nyuuzyou/wikis huggingface dataset:
Louis and Moos Mailer, April 17, 1964

::::::::::::::::::::142 Columbia Heights
::::::::::::::::::::Brooklyn 1, New York
::::::::::::::::::::April 17, 1964
Dear Louis and Moos,The late Louis Mailer was the brother of Mailer’s father, Isaac Barnett “Barney” Mailer. He and his wife Moos lived in South Africa but visited the U.S. several times.
Just a quick note to tell you a little about Michael.Beverly gave birth to Michael Burks Mailer, Mailer’s first son, on 17 March 1964. The work on the serial is really reaching up to its climax now, and I’m in a dozen kinds of trouble, for I have to finish the book in the next five weeks and the last installment has fearful importance attached to it because the book can turn out anywhere from fairly good to very good by the way I end it. At any rate, in the midst of all this, Mikey B. was born, and an alert little devil he is, very sharp-eyed and lively he is, like a squirrel, with a head that now is very much like mine in shape—nothing to brag about, but since he was born with a cranium as long and thin as a banana, we consider this a blessed improvement. In any event he looks more like his mother than like me. He’s got her eyes and nose, her lower lip and chin. Which are, in turn, almond-shaped, uptipped, tremulous, and pointed. But his ears and upper lip belong
to me, the ears quite large, but disposed benevolently close to the head. The upper lip is pure Mailer. Thin, as bowed as Cupid’s bow, and the channel in his upper lip is deep and long. He eats all the time, is passing fond of his mother, and glares at me. I’m obviously the opposition. And I suspect he’s planning (with the aid of his four sisters) to pull off a palace coup in the next ten years. As for the rest, he’s got a barrel chest, very active somewhat skinny legs, quick-moving arms, quiet red-gold hair (not much), and a fabulous twig, which persists, despite all odds, at remaining in a state of constant erection. It must be all the women he’s surrounded with. Last, he looks to be a good boxer. The other day I tapped him with three left hooks, and before I could land a fourth, he brought up his right to cover his chin. Add to this that he has a low but nonetheless noble brow, a fifty-year-old air of British elegance and looks disconcertingly at times like Ike or Winston Churchill. (At other times he just goes back to looking like a squirrel.) His toes? Oh god, I haven’t looked at them yet. 
Love to you, my dears, and I’ll send pictures so soon as we get a good one, which
will probably not be until the summer.
::::::::::::::::::::Norman
===Notes===
Louis and Moos Mailer, September 25, 1966

::::::::::::::::::::565 Commercial Street 
::::::::::::::::::::Provincetown, Massachusetts 
::::::::::::::::::::September 25, 1966 
Dear Louis and Moos,
I haven’t written in ages. Please forgive me for not answering your fine letters, but this summer’s been unbelievable. I haven’t worked so hard in years. I got going at a great rate on a new novel and then just about the time I was half way through, everything in the scheme of things diverted me over to an old adaptation of The Deer Park, which I rewrote and changed from a five-hour play to a two-hour play.The first stage version of The Deer Park, in two acts, was presented at Act IV, a Provincetown Theater, in August 1966, with Beverly Bentley as Lulu Myers. We did it up here in Provincetown in a theater Beverly helped to start (she is, by the way, a superb actress—woe is me—I’m not used to other talent in the family), and the play turned out well enough to be moved to New York. So we’re going to put it in on Off-Broadway this winter and if all goes well, it might be exciting, indeed. I have some hopes at any rate. As for the rest, all is well. Mother’s recovered completely from the operation, which proved, of course, not to be necessary—when will people finally realize that medicine exists first for the sake of doctors and their beastly hospitals. Cannibals and Christians came out and, to my surprise, received fairly good reviews.Cannibals and Christians, Mailer’s third miscellany, was published by Dial on 29 August 1966. If Dad hasn’t taken care of it, I’m going to make certain a copy gets to you. 
As for the boys, Michael is all box-office, prima donna, narcissistic, brilliant, spoiled, electric, frighteningly sexy, a complete self-starter, and SteveBeverly gave birth to Stephen McLeod Mailer, their second son, on 10 March 1966. all attention and reaction and soft smiles and chuckles and fun. They’re going to make a great pair, knock on wood, as my mother would say.
As for the movie, An American Dream, don’t ask. An absolute disaster. My only consolation is that I had nothing to do with the makings of it, except for the tarty action of taking a large sum of money in sale from a large movie studio, for which I had no respect. 
Give my best to Basil,Basil was the son of Louis and Moos. Beverly sends love, 
::::::::::::::::::::Norman Mailer
 
 
===Notes===
Maggie McKinley

is Professor of English at Harper College, where she teaches courses in composition and American literature. She is the author of Masculinity and the Paradox of Violence in American Fiction, 1950-75 (Bloomsbury 2015) and Understanding Norman Mailer (U of SC Press 2017), and the editor of Norman Mailer in Context and Philip Roth in Context (Cambridge University Press, 2021).
===Selected Publications===
* 
* 
* 
* 
* 
* The chapter “Existentialism, Violent Liberation, and Racialized Masculinities: Norman Mailer’s “The White Negro” and An American Dream” is reprinted here.
* 
* 
Category:Contributors
Category:2022 Conference
Category:2020 Conference
Category:2019 Conference
Category:2018 Conference
Category:2017 Conference
Malcolm Cowley

Malcolm Cowley (1898–1989) was an American novelist, poet, and literary critic who, along with Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ezra Pound, and Edmund Wilson, shaped the artistic sensibilities of America’s Lost Generation. After covering the World War I Western Front for The Pittsburgh Gazette, Cowley joined other expatriate authors in Paris and later became an important chronicler of that artistic collective. As an editor for Viking Press and, later, The New Republic, Cowley promoted and edited works by Hemingway, William Faulkner, Sherwood Anderson, John Cheever, and Jack Kerouac. Cowley’s own works included the influential collection of poetry, Blue Juniata (1929), Exile’s Return (1934), perhaps the most complete examination of his Lost Generation literary contemporaries, and the autobiographical And I Worked at the Writer’s Trade, winner of a 1980 American Book Award. Cowley edited many of the most distinguished author collections in Viking’s Portable series, and was honored, postmortem, with his own collection, The Portable Malcolm Cowley (1990), edited by Donald Faulkner.
===Contributions===
Category:Contributors
Mann Rubin, March 24, 1966

::::::::::::::::::::142 Columbia Heights
::::::::::::::::::::Brooklyn 1, New York
::::::::::::::::::::March 24, 1966
Dear Mann Rubin,Rubin wrote the first screenplay for An American Dream, one that was altered considerably by Warner Brothers. For example, the setting was changed to Los Angeles.
Well, your letter confirmed the little messages I was getting in my dreams, and so I got to work on my agent, who’s gotten to work on Warner’s, and that of course accomplished wonders, you bet. Now I hear they’ve got Janet Leigh playing Cherry.Janet Leigh did indeed play Cherry. Someday they will do the life of Jennie Grossinger, and Tuesday Weld will sit on Natalie Wood’s head long enough to grind the kasha in the second reel. Well, Mann, when you come to New York, give me a ring and we will commiserate—UL 58966.
::::::::::::::::::::Yours in show biz,
::::::::::::::::::::Norman Mailer
===Notes===
Marc Triplett

is a lawyer with a criminal defense trial and appellate practice.
He is a 1974 graduate of the University of Delaware (BA), and received
his JD from Cumberland School of Law, Samford University, Birmingham,
Alabama, in 1977. Mr. Triplett is a lifetime member of the Norman Mailer Society and has maintained an interest in ’s works since first reading The Armies of the Night in 1968.
Category:Contributors
Category:2008 Vol. 2 (MR)
Category:2019 Conference
Category:2017 Conference
Mark Olshaker

is an Emmy winning documentary filmmaker and author of thirteen nonfiction books and five novels, including Einstein’s Brain and The Edge. His books with former FBI Special Agent John Douglas, beginning with Mindhunter (basis for the Netflix series), have sold millions of copies worldwide. Deadliest Enemy: Our War Against Killer Germs, with Dr. Michael Osterholm, was published in 2017 and they are currently writing a book about pandemic preparedness. Olshaker is past president of the Norman Mailer Society and a life member of the Writers Guild of America. He was a contributor to Norman Mailer in Context.
Category:Contributors
Category:2008 Vol. 2 (MR)
Category:2022 Conference
Category:2019 Conference
Category:2017 Conference
Mark Stewart

Mark Stewart is the author of several short story collections (The Absence of Wings, The Last Aviator, and A Storm Over England) along with the novel The Quiet Limits of the World. He also co-authored and co-edited the biography
Arthur C. Clarke—A Life Remembered. His writing has been featured in a diverse range of publications including Spaceflight, Odyssey, Astronomy Now, and the Journal of the British Astronomical Association. Website.
===Contributions===
Category:Contributors
Marlissa Santos

Marlissa Santos is Professor in the Department of Humanities and Politics and Honors College Faculty Fellow at Nova Southeastern University. Her research focuses on film noir and classic film studies. She is the editor of Verse, Voice, and Vision: Poetry and the Cinema and the author of The Dark Mirror: Psychiatry and Film Noir. She has also published numerous articles on various topics such as Cornell Woolrich, film noir aesthetics, the James Bond franchise, American mafia cinema, and on directors such as Ida Lupino, Martin Scorsese, Edgar G. Ulmer, and Joseph H. Lewis.
===Contributions===
Category:Contributors
Category:2017 Conference
Martin Peretz, March 17, 1964

::::::::::::::::::::142 Columbia Heights
::::::::::::::::::::Brooklyn 1, New York
::::::::::::::::::::March 17, 1964
Dear Marty,Editor-in-chief of The New Republic, Martin Peretz was a professor at Harvard when Mailer met him in the early 1960s. 
Thanks for your letter. I’m not sure I’m going to go into a ski cabin next year, for it proved expensive, and full of headaches this season.
	
I still have my nose deep in the serial and I’m not sure I ever want to write a novel this way again. For cumulative fatigue may get in the way of finishing the book properly. I hope not, I think I still haven’t lost the book, but I’m feeling wrung out, dull, and smoking too many cigarettes these days. Forgive the lugubrious tone—I think I’m still recovering from the Clay-Liston fight.Mailer watched Cassius Clay, now known as Muhammad Ali, defeat Sonny Liston for the heavyweight championship in Miami on 25 February 1964. One of my secret dreams was to see Patterson and Liston have a great third fight.
::::::::::::::::::::Best for now,
::::::::::::::::::::Norman
===Notes===
Marty Correia

Marty Correia is a poet and fiction writer whose work has appeared in FUSE, Punk Soul Poet, Lady Business and Fiction Fix. A graduate of New York University’s M.F.A. program in Creative Writing, Marty is currently at work on her first novel, The Art of Money Getting. The tale follows four generations of arsonists and other fiery characters in Bridgeport, Connecticut, and it spans from the days of P.T. Barnum to 1986, the year the space shuttle Challenger explodes. Marty has lived in New York City’s East Village with conceptual artist Kate Conroy for almost twenty years.
===Contributions===
Category:Contributors
Mary Jane Shoultz, December 11, 1963

::::::::::::::::::::142 Columbia Heights
::::::::::::::::::::Brooklyn 1, New York
::::::::::::::::::::December 11, 1963 
Dear Mary Jane,Mailer’s letter to Mary Jane Shoultz, acquaintance with Ray Shoultz, confirms the fact that Esquire usually appeared approximately two weeks before its cover date. It also demonstrates his eagerness for feedback on the opening installment.
I’m buried in mail today so this is just a line to ask you to let me know what you think of the first installment of the serial, which should be out about the time you get this letter. That is, if you have the time in your own busy life. How is Ray? I take it he’s completely recovered. I certainly hope so. Don’t worry about the delay at Random House and Esquire. Those places take forever.
		
::::::::::::::::::::Best for now,
::::::::::::::::::::Norman
===Notes===
Mashey Bernstein

holds a Ph.D. in American literature. He has written extensively on Norman Mailer, with articles appearing in The Mailer Review, Studies in American Jewish Literature, The San Francisco Review of Books, and the London Jewish Chronicle. His most recent article was on Mailer’s Judaism in Mailer in Context (ed. Maggie McKinley). He also writes on film, especially Jewish aspects of the media. He maintained a close friendship with Mailer from 1978 till the author’s death.
Category:Contributors
Category:2008 Vol. 2 (MR)
Category:2022 Conference
Category:2020 Conference
Category:2018 Conference
Matthew Diomede

is a Professor of English/Writing at the University of Tampa. He has taught at the University of South Florida, St. Louis University, University of Missouri, and other universities. He has taught literary criticism, literature, vocabulary, composition/advanced writing, creative writing and other courses. His undergraduate degree is from Fordham University, where he received a track athletic scholarship. He has two MA degrees from Fordham and Long Island University. His Ph.D. in English is from St. Louis University. His revised Ph.D. dissertation on an Italian-American writer was published by Bucknell University Press: Pietro DiDonato, the Master Builder. Two chapters from this book have been reprinted in Twentieth Century Criticism (TCLC) and reproduced in Literature Resource Center. His most recent book of poetry is For Father And Many Other Things (May 2021), published by Finishing Line press. He has published over 100 poems, prose, and fiction and has received several writing awards. He is listed in A Directory of American Poets. He served in the U.S. Marine Corps Reserve for six years.
Category:Contributors
Category:2021 Vol. 15 (MR)
Matthew S. Hinton

(MA, MFA) was born in the back seat of his great grandmother’s taxi in Wilkes-Barre, PA. He is a playwright and poet, and teaches at Misericordia University. His account of getting a tattoo of Norman Mailer appears in the Summer 2018 issue of Provincetown Arts. He dreams in analog.
Category:Contributors
Category:2022 Conference
Category:2020 Conference
Category:2019 Conference
Category:2018 Conference
Category:2017 Conference
Michael Chaiken

is a regular contributor to Film Comment magazine. He has organized touring retrospectives of the work of Luc Moullet, Peter Whitehead and Norman and is the editor of Arthur Penn: Interviews (University Press of Mississippi, 2008!=) with Paul Cronin and Albert Maysles: Photographs/Cinemagraphs/Documents (Steidl, 2007) with Steven Kasher. He lives in Brooklyn.
Category:Contributors
Category:2008 Vol. 2 (MR)
Michael Fournier

is an Associate Professor of English and Chair of Faculty at Georgia Gwinnett College. He is the editor of The Collected Poems of Louis Ginsberg, a critical documentary edition of Parker Tyler’s long poem, The Granite Butterfly and Take This Waltz: A Celebration of Leonard Cohen. He has written about Modernist Poetry, Elizabethan Poetry, and the work of Louis Zukofsky. He is currently researching the early use of sound in French Cinema.
Category:Contributors
Category:2018 Conference
Michael K. Glenday

was appointed Honorary Research Associate in the Department of Literature at the Open University, United Kingdom in 2005. Amongst his publications are Norman Mailer (1995) and F. Scott Fitzgerald (2012). He is co-editor of American Mythologies: Essays on Contemporary Literature (2005) and a co-editor of the F. Scott Fitzgerald Review.
Category:Contributors
Category:2008 Vol. 2 (MR)
Michael Millgate

was born in England, studied at the universities of Cambridge,
Michigan, and Leeds, and taught at Leeds for six years before moving
to Canada in 1964, first to York University, Toronto, and then, in 1967, to
the University of Toronto, retiring as University Professor of English Emeritus
in 1995. Following early writings on American literature, including
American Social Fiction (1964) and The Achievement of William Faulkner
(1966), he has worked primarily on Thomas Hardy, editing or co-editing a
wide range of documentary materials, including The Collected Letters of Thomas Hardy (7 vols., 1978–88), and writing such critical and biographical studies
as Thomas Hardy: His Career as a Novelist (1971), Thomas Hardy: A Biography (1982), Testamentary Acts: Browning, Tennyson, James, Hardy
(1992), and Thomas Hardy: A Biography Revisited (2004).
Category:Contributors
Category:2008 Vol. 2 (MR)
Michael Nixon

Michael Nixon is a retired tax attorney. He was on active duty in the Marine Corps from 1968 to 1972; he did not serve in Vietnam. In addition to his law degrees, he holds an MA in creative writing from Wilkes University. In 2016, he was selected as a Norman Mailer Center Nonfiction Fellow. He lives in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware. “Parris Island 1968” is an excerpt from his yet unpublished memoir, Nowhere Else to Go: Parris Island and the Making of a Marine.
===Contributions===
Category:Contributors
Mickey Knox

(December 24, 1921 − November 15, 2013) was an American actor with nearly 80 films to his credit. Knox was also a screenwriter, film producer, and novelist. Knox was blacklisted during the McCarthy era, and he subsequently moved to Paris and Rome to find work. Knox’s screenwriter credits, where he adapted approximately 150 Italian and French into English translations, include the English adaptation of Sergio Leone’s The Good, the Bad and the Ugly. As a dialogue director, he coached many non-English speaking actors in performing convincingly in the English language. 
Category:Contributors
Category:2003 Conference
Mickey Knox, February 17, 1964

::::::::::::::::::::142 Columbia Heights
::::::::::::::::::::Brooklyn 1, New York
::::::::::::::::::::February 17, 1964
Dear Mickey,
This is the worst day in the world to write you a letter because I’m in a foul mood and have forty other letters to get through before the day is done. But if I don’t write you today another month will go by, because what with the serial taking up almost all the time, I try to take care of all the mail once a month. Anyway, there’s very little in the form of news. I’m simply working my ass off, and going out very little, seeing very few people, and keeping my nose over the top of a pencil. In return, things have been quiet and nice here. Bev’s pregnancy has been going along pleasantly and my life has been for me remarkably stable. Sometimes a week goes by before I get a chance to do some serious drinking. So that’s it on the news.
The biggest excitement in New York this year culturally has been “Dr. Strangelove” and the arrival of the Beatles, who, surprise, sounded kind of nice when I saw them on television. And “Dr. Strangelove” you’ve got to see. It’s the only great movie I know which is great not because it’s great as a movie but because it’s sociologically great that the thing was made.
I hope things are going ok between you and Joan. How’s her pregnancy? I’m a little pissed off at her because I asked her to ring and say goodbye before she left and she didn’t, which bugs me somehow. I mean like, you know, I knew her when.
I feel apologetic about this letter because your last one was fascinating and full of news, and this one of mine reads like last week’s newspapers, but truthfully it’s not depression, it’s just the weight of work. I was thinking about you yesterday and the couple of good evenings we had just before you left, and I wished you were back in New York again.
::::::::::::::::::::Best, Mickey, and love,
::::::::::::::::::::Norm
P.S. I think Henderson the Rain King could make a great movie, so here’s wishing you luck on that. I’m sure you’ve thought of this, but it occurs to me that Welles might be interested in playing Henderson; and it might be interesting to try to get Sonny Liston to play Dahfu. If you can get a picture started, I’ll go and talk to Liston because I’m on fairly good terms with his manager, Jack Nilon.Nothing came of the idea of having Orson Welles play Henderson and Sonny Liston play Dahfu in a film version of Saul Bellow’s Henderson the Rain King. Knox attempted unsuccessfully to convince Welles to buy the rights.
===Notes===
Mickey Knox, June 2, 1964

::::::::::::::::::::142 Columbia Heights
::::::::::::::::::::Brooklyn 1, New York
::::::::::::::::::::June 2, 1964
Dear Mick,
It’s now more than a month after your last letter, and no further news from you, and not a word from Omar Sharif, whom I did see in Lawrence of Arabia, and did think was marvelous. Incidentally, he’s a very handsome but exact version of Fred Betah,Fred Betah was the first husband of Joan Morales. so I felt as if I knew him very well. What did Joan think of him?Joan was Mickey’s third wife and the sister of Mailer’s second wife, Adele Morales.
And when is the baby due? It must be any day now. Send me a telegram when it happens. If it’s after June 3, Mickey, send it to me c/o Arlie Sinaiko, 603 Commercial Street, Provincetown, Mass.
Well, I’m finally coming to the end of An American Dream. I’ve finished the last installment rough draft, and I’m giving it the final polish. What a murderous fucking installment this last one has been. I’m in pretty good shape, but of course tense as hell, and all burned out from smoking. I feel just the way a wire must feel after a short circuit. But the book is pretty good, I think, and if it does nothing else, will make me enough money so that I can pay my alimony for a couple of years. I don’t think anything changed my life quite so much as losing my loot on the stock market and having to pay Adele that twenty grand a year. It’s amazing how I, who was always so impractical, am now making a living.
Incidentally, I’m pretty sure I did receive a letter from you about ten days ago, a typewritten letter, but I’ve looked all around and can’t seem to find it, of all the damn luck. Anyway, in it I seem to remember your asking about the movie of An American Dream. It’s simple enough. Warner’s took an option for twenty grand, against $200,000 if they take it within four months after completion. Some of the newspapers reported it was sold outright at $300,000, but that of course was Hollywood reporting. Anyway, if you get into a situation where you have money to make your movie, run into trouble, and need a few thousand more, I’d probably be able to help you. I’d offer to put up the full twenty-five grand you mentioned in your letter, but I’m likely to clear no more than $100,000 after debts, taxes, what-have-you, and I’ve got to put most of the money aside so that I can get to work on the big novel.
No news other than work. I’ve hardly seen a soul in weeks, and spend most of my time pushing a pencil. But this summer we’re going to be in Provincetown for four months. Is there any chance you’ll be back in the States between June and September? Because if so, I’d sure like you to come up—I think we’d have room to put you up.
Wish Joan a good delivery for me. Bev has been in pretty good shape, and Michael is nothing but a prick. Every time his mother changes his diaper, he gets a hard-on.
::::::::::::::::::::Best, and love,
::::::::::::::::::::Norm
===Notes===