A woman who savors a fine wine Nov 20, 2009
In "Advertisements for Myself," Norman Mailer admitted "a desire to inflict my casual opinions on a half-captive audience." That's what Palin has done in her 400-plus-page advertisement for a woman who, at age 45, seems to have permanently attached the word former to her name - former beauty queen, former mayor of Wasilla, former governor of Alaska, former Republican vice presidential nominee. Palin is now beginning a book tour on which she will do what she does best: draw crowds, create... (Juneau Empire)
The story, so far Nov 19, 2009
Yes, that really was John Updike, Frank McCourt, Norman Mailer, the historian Shelby Foote, Hunter S. Thompson of gonzo lore and Kurt Vonnegut on those memorable Albany evenings when the city's literary standing was every bit equal to its political one. Saul Bellow and Joseph Heller were here, too, in their day. (Albany Times Union)
Excerpt: "Rainwater" Nov 9, 2009
Excerpt: "Rainwater," by Sandra Brown - The Early Show - CBS News. Excerpt: "Rainwater," by Sandra Brown. (CBS News -- Early Show)
Sex ed gets another endorsement Nov 7, 2009
It wasn't pretty -- but I did have a drink with Norman Mailer. By Melena RyzikWednesday, Dec 31, 1969 16:00. (Salon)
Ron White brings out Blue Collar laughs Oct 26, 2009
White also praised Pulitzer Prize-winning author Norman Mailer, who died at 84 in 2007. White said he admired Mailer because the author was married six times, smoked marijuana and drank excessively. (The Herald-Mail Online)
Trip to book store recalls who helped through life Oct 22, 2009
In the "M," Henry Miller and Norman Mailer. Other writers interested us too but in passing. (Anchorage Daily News)
Idol With Clay Feet Oct 20, 2009
In his youth, Podhoretz was best known as a literary critic, and his reflections on such writers as Saul Bellow, Norman Mailer, and Philip Roth, embedded with his personal stories about them, are all reprinted here, along with a brief and unremarkable essay on Huckleberry Finn. To most Americans, if not to Podhoretz and his fans, such writers and their professional careers, personal quarrels, political opinions, and sexual peccadilloes are as remote as the struggles between the Greens and the... (The American Conservative)
Tough guys don't need to dance Oct 14, 2009
Not the free-thinkers, not today's equivalents of Mary McCarthy or Norman Mailer ... One person unsurprised by this state of affairs would have been Norman Mailer, who died in 2007 ... Courtesy of Norman Mailer, here are three unconventional pointers that should be driving him in this direction: 1. (Asia Times Online)
Obama at the Afghan Precipice Oct 13, 2009
One person unsurprised by this state of affairs would have been Norman Mailer, who died in 2007 ... Courtesy of Norman Mailer, here are three unconventional pointers that should be driving him in this direction ... What Obama needs, in other words, is fewer generals and ex-generals and more Norman Mailers -- more outspoken free-thinkers who have no interest in staying inside the pentagonal box that holds Washington's thinking tight. (CBS News)
Gore Vidals United States of Fury, Johann Hari, The Independent Oct 9, 2009
I ask him about some of his rivals who have died recently John Updike, William Buckley, Norman Mailer and he interrupts. "Updike was nothing. Buckley was nothing with a flair for publicity. Mailer was a flawed publicist, too, but at least there were signs every now and then of a working brain." Then he smiles to himself: "You know, he used the word 'existential' all the time, to the end of his life, and never even learned what it meant. I heard Iris Murdoch once at dinner explain to Norman what... (Harper's Magazine)
Writing the Book on the 'F' word
Oct 8, 2009
Norman Mailer using "fug," in The Naked and the Dead, which gave rise to the famous anecdote that at a party, Tallulah Bankhead or in some versions, Dorothy Parker came up to him and said, "So you're the young man who can't spell 'f---'.". How would you describe the current standard in magazines and newspapers. (Time.com)
‘Hound Dog’ documents Lieber and Stoller’s rise to greatness Sep 30, 2009
And we get some great insider memories - mostly from Leiber, who admits to fighting Norman Mailer in a nightclub scrap, drinking with James Dean, and getting testy with Colonel Tom Parker, Presley s manager. He calls Parker fat and smart and a nonstop talker whose ego was always on parade. (Boston Globe)
A bed with a view Sep 24, 2009
The book consists of essays on Walt Whitman, Norman Mailer, Bob Dylan, Fannie Lou Hamer, Margaret Sanger, Clarence Darrow and many others who ve struggled against conformity, commercialism, racism, oligarchy, conventional wisdom, stacked decks and sacred cows. Another book Think on These Things, by J. Krishnamurti, was given to me by one of the kindest women I ve known, the late Donna Dowling, whose young life was rudely taken by cancer. (Greenville Delta Democrat Times, MS)
Student wins $10K writing award Sep 24, 2009
Published: Thursday, September 24, 2009 2:06 AM CDT A Utah State University undergraduate has won the first Norman Mailer College Nonfiction Writing Award an honor that includes 10,000 and an all expenses paid trip to the Norman Mailer Writers Colony in Massachusetts ... In his winning essay for the Norman Mailer contest, Gilmore drew on childhood experiences hiking in the high Uinta Mountains with a favorite youth leader now dying of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS). (Logan Herald Journal, UT)
DAVID BROOKS: Our nation lacks humility Sep 18, 2009
Norman Mailer wrote a book called "Advertisements for Myself.". Today, immodesty is as ubiquitous as advertising, and for the same reasons. (Fresno Bee -- Opinion)
‘Old Girlfriends’ traverses emotional wreckage Sep 9, 2009
They seem like writers, and not of the brawny Ernest Hemingway or Norman Mailer variety. And the pieces themselves, in the minimalist, New Yorker tradition of the 80s, don t exactly overwhelm with incident. (Boston Globe)
Making history. Or not. Sep 8, 2009
The congenitally-on-the-verge novelist Mary Gaitskill tries to parody Norman Mailer s bombast, but she does remind us how forgettable and mired in self-parody the bard of Provincetown has become. She calls Mailer s ravings artifacts from narcissism s Golden Age. (Boston Globe)
Remember the socialist origins of Labor Day! Sep 5, 2009
Remember the socialist origins of Labor Day. Remember the socialist origins of Labor Day. (Atlanta Journal-Constitution -- Opinion)
New Fall Books Penned by Prizewinners Aug 28, 2009
A food book is coming out from another veteran editor and gourmet, Jason Epstein, who worked with Doctorow, Norman Mailer and many others. Besides Kennedy's memoir, other notable books are by authors no longer around to discuss them. (CBS News -- Entertainment)
What the Radical Left Doesn't Want You to Know About the 60's Aug 25, 2009
Sixties disassembles other personalities from the era, including author Norman Mailer and environmentalist Rachel Carson. Mailer saluted the societal criminal as a figure artists need to emulate and called Fidel Castro the greatest hero to appear in the Americas, among his many irrational statements. (Human Events Online)
Film buff Justin Freed played a lead role in Boston theater history Aug 23, 2009
Moviegoers were as likely to encounter Norman Mailer introducing one of his films, or the graffiti artists of Wild Style spray-painting an exterior wall, as a Fellini double feature. Now run by the nonprofit Coolidge Corner Theatre Foundation, the theater continues its year-long celebration of the 75th anniversary of its founding. (Boston Globe)
Richard Poirier; literary critic and writer who founded Library of America Aug 22, 2009
He wrote books, essays, articles, and reviews about America s most perceptive writers and thinkers - Henry James, Robert Frost, and Norman Mailer, among others - but he also explored such cultural phenomena as the American invasion of the Beatles. In Learning From the Beatles, an essay originally published in Partisan Review in 1967, Dr. Poirier was one of the first commentators to contend that the album Sgt. Pepper s Lonely Hearts Club Band represented an intermingling of pop and serious... (Boston Globe)
Vt. firefighter, Iraq guardsman writes about war Aug 10, 2009
Middleton, without meaning to, has joined a long and distinguished line of authors who wrote of their war experiences - some of whom, like Ernest Hemingway after World War I or Norman Mailer and Kurt Vonnegut from World War II, became giants of American literature. Almost eight years after the United States went to war in Afghanistan in the aftermath of 9/11, war memoirs like Middleton's and books by reporters, diplomats and retired generals are filling store shelves. (Concord Monitor)
Torrington Artwork Spawns Controversy Aug 7, 2009
It centered on a painted cutout work-a nude with carefully and colorfully articulated breasts-created by Danielle Mailer, the daughter of literary lion Norman Mailer, that was displayed in a storefront window as part of Artwell's salon. According to Artwell, Torrington police, responding to an anonymous complaint on the night of the opening, ordered Artwell volunteers to remove the artwork from the window display, saying it was in violation of city ordinance 149-2 regarding the display of... (Litchfield County Times, CT)
TV critic's corner Jul 25, 2009
Those interviewed include writers Michael Cunningham, Peter Manso, and Norman Mailer, as well as comedian Lea DeLaria and artist Anne Packard. Alan Cumming narrates. (Boston Globe)
Downstate: Who needs it? Jul 24, 2009
And 1969 was the year that writer Norman Mailer and columnist Jimmy Breslin ran together on an independent ticket, seeking the New York City mayoralty and city council presidency, challenging Mayor John Lindsay with an agenda to make New York City the 51st state. The scholars at remind us that, when questioned as to the name of the new state, Breslin said the city deserved to keep New York and that upstate should be renamed Buffalo , after its largest city. (Buffalo Business First, NY)
Obscenity, Belly Laughs and a Sacre... Jul 23, 2009
For nearly two hours, Krassner read and recounted stories about Abbie Hoffman who really did commit suicide Krassner said Norman Mailer, Alan Ginsberg, Lenny Bruce (who was his comedy mentor) and others. Krassner, it seems, was everywhere and into everything. (Suite101.com)
Frank McCourt Jul 22, 2009
What a lesson, too, of the school teacher who enjoys a pint in the same saloons that the real writers do -- Pete Hamill, Jimmy Breslin and Norman Mailer among them -- and proceeds to hold his own, and then some. Any of them -- the writers, the hangers-on and all the rest -- could of course cite F. Scott Fitzgerald's endlessly rebuked observation that there are no second acts in American lives. (Albany Times Union)
The king of all trips Jul 22, 2009
(Taking nothing away from Tom Wolfe s The Right Stuff, the best account of Apollo 11, for anyone interested, is Norman Mailer s Of a Fire on the Moon, which shows the brilliance the man could uncork on occasion. . (Boston Globe)
Leiber and Stoller write about music legacy Jul 19, 2009
" Two weeks earlier, Mike Stoller was sitting in his room at a quietly elegant midtown Manhattan hotel, while his wife, cabaret singer Corky Hale, went out for Chinese. He and Leiber were doing a New York City promotional tour for the book, a rare return to scenes from their glory days. They did a book signing before an overflow crowd at the Barnes and Noble at Lincoln Center. They attended a reception in their honor co-hosted by "American Idol" judge Randy Jackson at the Sony Club atop the... (San Francisco Chronicle -- Entertainment)
‘From Square One’ sails into world of crossword aficionados Jul 12, 2009
The reverse passer sees the bid of Norman Mailer s jive-talking, jazz-loving White Negro and raises it, full time. Mishna Wolff s father grew up in Seattle in the 1960s in a neighborhood in transition. (Boston Globe)
Bernstein biography Jul 11, 2009
Along with other artists such as Norman Mailer and Henry Miller, Bernstein appeared in a 1949 Life magazine issue in a gallery of Communist dupes. His career temporarily stalled in the 1950s when his name appeared on the Cold War blacklist, the removal accomplished only after he signed an affidavit that he was not a communist. (Boston Globe)
Actress Sylvia Miles gets shot at long-awaited role Jul 10, 2009
At Norman Mailer House, 627 Commercial St., Provincetown, tomorrow night at 6. Tickets: $20-$50. (Boston Globe)
OPEN COURT: Summer reading club Jul 5, 2009
During the next few weeks, I ll be discussing pieces by David Halberstam, Norman Mailer, Jim Murray, Red Smith, W.C. Heinz, Hunter S. Thompson, Rick Reilly, Bill Simmons, Ralph Wiley, Frank Deford, Gary Talese, Richard Ben Cramer and a few under-the-radar gems. If you have any suggestions, please e-mail them to me. (Green Valley News & Sun, AZ)
Cheers! Worlds 10 most legendary bars Jun 30, 2009
White Horse Tavern; New York City, N.Y.A favorite of New York's literati set, The White Horse has seen everyone from Jack Kerouac to Norman Mailer pass through its doors but is perhaps best known as being the bar that served the 18 whiskeys said to have killed Dylan Thomas. 4. (MSNBC -- Travel)
Life By the Horns Jun 1, 2009
As Norman Mailer said, Papa is the cavalry of American letters. He made narrative prose into a physical medium tough, stoical, suffering, what is known as grace under pressure. (The American Conservative)
Litquake funding lures Ethan Canin to S.F. May 30, 2009
But talent and fame did not turn Canin into a Norman Mailer. Today, at 48, he seems the paradigm of a well-rounded, accomplished and kind-hearted man. (San Francisco Chronicle -- Entertainment)
Khmer Rouge court's identity crisis May 23, 2009
He tried to send him the books On God by Norman Mailer and The Inner Life by the theologian Thomas a Kempis, along with letters and e-mails through third parties. All efforts failed and Duch never responded. (Asia Times Online)
Summer of ’69 Apr 30, 2009
Norman Mailer and Jimmy Breslin s campaign to liberate NYC ... Norman Mailer and Jimmy Breslin Open letter to the New York Times June 15, 1969. (The American Conservative)
JOHN MAHER was born Jan. 21, 1923, in Cleveland, Ohio, Apr 28, 2009
She was Norman Mailer s sister, Barbara Mailer ... One day John came across his Alumni Magazine and called Norman Mailer asking about his sister (about 60 years from their first encounter). (Green Valley News & Sun, AZ)
Why Bea Arthur was golden Apr 28, 2009
This was when Gloria Steinem was flipping her long, streaked hair and saying that she "[needed] a man like a fish needs a bicycle"; when Germaine Greer was unleashing her Glamazon-wisdom to seduce and attack everyone from dumb-struck Playboys to Norman Mailer; when plain-Jane everywoman, it seemed, felt like taking Erica Jong's dirty lead in Fear of Flying and leaving her husband for a sexy vagabond. And Arthur, the impossibly tall, warrior-stylish eponymous heroine, made Maude an unprecedented... (Globe and Mail)
Not So Free Love Apr 6, 2009
(He s straight out of Norman Mailer s 1957 treatise The White Negro. The strain in the portrayal of blackness becomes only more evident and uncomfortable in the play s second act, when a Tribe member (Saycon Sengbloh), dressed in an Abraham Lincoln-like stovepipe hat, joins Hud and four black men carrying spears to sing Yes, I s Finished on Y All s Farmlands. (New Yorker)
PEDALING REVOLUTION Mar 22, 2009
As Mapes notes, two mayoral contenders, Norman Mailer and William F. Buckley (though on opposite sides of the political spectrum), each had their own ideas for encouraging bicycling in the city. Mayor John Lindsay "held periodic car-free holidays on Park and Madison avenues, curtailed auto traffic in Central and Prospect parks and restored the Brooklyn Bridge pedestrian path.". (New York Post -- Opinions)
Donald Barthelme: A convincing, admiring portrait of a complex storyteller Mar 21, 2009
He was also the brilliant young editor of the magazine Forum, which he oversaw from 1956 (after he returned from the Korean War) to 1960, publishing original work by figures like Leslie Fiedler, Hugh Kenner, William Carlos Williams, Norman Mailer, Walker Percy and Alain Robbe-Grillet. In 1960 he published Marshall McLuhan's speech "The Medium Is the Message.". (International Herald Tribune -- Arts)
Cheever’s conflicts - With family’s blessing, a new look at torments of a suburban author Mar 14, 2009
Other writers of Cheever s era - Norman Mailer, Saul Bellow, Philip Roth - wrestled with the political and social issues of the time. They paid attention to the headlines. (Missoulian, MT)
• Idaho bill would remove firing squad death option Mar 4, 2009
Since the U.S. Supreme Court reinstated capital punishment in 1976, two people in the United States have died by firing squad, both in Utah: Gary Gilmore, made famous in a book by Norman Mailer, in 1977 and John Albert Taylor in 1996. The Idaho bill would also allow a county coroner to declare the inmate dead and authorizes the Department of Correction director to select the drugs for injections. (Burley South Idaho Press, ID)
New slant on writing pushes participation Feb 23, 2009
" In addition to releasing the report, the council will announce a National Day of Writing, scheduled for Oct. 20; the National Gallery of Writing and the beginning of annual National High School College and University Writing Awards in partnership with the Norman Mailer Writers Colony. Dr. Yancey's report and information on the writing day, the gallery and the awards can be found on the Web at www.ncte.org/press/21stcentwriting. Education writer Eleanor Chute can be reached at or 412-263-1955.... (Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, PA)
A Humble Opinion Feb 18, 2009
Norman Mailer is dead ... II. Norman Mailer, November 2007 ... We are discussing Oscar Wilde's "Salome." I make an ill-conceived comparison between a facet of the work and Norman Mailer's "An American Dream.". (GW Hatchet, Washington DC)
SUBVERSE: Obama's loose screw Feb 16, 2009
In his iconic 1948 war novel, The Naked and the Dead, Norman Mailer resorted to coining the replacement fug to thwart verbal vigilantes who might try to get his book banned on grounds of indecency. That fug of unknowing has, of course, long blown over in not just the realm of literature but also in films and the more hardboiled of American TV serials, such as the award-winning The Sopranos. (India Times, India)
Arts » Feb 12, 2009
Norman Mailer is dead. David Foster Wallace is dead, and most recently, baseball-lauding American writer John Updike died, leaving us - a generation of readers and writers who experienced the work of these men - alone. (GW Hatchet, Washington DC)
A John Updike appreciation Feb 8, 2009
Like Saul Bellow, Philip Roth and Norman Mailer, the other great white hairy-chested male writers (a bygone category in which Updike included himself), he chronicled a culture whose virility and belief in the future were on the ropes. He wrote about sex with a conflicted Protestant obsessiveness and a wariness of women that was reflective of that generation, and uneasily true. (Globe and Mail -- Entertainment)
ABROAD: Randy Scandinavia? Calm down, boys, you're misinformed Feb 8, 2009
Norman Mailer championed it as "one of the most important pictures." There you go. Even "Bonanza" was sexier, in retrospect. (International Herald Tribune -- Arts)
Iconic writer John Updike dead at age 76 Feb 7, 2009
On purely literary grounds, he was attacked by Norman Mailer as the kind of author appreciated by readers who knew nothing about writing. Last year, judges of Britain's Bad Sex in Fiction Prize voted Updike lifetime achievement honors. (MSNBC -- Lifestyle)
