Selected Letters of Norman Mailer

Starred review from November 24, 2014
Mailer’s ambition to be the greatest writer of his generation is made clear in his stylish, sophisticated letters. The novelist wrote at least 45,000 over the course of his long life, and this fascinating and lively volume reprints many hundreds (716, to be precise). The book begins in 1940, when Mailer was a Harvard undergraduate, and ends with just weeks before his death in 2007; his letters span from the atom bomb to the Huffington Post, in other words. A list of Mailer’s correspondents reads like a guide to 20th-century history and literature: Martin Luther King Jr., Robert F. Kennedy, Henry Kissinger, John Lennon, Yoko Ono, Fidel Castro, Hunter S. Thompson, Graham Greene, Philip Roth, Thomas Pynchon, Bill Clinton, Monica Lewinsky, and dozens of others. Mailer’s extensive correspondence with Jack Abbott reveals that Mailer remained friendly with him, even years after Abbott returned to prison for manslaughter. Mailer’s
legendary combative side is also on display, as when he tells Gordon Lish, “what your work catches is everything I detest about modern life.” Lennon proves an ideal guide, expertly assembling a tidal wave of letters into a tidy, chronological selection. In the end, Mailer’s letters stand as the best autobiography available for such a complicated and extraordinary life.

October 15, 2014
The late literary lion's archivist shares 70 years of his missives.Before he died at age 84, Pulitzer Prize-winning author Norman Mailer (1923-2007) penned 44 books. He also spent that time adapting plays, writing poetry, producing films, and helping to launch "New Journalism" and the Village Voice. In the course of all that activity, the Brooklyn boy-turned-Harvard man also wrote complex, caustic and sometimes-moving letters to some 4,000 individuals. Lennon (Norman Mailer: A Double Life, 2013) presents 716 of those letters, decade by decade, in their naked forms and without much introduction. The recipients represent a cavalcade of contrasting personalities ranging from Martin Luther King Jr. to Monica Lewinsky. Most are directed at Mailer's family, friends and colleagues and find the World War II veteran supremely absorbed in his own ideas. Mailer aficionados will no doubt enjoy the behind-the-scenes looks at the making of seminal works like The Naked and the Dead, as well as the writer's ongoing sparring matches with editors and critics. Back in 1958, fellow scribe William Styron received this warning: "So I tell you this, Bill-boy. You have got to learn to keep your mouth shut about my wife, for if you do not, and I hear of it again, I will invite you to a fight in which I expect to stomp out of you a fat amount of your yellow and treacherous shit." The legendary man of letters seems downright tame here, possessed of a certain kind of blue-collar charm that compliments his penchant for intellectualization. But one must also then consider that Mailer later stabbed the same woman he so steadfastly defended. She survived, but the author would go on to fulfill the prediction he made early on in life about becoming a serial groom. Apparently, Mailer hated writing letters and often found the exercise tortuous, but from Lennon's collection, it appears that he loathed being disconnected even more. An intriguing look at a particularly influential life of letters and a treat for Mailer fans.

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December 1, 2014
Lots of people didn't care for Norman Mailer personally, because he could be pretty arrogant. And lots of readers, even to this day, don't like his work, in which they perceive misogyny. Nevertheless, Mailer rests rather assuredly in the pantheon of major post-WWII novelists, which means his collected correspondence has significance in the history of American letters. According to editor Lennon, who knew Mailer for many years and edited several of his books, Mailer's letters constitute an extraordinary trove of epistles, one of the largest in American life. The letters included here are arranged by decade, the 1940s through the 2000s, and the reader will see Mailer's openness as he discusses writerly concerns during the rising arc of his career. But concomitantly, personal issues also find their way into his correspondence, and it is there we observe egotism but also frustration, and from this mix emerges a writer who, yes, perhaps many of us would not have wanted to have a beer with but nevertheless offers the fascinating complexities of a deeply intelligent individual.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2014, American Library Association.)

July 1, 2014

Author of last year's big biography of Norman Mailer, Mailer scholar Lennon edits a hefty selection of letters from the perpetual enfant terrible--just check out the page count.

Copyright 2014 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

January 1, 2015

Mailer (1923-2007) composed more than 45,000 letters over 70 years. This fractional selection of 716 of them covers the 1940s to 2007. In style and temper, the missives are quintessential Mailer: self-serving, confrontational, and vituperative; but sometimes subdued, chummy, and intimate. Notwithstanding his Harvard University degree in aeronautical engineering, Mailer's true calling was writing, as evidenced in his enthusiastic notes about composing fiction and contributing stories to the Harvard Advocate. Mailer's army letters from the Philippines to his parents, siblings, and first wife report horrific experiences which he incorporated in his acclaimed war novel, The Naked and the Dead. With the exception of his creative nonfiction, The Armies of the Night and The Executioner's Song, approbation was not extended to his subsequent work and this collection includes a maelstrom of belligerent correspondence to reviewers. Alternatively, Mailer's reports to several publishers, editors, and critics (Irving Howe, Diana Trilling, Joseph Aldridge) are unpretentious in their self-analysis; and those to fellow writers William Styron, James Jones, Irwin Shaw, and Truman Capote are complimentary. The few, brief missives to Don DeLillo, Salman Rushdie, Thomas Pynchon, and Philip Roth, among others, seem to be included as reader appeal to name recognition. VERDICT Lennon (Norman Mailer: A Double Life) has appended meticulously fulsome explanatory notes to this collection. For fans of the alpha-Mailer.--Lonnie Weatherby, McGill Univ. Lib., Montreal

Copyright 2015 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.