Books

  • Norman Mailer: Works and Days (with Donna P. Lennon). Edited by Gerald R. Lucas. Preface by Norman Mailer. Annotated bio-bibliography. Atlanta: Norman Mailer Society, 2018, 468 pp. Revised, expanded version of 2000 edition. Selected as an “Outstanding Academic Title, 2000” by Choice Magazine. Rpt: Advance excerpt in Provincetown Arts, 14 (1999). Winner of Robert F. Lucid Award for Mailer Studies.
  • Norman Mailer: The Sixties. Editor. NY: Library of America, 2018. Vol. I: Four Books of the Sixties: An American Dream, Why Are We in Vietnam? The Armies of the Night, Miami and Siege of Chicago, 926 pp. Vol. II: Collected Essays of the 1960s, 513 pp.
  • The Fight by Norman Mailer. Editor, introduction. Oversize, illustrated, condensed edition of Mailer’s book of the same title. Los Angeles: Taschen Books, 2016.
  • Selected Letters of Norman Mailer, Editor. New York: Random House, October, 2014. Advance excerpts in New Yorker, Playboy, NYRB. Contains 714 of Mailer’s letters from the 1940s to 2000s.
  • Norman Mailer: A Double Life. New York: Random House, 2013. Selected as “Editor’s Choice,” New York Times Book Review, and one of Amazon’s top 20 nonfiction books of 2013.
  • Norman Mailer/Bert Stern/Marilyn Monroe. Editor. Oversize, illustrated, condensed edition of Mailer’s 1973 biography, Marilyn. Los Angeles: Taschn Boks, 2011.
  • Moonfire: The Epic Journey of Apollo 11. Editor. Oversize, illustrated, condensed edition of Mailer’s 1971 nonfiction narrative, Of a Fire on the Moon. 2010.
  • On God: An Uncommon Conversation. By Norman Mailer with Michael Lennon. NY: Random House, 2007.  Advance excerpts in New Yorker and Playboy.
  • Norman Mailer’s Letters on An American Dream, 1963-1969.  Editor.  Shavertown, PA: Sligo Press, 2004.  Advance excerpt in Provincetown Arts.
  • The Spooky Art: Some Thoughts on Writing. Editor.  By Norman Mailer. New York: Random House, 2003.  Advance excerpt in The New Yorker.
  • Selected Poems of Charles Robb.  Editor. Robinson, IL: James Jones Literary Society, 1998.
  • The James Jones Reader: Outstanding Selections from His War Writings.  Editor (with James R. Giles). New York: Birch Lane Press, Carol Publication Group, 1991, 404 pp. Advance excerpt in Playboy.
  • Conversations with Norman Mailer. Editor. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1988, 396 pp. Thirty-four interviews, 1948-87, introduction and biographical chronology. Part of Conversations with American Writers series. Hard and soft cover.
  • Critical Essays on Norman Mailer. Editor. Boston: G. K. Hall, 1986, 200 pp. twenty reviews and essays, critical introduction. Part of Critical Essays on American Writers series.
  • The “Illinois Issues” Humanities Essays: 1981-1984. Editor.  Springfield, IL: Sangamon State University, 1985.  Sixteen essays, reprinted from Illinois Issues magazine. Sponsored by the Illinois Humanities Council.
  • Pontifications (20 interviews, 1958-81) by Norman Mailer. Editor. Boston: Little, Brown, 1982, 182 pp. Includes three Lennon interviews. Selected as one of the “notable books of the year” by New York Times. Hard and soft cover.

Book Chapters, Interviews, Articles and Essays (Selected)

  • Review of Robert Stone: Dog Soldiers, A Flag for Sunrise, Outerbridge Reach, ed. by Madison Smartt Bell (NY: Library of America, 2020), TLS. Forthcoming, 2021.

  • “The Archivist’s Apprentice”(2020), Lifewriting Annual: Biographical and Autobiographical Studies. Memoir on assembling Mailer’s archive, Forthcoming, 2021.

  • “On the State of Mailer Studies: An Interview with Phillip Sipiora,” Mailer Review (2019), 46-64.

  • “Dread Persists,” TLS (October 23, 2020), 16-17. Review of The Silence by Don DeLillo (NY: Scribner, 2020).

  • “Crafted Confession: Re-reading Mary McCarthy,” TLS (July 10, 2020), 21-22. Essay on Memories of a Catholic Childhood (1957). Rpt: Provincetown Arts (2020).

  • “A New Edition of Joan Didion’s Work Reminds Us that She Is Her Most Important Character.” Washington Post (November 7, 2019). Review of Joan Didion: The 1960s & 70s, edited by David L. Ulin.

  • “Interview with Susan Mailer, author of In Another Place: My Life With and Without My Father, Norman Mailer.” Hippocampus Magazine (October 1, 2019). On Line.

  • “Cold War Trophy.” Times Literary Supplement (July 12, 2019), 13. Review of American Moonshot: John F. Kennedy and the Great Space Race by Douglas Brinkley.

  • “Dialogue as Combat.” Times Literary Supplement (April 19, 2019), 25-26. Review of John O’Hara: Four Novels of the 1930s.

  • “A Magnificent Keening.” Hippocampus Magazine (April 1, 2019). On Line. Review of Phantom Signs: The Muse in Universe City by Philip Brady.

  • “Tom Wolfe and the Mission to Bring Back Literature into Journalism.” Chicago Tribune (May 16, 2018). Online.

  • “The Naked and the Read.” Times Literary Supplement (March 9, 2018), 6-7. Essay on Mailer’s library. Rpt: Mailer Review (2018).

  • “Craftsman of Violence.” Times Literary Supplement (November 24, 2017), 19. Review of Ali: A Life by Jonathan Eig.

  • Review of Pretend I’m Not Here: How I Worked with Three Newspaper Icons, One First Lady, and Still Managed to Dig Myself out of the Washington Swamp by Barbara Feinman Todd. Hippocampus Magazine (March 1, 2017). Online.

  • “Motion Slowed into Choreography.” Times Literary Supplement (February 24, 2017), 25. Review of South and West: From a Notebook by Joan Didion.

  • “Editor, Edit Thyself.” Times Literary Supplement (January 20, 2017), 32, Review of Avid Reader: A Life by Robert Gottlieb.

  • “Mailer’s Letters: A Colloquy at the Strand Bookstore.” With Morris Dickstein. Mailer Review (2016), 75-92.

  • “Pound, Bishop, and Prospero in Buzzards Bay.” Ocean State Review 6 (2016), 153-70.

  • “Drenched in Last Things.” Times Literary Supplement (May 6, 2016), 19-20. Review of Zero K by Don DeLillo.

  • “Special Friends.” Illinois Times (May 5, 2016), 1. Review of Your Friend Forever, A. Lincoln by Charles B. Strozier.

  • “On the Road.” Times Literary Supplement (October 16, 2015), 12-13. Review of Every Time a Friend Succeeds Something Inside Me Dies (biography of Gore Vidal) by Jay Parini.

  • “Transmogrified by Travel.” Hippocampus Magazine (October 1, 2015). On Line. Review of Cannot Stay: Essays on Travel by Kevin Oderman.

  • Introduction. Norman Mailer: JFK, Superman Comes to the Supermarket. Edited by Nina Weiner. Cologne: Taschen, 2014, 370 pp. Rpt: Mailer Review (2015), 46-50.

  • “An Excerpt from Mailer’s Last Interview: The Village Voice.” Mailer Review (2014), 17-20. Rpt: Times Literary Supplement On Line (August 29, 2017).

  • “Mailer’s Brooklyn.” Mailer Review (2014), 11-13.

  • “The 10 Best Norman Mailer Books.” Publishers Weekly (October 11, 2103). On Line.

  • “The Complications of Norman Mailer: A Conversation with J. Michael Lennon.” Interviewer, Philip Sipiora. Mailer Review (2013), 23-65.

  • “Why Mailer Matters: Three Reasons,” Mailer Review (2012).

  • “Gore and Norman in Provincetown,” Mailer Review (2012), 58-60. Working with Vidal and Mailer in G.B. Shaw’s “Don Juan in Hell” production.

  • “Required Reading: A Connoisseur of Narrative Forms.” Creative Nonfiction (fall 2010), 14. Mailer’s best books.

  • “Hemingway to Mailer–A Delayed Response,” Mailer Review (2010), 31-35. Previously unknown Hemingway letter.

  • Review of Love in Tennessee by John Bowers. Provincetown Arts (2010/11), 134-35.

  • “Long Legs, The American Tolstoy, Oswald and the KGB: A Conversation with Lawrence Schiller,” Mailer Review (2009), 29-73.

  • “Norman Mailer’s Best Sellers.” Mailer Review (2008), 270-71.

  • “Gallery Talk: The Mailer Archive.” Mailer Review 1 (fall 2007), 132-40. Overview of massive Mailer Archive. Also on the Harry Ransom Center website.

  • “A Series of Tragicomedies”: Mailer’s Letters on The Deer Park, 1954-55.” Editor. Mailer Review (fall 2007), 44-76.

  • “Norman Mailer: Supplemental Bibliography through 2006.” With Constance E. Holmes. Mailer Review (2007), 234-60.

  • “Hitler in My Mind: The Roots of The Castle in the Forest” (interview with Mailer), Provincetown Arts 22 (2007-08), 92-94.  Reprinted in Mailer Review (2008).

  • “Norman Mailer: Novelist, Journalist, or Historian?” Journal of Modern Literature 30:1 (fall 2006), 91-103.

  • Norman Mailer’s Provincetown: The Wild West of the East.  Editor. Provincetown, MA: Provincetown Arts Press, 2005.  Evocations of Mailer’s Provincetown, with an introduction by the editor, 12 pp.

  • “Norman Mailer.” Oxford Encyclopedia of American Literature. Jay Parini, editor. New York: Oxford University Press, 2004.  Five-thousand word overview of Mailer’s life and works.

  • “Norman Mailer’s The Naked and the Dead.” American Writers Classics. Jay Parini, editor.  New York: Scribner’s, 2004.  Ten-thousand word essay.

  • “Norman Mailer.” Scribner’s Great Writers Series, 2003, 195-217. New York: Gale, 2003. Ten thousand-word overview of Mailer’s life and works. Winner of Robert F. Lucid Award for Mailer Studies.

  • “Norman Mailer: Novelist or Nonfiction Writer?” Provincetown Arts 17 (2002), 140-47.

  • “Afterword.” With Judith Everson.  Writings from the Handy Colony. Edited by Helen Howe, Don Sackrider, and George Hendrick. Urbana, IL: Tales Press, 2001.

  • “A Brief History of Norman Mailer,” American Masters, PBS documentary, October 2000. Essay written for PBS American Masters website.

  • “The Wisdom of a Serious Redneck: Norman Mailer Remembers James Jones.” Editor. James Jones Literary Society Newsletter 10:4 (fall 2001), 2-4. Extempore remarks at the 1999 Jones Society conference at Long Island University.

  • “Feathered with Forbearance.” Provincetown Arts (2001), 101-02. Review of Greene on Capri by Shirley Hazzard.

  • “A Conversation with Norman Mailer.” New England Review 20 (summer 1999), 138-48. Rpt: Creating Nonfiction (NY: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2009). Edited by Becky Bradway and Douglas Hesse. Focuses on The Time of Our Time.

  • “Norman Mailer.” Concise Dictionary of American Literary Biography. Detroit: Gale Literary Database. Bruccoli Layman Clark, 1998.

  • Norman Mailer. Columbia Dictionary of Quotations. NY: Columbia University Press, 1996.

  • “Norman Mailer.” Facts on File Bibliography Series: American Fiction. 1919-1988. NY: Facts on File, 1991, 306-10.

  • “Mailer’s America” (profile-interview). The Arts, Chicago Tribune (September 29, 1991), 18-19, 26. Rpt., Mailer Review (2012).

  • “Glimpses: James Jones, 1921-1977” (with George Plimpton). Paris Review 103 (summer 1987), 205-36.

  • “Les Odyssees de Norman Mailer,” Magazine Litteraire (Paris), Dec., 1983. Interview.

  • Introduction. Poor Richard in Rebus. Chicago: The Monastery Press, 1982.

  • “Mailer’s Cosmology,” Modern Language Studies 12 (Summer 1982), 18-29. Reprinted in Critical Essays on Norman Mailer, Boston: G. K. Hall, 1986.

  • “Empathy and Detachment in the Narratives of Erikson and Mailer” (with Charles B. Strozier), Psychohistory Review 10 (Fall 1981), 18-32.

  • “Mailer’s Radical Bridge,” Narrative 7 (Fall 1977), 170-88.

  • “Mailer’s Sarcophagus: The Artist, the Media and the ‘Wad’,” Modern Fiction Studies 23 summer 1977), 179-87. Rpt: Proceedings of the Fifth National Popular Culture Association Convention. Edited by Michael T. Marsden. Bowling Green, Ohio: Popular Culture Press, 1975.

  • “Mark Twain on the Mississippi.” Illinois Times (April 1, 1977), 7-8.

  • “Pursewarden’s Death: ‘A Stray Brick From Another Region’” (Alexandria Quartet). Modern Language Studies 6 (spring 1976), 22-28. Rpt: Modern British Literature, 5th edition. Edited by Denis Lane and Rita Stern. NY: Frederick Unger, 1984.