nyuuzyou/wikis huggingface dataset:
Diana Athill, July 5, 1964

::::::::::::::::::::597 Commercial Street
::::::::::::::::::::Provincetown, Massachusetts
::::::::::::::::::::July 5, 1964
Dear Diana,Diana Athill was a British literary editor, novelist, and memoirist. Mailer complains here of the way the British edition of An American Dream is described in the Deutsch catalogue of forthcoming books.
On the negative side, I have only a few comments for the catalogue page. I think “evil wife” oversimplifies too much. I think “tragic, tormented, half-evil wife” or something of that ilk might be more satisfactory. Also, “sane love” with Cherry sounds hygienic. "To find some part of his dream of love" might be more what we need. Outside of that, I think it's fine. But I also think we're giving away too much by saying that An American Dream is so unlike “mannerly British fictions,” for it seems to me that the virtuoso aspect of An American Dream is that it is so mannered a book. Violent people always are mannerly, or chaos would result if there were not a spectrum of manners in their dealings with each other. Now this has always fascinated the British—Hammett, Chandler, so forth. But of course the manners they showed there were essentially false ones. The reality is curious and somehow subtler, and I was trying to get toward that reality in An American Dream. But I think it would be a serious mistake to abdicate from any claims this novel can make in the dominion of manners, because it is precisely by the play of manners that I've tried to tell the story. One could even go so far perhaps as to argue that the novel is a study of the bizarre, incisive, and very elaborate manners of some of the kinds of people who live in the social worlds and under-worlds of New York. So I think we might emphasize the book is in its way as mannered as a novel by Henry James. What creates the—it is to be hoped—fascinating confusion is that the material is closer to a Mickey Spillane.
By the way, Diana, how do you all feel about the end of the book? There's been not a word about that from Andre or from you. If you’re unhappy, now’s the time to talk, because I hope to put in about five to ten thousand words and take out a little of the old, all of this to be accomplished by September 1. Since I’m also going to do the Republican Convention, there’ll be only a few weeks for this, probably from August 10 to September 1. But in the month between, there would certainly be time to get your comments. Please believe me, I’m not so delicate as to be afraid of negative comments. And this can go right down to the individual sentences. It’s really a good idea to let me know now whatever bothers you and Andre. Of course, if the end is a vast disappointment to you . . . But then I hope not. I was so tired by the time I finished I was willing to accept any external verdict that it was very good or very bad. The good remarks I heard were that it was very good, by then it was the agent and publisher who said that, and they’re not exactly similar to the critics in their interest. At any rate, give us a reaction.
::::::::::::::::::::Best for now,
::::::::::::::::::::Norman
===Notes===
Diana Trilling, April 6, 1965

::::::::::::::::::::142 Columbia Heights
::::::::::::::::::::Brooklyn 1, New York
::::::::::::::::::::April 6, 1965
Dear Diana,
Just a racing note. I’m arriving in England the morning of the twentieth, and my business, much as it is, will probably be done by the 27th. So the 28th would probably be better for me than the 30th for the simple reason that I may have just two weeks in Europe and so would like to visit other places. If it’s generally the same to you, I’d appreciate it then if you’d make it the 28th or the 29th, but if there’s a particular reason for the 30th, then by all means, that’s when we’ll have it. And I’ll plan to spend the night. Incidentally, I still don’t know if Beverly will be with me then. She’s going to be in Europe for a week of the two and a half weeks I’ll be there, but just which part isn’t too certain yet. If you’re thinking about seating arrangements, I suggest that you assume she’ll be with me. If she’s not, it would perhaps be possible to get some fine lady on short notice. And if not, we’ll all weather the damage. 
Forgive the mechanical concentration of this, and the lack of newer news, but I wanted to get it off to you in a hurry.
::::::::::::::::::::Norman
P.S. If you haven’t answered Jerry Agel’s letter yet, then don’t. He puts out a monthly publisher’s newsletter which is filled with gossip, very little of it nasty or vicious, but I know for certain you would not want any answer you might give to Granville Hicks to appear there. And if you have written to him already, then drop him a line that you would not wish your letter used for publication. One thing more. Please don’t bring my name into this. Agel did a long piece on me and treated me reasonably well, and he would be hurt and probably vindictive if he knew I had warned you. But I know how much pain any remarks of yours printed in a newsletter sort of literary magazine would cause you, so I take the unnatural step of working just this much behind the man’s back.
All for now. I can’t tell you how much I look forward to seeing you and Lionel again.
P.P.S. Tell Lionel that whether he ends up liking or not liking An American Dream, I respect him for not deciding immediately. Finally one critic has recognized that the book is not to be taken by storm and hung high or garlanded on the instant.
Diana Trilling, July 14, 1965

::::::::::::::::::::607 Commercial Street
::::::::::::::::::::Provincetown, Massachusetts
::::::::::::::::::::July 14, 1965
Dear Diana, 
 	
Thank you for the clipping and the nice reports. I’m not sure I know what you mean by the absence of a Marlow,The “Marlow” Trilling refers to is the narrator-participant used by Joseph Conrad in several fictional works he wrote based on his seafaring experiences: “Youth,” Lord Jim, Heart of Darkness and Chance. in An American Dream. Superficially it seems to me that Rojack embodies a sufficient amount of civilization to avoid meaninglessness, but to defend that in detail means a long letter, and then we shall both be breaking our vows to write many pages this summer and few letters. Therefore I save the discussion for the pleasure of seeing you and Lionel in September. By the way, our place is on the sea and most agreeable. I hope you and Lionel (and Jim if he’s so inclined) are in the mood to come here when you get back.
::::::::::::::::::::Love,
::::::::::::::::::::Norman
P.S. There’s a somewhat unintegrated book by a man named Christopher Lasch, called if I remember The New Radicalism in America, but it has a very good chapter on Mabel Dodge LuhanMabel Dodge Luhan was a supporter of D. H. Lawrence when he lived in New Mexico. in which Lawrence figures prominently, and I think you might enjoy it.
===Notes===
Diana Trilling, June 8, 1965

::::::::::::::::::::142 Columbia Heights
::::::::::::::::::::Brooklyn 1, New York
::::::::::::::::::::June 8, 1965
Dear Diana, 
Just a line. I’m getting ready to start work on a novel, so I’m doing my best to try to clear up correspondence ruthlessly, ruthlessly. There’s no pleasure in it now, but the alternative is to let it feed upon half the week. But it does deprive me of writing a long letter in answer to yours, and that’s a shame because I think in replying to your honest and most gently stated criticisms of An American Dream I would have formulated certain things about the book for myself. I don’t know if I’m getting mellow or if it’s the nature of the book itself, or even just the way the book was written, but for the first time I’ve written a novel about which I feel altogether two-headed, which is that there are any number of occasions when my private opinion comes close to the worst of the reviewers, and I really think it is an extraordinary piece of crap. But of course there are just as many other days when I decide quite calmly that it’s probably the first novel to come along since The Sun Also Rises which has anything really new in it. And that with all my faults, I’m the only one around who’s doing anything interesting in writing at all. So you can see that with this unresolved argument going on in my dear head I hardly can get excited when my friends are unhappy about the whole thing. Anyway, angel, you and Lionel will be back in the fall. Maybe by then it will be clearer in all our heads. Incidentally, we’re going to be in Provincetown until October 5. So if you come to the city before then and it inspires you with horror, which has happened to me after many a year in Europe, and you feel that you have to get out for a few days, take a flying trip up to us. We’re going to have lots of room this summer and would of course love to have all two of you, all three of you, however it might go.
Give our best to Guronay and Margie, and the very best of everything to Lionel,
::::::::::::::::::::Norman 
P.S. I look forward to your description of Upton House up close, and bless you for your jealousy when they said nice things. How human you are. The very last one.
::::::::::::::::::::Norman
Dick Fontaine

has made over forty films for cinema, television, and the
independent media. A founder member of the legendary investigative film
series World in Action, he was the first filmmaker to introduce the techniques
of cinéma vérité to UK television in the Sixties, collaborating with the
Maysles Brothers to make groundbreaking films with the Beatles and Jean
Shrimpton. He developed the essay film with Norman Mailer: Will the Real Norman Mailer Please Stand Up? He has given master classes and retrospectives
of his work have appeared around the world. His work is now housed
in the Harvard Film Archive. He joined the National Film & Television
School in the UK as Head of Documentary in 1995.
Category:Contributors
Category:2008 Vol. 2 (MR)
Don Carpenter, January 15, 1964

::::::::::::::::::::142 Columbia Heights
::::::::::::::::::::Brooklyn 1, New York
::::::::::::::::::::January 15, 1964
Dear Don,Don Carpenter was a west coast novelist who corresponded regularly with Mailer in the 1960s.
My letters are getting as short as short hairs. The serial has me close to pissing blood because the ten thousand more or less finished words each month screws me tight as a twisted wire. So when I finish, as I’ve just done with the fourth installment—I have to stay two installments ahead to meet the magazine’s schedule of deadlines—I usually fall on the mail like a demented zoo animal and do my best to eat it up. So this is really just to say that I liked your letter of December 22 which you sent December 30 and the praise was fine, and I just hope I don’t let everybody down. Because a good beginning is one thing, but “the keeping up” (which is Henry James’ little language for it, of course) is something else. Anyway, at this point, the trip is still being taken alone. Let’s see if there’s snow blindness near or far out on our fields. And let me hear what you think of the second installment if you’re in the mood. Despite my remarks about the praise up above, you are, buddy, believe it or not, free to register disappointment. For one thing each installment is sixty days behind me so I’m worried more about where I am now than where I was then, and also if something is not good enough one’s friends are only hurting one’s sense of reality if they neglect to tell you.
Say hello to Michael McClureMichael McClure, Beat poet, musician and playwright, was a major figure in the San Francisco Renaissance of the 1950s and 1960s. wrote a foreword to his play, The Beard (1967). Mailer saw Carpenter and McClure in San Francisco during the summer of 1963. if you see him and give him my best. Tell him I’d like to talk to him about his Meat Science Essays if we get a chance.
::::::::::::::::::::Best,
::::::::::::::::::::Norman
===Notes===
Don Carpenter, June 1, 1964

::::::::::::::::::::142 Columbia Heights
::::::::::::::::::::Brooklyn 1, New York
::::::::::::::::::::June 1, 1964
Dear Don,
A thousand congratulations, and I’m glad that you’re now in the same boat with
me, one of those high-paid, please-the-public, fink low-brow prostitutes. Wait until you
see what awful things happen to your ego when you realize that more people read
magazines than novels. Of course, nobody I know reads the Saturday Evening Post.
Wha’dya do, sell a piece of your cock, schmuck? But down with Lenny Bruce, have a
good summer.
I’m just about done with An American Dream. There were times when I began to
wonder a little, but the seventh installment’s pretty good, and the eighth has a bing-bang
ending. You didn’t think I was going to be squeezing the last drops off my cock at the
end, fellow-racketeer—no, I gave them the spatty bit bit spatty be-deet from my old
tommy gun. Now we go to Provincetown and I to collapse. The only bad thing about
writing a novel in eight months is having to show it once a month. It’s like giving a hot
fuck to your beloved, and having to pull your cock out eight times for her to inspect it.
If you and your wife are going to work your way through the Kama Sutra
backwards, you had better read a few companion volumes: 1) Art is a Schmuck, and 2)
Hard as a Hammock. So dot’s my koan for today, Clappinger, I mean Don.
::::::::::::::::::::Best,
::::::::::::::::::::Norman
Don Carpenter, March 25, 1965

::::::::::::::::::::142 Columbia Heights
::::::::::::::::::::Brooklyn 1, New York
::::::::::::::::::::March 25, 1965
Dear Don,Carpenter’s positive review has not been located.
I read your review with interest. First of all because it was agreeable to read, second because you said a few things I found fascinating, and third because it was interesting to see how they rearranged it and fucked it up in the newspaper. That opened a door into the world of book review editors and gave a hint of why all book reviews end up reading the same. The reviews in general have been not too bad on An American Dream, which is to say they broke about two good, three bad in the important places, and about one good, three bad in the out of town reviews. But the bad reviews were lively and the book seems to be off to a start. I find I hardly care. I’ve been in a post partum for months, not a deep one, no gloom in this, just a sense of personal flatness. For the first time in years I feel no desire to write the great American novel. It doesn’t seem important. I don’t seem important. And I’m bored with myself—that’s an emotion I haven’t felt in years. But it seems to me I spent my last letter complaining in just this fashion, and twice is enough for the best of pen pals. So let me hasten to add that I’ll have my secretary call Bob Mills so that he can send the novel on to me and you can be certain I’ll be looking forward to this. I’ll let you know as soon as I read it, but of course that may not be for several weeks, since I’m off to Alaska April 1 for a few days of action back and forth in the sparkling halls of Greater Northern America.
::::::::::::::::::::Best for Now,
::::::::::::::::::::Norman 
===Notes===
Don Carpenter, October 5, 1964

::::::::::::::::::::142 Columbia Heights
::::::::::::::::::::Brooklyn 1, New York
::::::::::::::::::::October 5, 1964
Dear Don,Don Carpenter was a west coast novelist who corresponded regularly with Mailer in the 1960s.
This is just a yeah-man-like-I-liked-your-last-letter letter, because I’m feeling a little written out. I did twenty thousand words on the Republican Convention—did I tell you? And they’re going to be in the November Esquire, out toward the end of October. It’s pretty good I think and I expect you might enjoy it, what with the local scene and all. Then I spent the rest of the summer getting An American Dream into shape. It’s a little tighter, stronger, meaner, and it’s got a little more gold in it, so I don’t know, either I’ve got a very good novel, like maybe the best book in ten years, or else I’ve got an incredibly fancy piece of shit. I’ve worked it too hard to know, but my secretary, Anne Barry, a stuck-up little New Hampshire cunt whom you may have met, is giggling her stuck-up head off as I make this remark. So I have just fired her, and will have to rehire her in the morning—Don, I’m only kidding. Anyhoo, don’t bother, as you have suggested you might, to read the installments through, because the book will be out in a couple of months, and it’s just sufficiently different in critical little ways so that you’d have to read the book version too.
This is all for now. I’m beat from too much writing, and once again doing all the letters on the same day. But I did want to say one thing, which is for Christ’s sake, never to apologize for getting interested or even being an actor on a power scene, no matter how picayune, for that after all is the very protein fat of what we have to write about.
::::::::::::::::::::Best for now,
::::::::::::::::::::Norman
===Notes===
Donald Kaufmann, April 20, 1965

::::::::::::::::::::142 Columbia Heights
::::::::::::::::::::Brooklyn 1, New York
::::::::::::::::::::April 20, 1965
Dear Don,Kaufmann was a professor at the University of Alaska, Fairbanks, who became friendly with Mailer when he spoke at the University in April 1965. In 1969 he published one of the first major critical studies of Mailer, Norman Mailer: The Countdown (The First Twenty Years).
Just a line to tell you that I love you, and what a fine time we had. So good that it sets up looking forward to the next one. Incidentally, I found when I came home a book written by a man named Christopher Lasch which will be coming out in a couple of weeks, published by Knopf.The New Radicalism in America, 1889-1963: The Intellectual as a Social Type (1965). I can’t remember the title, but the subject is a history of intellectual radicalism in America over the last hundred years, and a portion of the last chapter is devoted to your favorite subject for thesis. Lasch didn’t have anything to say which rang any big bells for me, and like many before him, he does his best to flatten nuances and make me sound twice as assertive as ever. But the chapter is finally harmless enough. I mention it only because you may wish to include it in your bibliography. Also keep an eye out for the April 20 issue of The National Review. To my absolute amazement, there’s a rave by Joan Didion on An American Dream. And nicely written too, by God.
Give my best to Cheryl, tell her I’m sorry I didn’t get a chance to talk to her anymore than I did, and keep slugging, you old fuck of a rabbi.
::::::::::::::::::::Your fellow-alumnus from Heidelberg,
::::::::::::::::::::Old Walk-on-Eggs Norm
===Notes===
Donald L. Kaufmann

was Professor of English at the University of South
Florida, where he has taught American literature and creative writing since
coming to USF from the University of Alaska in 1965. He is the author of
Norman Mailer: The Countdown: The First Twenty Years (Southern Illinois
University Press, 1969), one of the first two books to appear on the work of
Norman Mailer. He has also published essays on Mailer, Updike, Bellow,
Hemingway, and other twentieth-century American writers. Professor Kaufmann
holds one of the largest Mailer collections of books, stories, essays,
memorabilia, and ephemerals.
Category:Contributors
Category:2008 Vol. 2 (MR)
Category:2007 Vol. 1 (MR)
Donn Pennebaker

(July 15, 1925 – August 1, 2019) was an American documentary filmmaker and one of the pioneers of direct cinema. Performing arts and politics were his primary subjects. In 2013, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences recognized his body of work with an Academy Honorary Award. Pennebaker was called by The Independent “arguably the pre-eminent chronicler of Sixties counterculture.”
Category:Contributors
Category:2003 Conference
Douglas Taylor

Douglas Taylor is Assistant Professor of Multiethnic Literature at Cal State East Bay, specializing in African American Literature. Prior to joining the faculty at Cal State East Bay, Dr. Taylor served on the English Department faculty at Howard University and The University of Texas at Austin. He earned his Ph.D. in English from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Dr. Taylor’s current research interests include African American Autobiography, the Black Arts Movement, Race and Masculinity, Critical Theory, and the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL). Along with William L. Andrews, he is the co-editor of Richard Wright’s Black Boy (American Hunger): A Casebook. He has published articles in a number of academic journals and is currently at work on a book titled Outlaws, Nationalists, and Revolutionaries: Race and Masculinity in Black Power Autobiography (forthcoming from U Press of Mississippi).
Category:2020 Conference
E. L. Doctorow

’s novels include The Book of Daniel (1971), Ragtime (1975),
Loon Lake (1980), Billy Bathgate (1989), and City of God (2000). His most
recent novel The March (2005) was awarded the National Book Critics’ Circle
award for fiction, the PEN/Faulkner award, and was a finalist for the
Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award. His latest collection of essays is
Creationists (2006). He holds the Glucksman Chair in American Letters at
New York University.
Category:Contributors
Category:2008 Vol. 2 (MR)
Editor, Boston Globe, March 14, 2002

::::::::::::::::::::The Boston Globe
::::::::::::::::::::For Whom The Will Toils
::::::::::::::::::::March 27, 2002A letter to the editor of the Boston Globe, entitled “Norman Mailer Answers George Will” and published on March 14, 2002, See 02.5.
To the Editor:
 
George F. Will writes: “Bush’s terseness is Ernest Hemingway seasoned with John Wesley.” (“Old Fashioned Values Return Since Sept. 11,” Op Ed, March 12)
 
Well, one is hardly familiar with John Wesley’s sermons, but I do know that to put George W. Bush’s prose next to Hemingway is equal to saying that Jackie Susann is right up there with Jane Austen.
 
Did a sense of shame ever reside in our Republican toadies? You can’t stop people who are never embarrassed by themselves. Will’s readiness to turn a sow’s ear into a silk purse can be cited as world class sycophancy.
 
Here’s a passage from A Farewell to Arms. It has more going for it than “terseness.”
 
 
It is worth reminding ourselves that the life of a democracy may also depend on the good and honorable use of language and not on the scurvy manipulation of such words as “evil” and “love” by intellectual striplings of the caliber of our president.
 
::::::::::::::::::::Norman Mailer
::::::::::::::::::::Provincetown
==Note==
Edmund Skellings, November 26, 1963

::::::::::::::::::::142 Columbia Heights	
::::::::::::::::::::Brooklyn 1, New York
::::::::::::::::::::November 26, 1963
Dear Ed,Skellings, then a professor at the University of Alaska, Fairbanks, and an admirer of Mailer’s work, met Mailer at an Esquire symposium at the University of Iowa in December 1958. He saw Mailer again when Mailer visited Alaska in early April 1965; Mailer drew on his impressions of the visit for his 1967 novel, Why Are We in Vietnam? Mailer turned in the third installment shortly after the first one appeared in Esquire in mid-December. 
This is just a note because I have to start tomorrow on the third installment of the novel I’m doing in serial for Esquire so I’m trying to drive the bulldozer through my mail.
I can’t answer your questions the way they should be answered—I did however send your manuscript to Walter Minton yesterday, who’s my publisher at G. P. Putnam’s Sons, and told him that you were interested in rewriting it. So let’s see what happens there.
::::::::::::::::::::Best for now, 
::::::::::::::::::::Norman
===Notes===