Books
Mailer’s Last Days: New and Selected Remembrances of a Life in Literature. Etruscan Press: Wilkes-Barre, PA, 2022.
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: 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.
On God: An Uncommon Conversation. By Norman Mailer with Michael Lennon. NY: Random House, 2007. Advance excerpts in New Yorker and Playboy.
Edited Books
Lipton’s: A Marijuana Journal, 1954-55 by Norman Mailer. Editor (with Gerald R. Lucas and Susan Mailer). NY: Arcade Books, 2024. Winner of the Robert F. Lucid Award for Mailer Studies.
A Mysterious Country: The Grace and Fragility of American Democracy. Writings by Norman Mailer. Editor (with John Buffalo Mailer). NY: Arcade Books, 2023.
The Naked and the Dead and Selected Letters, 1945-46. Editor. NY: Library of America, 2023.
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.
“Triumph at the Biltmore: John F. Kennedy’s Nomination,” Introduction to Superman Comes to the Supermarket, which originally appeared in Esquire (November 1963), and The Presidential Papers (1963). Taschen illustrated edition conceived by Lawrence Schiller and edited by Nina Weiner. Los Angeles, Taschen Books, 2014. Reprinted in Mailer Review, 9 (2015), and Mailer’s Last Days (2022).
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.
Norman Mailer’s Provincetown: The Wild West of the East. Editor. Provincetown, MA: Provincetown Arts Press, 2005. Evocations of Mailer’s Provincetown from his writings, with an introduction by the editor.
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.
Pieces and Pontifications by Norman Mailer. Editor. Boston: Little, Brown, 1982, Includes three Lennon interviews. Selected a “notable book of the year” by New York Times.
Book Chapters, Interviews, Articles and Essays (Selected)
Interview with Rachel Weaver, author of Dizzy: A Memoir (Morgantown, WV, West Virginia University Press, 2026). Hippocampus On-line Magazine, March 3, 2026.
“Saint and Psychopath.” Excerpt from Norman Mailer’s unpublished marijuana journal from Lipton’s: A Marijuana Journal, 1954-55, edited by J. Michael Lennon, G.R. Lucas, and Susan Mailer (NY: Arcade Books, 2024). TLS, August 19, 2024.
“Five Best Books on Sparring Partners,” Wall Street Journal, April 8-9, 2023. Books chosen: The Red and the Black by Stendhal (1830); Night Boat to Tangier by Kevin Barry (2019); Words in Air: Correspondence of Elizabth Bishop and Robert Lowell, edited by Thomas Travisano and Saskia Hamilton (2008); Butterfield 8 by John O’Hara (1935); Parisian Lives: Simon de Beauvoir and Samuel Beckett by Deirdre Bair (2019).
“The Archivist’s Apprentice,” Lifewriting Annual: Biographical and Autobiographical Studies, 6 (2021). Memoir on assembling Mailer’s Archive. Rpt. Mailer’s Last Days (2022).
“JFK and Political Heroism,” Chapter in Norman Mailer in Context, edited by Maggie McKinley (Cambridge University Press, 2021), 138-47.
“Memorial: Looking for Joan Didion: Norman Mailer’s Opposite,” Chicago Tribune, December 29, 2021, Section 1, p.11.
“Interview with Susan Mailer, author of In Another Place: My Life With and Without My Father, Norman Mailer.” Hippocampus On-line Magazine, October 1, 2019.
“On the State of Mailer Studies: An Interview with J. Michael Lennon by Phillip Sipiora,” Mailer Review (2019), 46-64.
“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).
“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. Rpt: Mailer’s Last Days (2022).
“An Excerpt from Mailer’s Last Interview: The Village Voice.” Mailer Review (2014), 17-20. Rpt: TLS, August 29, 2017.
“Mailer’s Brooklyn.” Mailer Review (2014), 11-13.
“The 10 Best Norman Mailer Books.” Publishers Weekly (October 11, 2103).
“The Complications of Norman Mailer: A Conversation with J. Michael Lennon.” Interviewer, Philip Sipiora. Discussion of Norman Mailer: A Double Life, Mailer Review (2013), 23-65.
“Why Mailer Matters: Three Reasons,” Mailer Review (2012).
“Gore and Norman in Provincetown,” Mailer Review (2012), 58-60. Vidal and Mailer in production of G.B. Shaw’s “Don Juan in Hell.”
“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.
“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 (2007), 132-40. Overview of massive Mailer Archive in the Harry Ransom Center, University of Texas, Austin.
“‘A Series of Tragicomedies’: Mailer’s Letters on The Deer Park, 1954-55.” Mailer Review (fall 2007), 44-76.
“Hitler in My Mind: The Roots of The Castle in the Forest” (interview with Mailer), Provincetown Arts 22 (2007-08), 92-94. Rpt: Mailer Review (2008); Mailer’s Last Days (2022).
“Norman Mailer: Novelist, Journalist, or Historian?” Journal of Modern Literature 30:1 (fall 2006), 91-103. Rpt: Provincetown Arts, (2007); Mailer’s Last Days (2022).
“Norman Mailer.” Oxford Encyclopedia of American Literature. Jay Parini, editor. New York: Oxford University Press, 2004. 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.
“Norman Mailer.” Scribner’s Great Writers Series, 2003, New York: Gale, 2003. 195-207. Overview of Mailer’s life and works. Winner of Robert F. Lucid Award for Mailer Studies.
“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 for PBS American Masters website.
“The Wisdom of a Serious Redneck: Norman Mailer Remembers James Jones.” James Jones Literary Society Newsletter 10:4 (fall 2001), 2-4. Extempore remarks at the 1999 Jones Society conference at Long Island University.
“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.
Reviews
Review of Twice-Born. Biography of Justin Kaplan by Hester Kaplan (NY: Catapult Press, 2025). Provincetown Arts, June 2026.
Review of Eminent Jews: Bernstein, Brooks, Friedan, Mailer by David Denby (NY: Henry Holt, 2025). Hippocampus on-line Magazine, May 6, 2025.
“Middleman of American Letters.” Review of The Outsider. Biography of Malcolm Cowley by Gerald Howard (NY: Penguin Press, 2025). TLS, March 6, 2026, 17.
“Memorial: John T. “Ike” Williams,” Provincetown Arts, 2025, 164-65.
“This Bastard Form,” Review of The Fine Art of Literary Fist-Fighting: How a Bunch of Rabble-rousers and Outsiders Concocted Creative Nonfiction,” by Lee Gutkind (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2024), TLS (March 15, 2024), 5.
“A Mistake 10,000 Miles Long,” Review of Robert Stone: Dog Soldiers, A Flag for Sunrise, Outerbridge Reach, ed. by Madison Smartt Bell (NY: Library of America, 2020), TLS, March 12, 2021, 18-19.
“Dread Persists,” Review of The Silence by Don DeLillo (NY: Scribner, 2020). TLS, October 23, 2020, 16-17.
“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. Rpt. Mailer’s Last Days (2022).
“Cold War Trophy.” Review of American Moonshot: John F. Kennedy and the Great Space Race by Douglas Brinkley (NY: Harper, 2019). TLS, July 12, 2019, 13.
“Dialogue as Combat.” Review of John O’Hara: Four Novels of the 1930s TLD, April 19, 2019, 25-26.
“A Magnificent Keening.” Review of Phantom Signs: The Muse in Universe City by Philip Brady (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 2019). Hippocampus On-line Magazine, April 1, 2019.
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 On-line Magazine, March 1, 2017.
“Motion Slowed into Choreography.” TLS, February 24, 2017, 25. Review of South and West: From a Notebook by Joan Didion. Rpt. Mailer’s Last Days (2022)
“Editor, Edit Thyself.” TLS, January 20, 2017, 32, Review of Avid Reader: A Life by Robert Gottlieb.
“Drenched in Last Things.” TLS, May 6, 2016, 19-20. Review of Zero K by Don DeLillo. Rpt: Mailer’s Last Days (2022)
“Special Friends.” Illinois Times, May 5, 2016, 1. Review of Your Friend Forever, A. Lincoln (NY: Columbia Univ. Press, 2016) by Charles B. Strozier.
“On the Road.” TLS, October 16, 2015, 12-13. Review of Every Time a Friend Succeeds Something Inside Me Dies (biography of Gore Vidal) by Jay Parini. Rpt: Mailer’s Last Days (2022).
“Transmogrified by Travel.” Hippocampus On-line Magazine, October 1, 2015. Review of Cannot Stay: Essays on Travel by Kevin Oderman (Wilkes-Barre, PA: Etruscan Press, 2015).
Review of Love in Tennessee (Greenpoint, NY: Greenpoint Press) by John Bowers. Provincetown Arts (2010), 134-35.
“Feathered with Forbearance.” Provincetown Arts (2001), 101-02. Review of Greene on Capri by Shirley Hazzard. Rpt: Mailer’s Last Days (2022).