s Collection

Preorder now.

Woodstalk Live Presents: Truth of Consensus: Survival Tools in the Age of Fake News

Moderator: Dr. J. Michael Lennon– Norman Mailer’s official biographer, Vietnam Veteran, award-winning author, and Professor Emeritus at Wilkes University.

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