Norman Mailer Society/News/2020

* 2020-12-23: “The Village Voice Rises From the Dead” — The owner of LA Weekly, another independent publication, plans to restart The Voice next month. In addition to reviving the website, Brian Calle plans a quarterly print edition.
* 2020-11-12: “One’s condition on marijuana is always existential. One can feel the importance of each moment and how it is changing one. One feels one’s being, one becomes aware of the enormous apparatus of nothingness — the hum of a hi-fi set, the emptiness of a pointless interruption, one becomes aware of the war between each of us, how the nothingness in each of us seeks to attack the being of others, how our being in turn is attacked by the nothingness in others.” Mailer and other famous tea experimenters are quoted today in “20 Chill Quotes About Cannabis.”
* 2020-11-10: Norman Mailer died 13 years ago today.
* 2020-11-08: Forward has published an excerpt from Susan Mailer’s memoir: “That time my father Norman Mailer introduced me to Norman Mailer the celebrity.”
* 2020-10-30: We might soon have television series based on Harlot’s Ghost, according to Variety: “Norman Mailer spy novel ‘Harlot’s Ghost’ is getting the TV treatment, Variety has learned exclusively. Mark Gordon Pictures is developing the book for TV, having acquired the rights to the 1991 title.” How great would that be?
* 2020-10-23: The Daily Bulletin lists The Executioner’s Song as one of “13 terrifying books to haunt your dreams as Halloween approaches.” They write: “This is Mailer’s true-crime account of the murders perpetrated by Gary Gilmore and Gilmore’s execution by firing squad in Utah. It won the Pulitzer Prize for its portrayal of the devastation of those killings and the questions raised about the justice of capital punishment.”
* 2020-10-20: Join Susan Mailer and J. Michael Lennon in a virtual conversation about Susan’s memoir In Another Place: With and Without My Father, Norman Mailer at the 92Y on November 15, 2020 at 7pm EST. For more information, check the 92Y web site. Registration is $20, and must be done before the event.
* 2020-10-19: Thomas Doherty reviews Town Bloody Hall: “The 1979 documentary . . . is a time tunnel passageway into what stand-up comedians used to call ‘women’s lib.’ It is still liable to raise a gendered ruckus — and provide a rollicking good time.” And Sean Murphy also reviews Criterion’s reissue of the 1979 documentary for The Pulitzer Prizes.
* 2020-08-23: In “The Cool-Media Approach to Conventions,” James Fallows writes about the resonance of Mailer’s “Superman” in today’s political landscape.
* 2020-08-20: “Want a Shot in Politics? Consider Being a Novelist First.” Argues Tobias Carroll. “From Norman Mailer to Boris Johnson, going from writing to campaigning has come easy for some.”
* 2020-08-15: Geek Vibes Nation has reviewed Criterion’s new release of Town Bloody Hall—“a lively snapshot of the feminist movement.”
* 2020-06-14: In the New York Daily News, Gabe S. Tennen considers “Policing the 51st state: Learning from Breslin and Mailer.” He writes: “Mailer and Breslin both argued that, to engender community trust, policemen should have personal attachments to the areas they work in.”
* 2020-04-25: In the LA Review of Books, Mark Hanson writes about “Mailer in Miami”: “Whenever Mailer changed gears from fiction to journalism, the novelistic keen eye for character and detailed scene-setting merged with the beat reporter’s feel for the smoke-filled back rooms.”
* 2020-04-01: Join us for this year’s conference in Long Branch, NJ, October 15–17. More information is on our conference page.
* 2020-03-19: The New York Times recommends The Executioner’s Song in “True Crime Favorites From New York Times Critics and Staff.” Dwight Garner writes: “With ‘The Executioner’s Song,’ Norman Mailer seemed to cram all of America into this sprawling book about the life and death of the murderer Gary Gilmore. He became internationally famous after he demanded that the state of Utah, where he killed two people, put him to death. The book, which won a Pulitzer Prize, is awesome in its sweep, power and (for Mailer) plain-spoken humanity.”
* 2020-03-18: Did Rip Torn hit Norman Mailer with a hammer while filming Maidstone? To find out, see “The Most Intense Celebrity Fights On Set” and scroll all the way down.
* 2020-03-17: The Saint Louis Post Dispatch recommends The Executioner’s Song in “10 (plus) big books to read for restless days at home.”
* 2020-03-15: The Norman Mailer Society hopes everyone stays safe during the current epidemic. While you’re social distancing, catch up on your reading.
* 2020-02-05: John Buffalo Mailer And Hivemind To Adapt Norman Mailer’s WWII Novel The Naked And The Dead Into Limited Series.
* 2020-01-31: Norman Mailer would have been 97 years old today.
* 2020-01-18: January 17: On This Day in World History . . . 1977: Murderer Gilmore gets his death wish
* 2020-01-11: Was the Safdie Brother’s latest Adam Sandler film influenced by Norman Mailer? Armond White in the National Review thinks so: “Uncut Gems: An Adam Sandler Movie for People Who Hate Adam Sandler Movies.”
* 2020-01-05: From The Guardian: “Norman Mailer meets Clint Eastwood in 1984. The novelist writes admiringly of the actor – even suggesting he’d make a good politician.
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