An American Dream Expanded/Timeline of Events, 1962–1966

Year	Date 	Event
1962	January30 	NM’s first volume of poems, Deaths for the Ladies (and Other Disasters), is published by Putnam’s.
1962	Late March 	NM divorces his second wife, Adele Morales, in Juarez, Mexico.
1962	April 	NM marries Lady Jean Campbell and they move into his apartment at 142 Columbia Heights in Brooklyn.
1962	Mid-August 	NM submits the first (of 14) columns, titled “The Big Bite,” for publication in the November Esquire.
1962	August 18 	NM’s third daughter, Kate, born to Jean Campbell.
1962	September 22 	NM debates William F. Buckley, Jr. on “The Role of the Right Wing” before an audience of 4,000 in Chicago.
1962	September 25 	NM covers the heavyweight prizefight between Floyd Patterson and Sonny Liston in Chicago.
1962	October-November	Cuban Missile Crisis. The Soviet Union removes missile sites from Cuba after the U.S. threatens a military attack.
1962	Late fall 	NM separates from Jean Campbell.
1962	December 	NM publishes the first of six columns of reflections on Martin Buber’s Tales of the Hasidim in Commentary.
1962	December 20 	“An Open Letter to JFK from Norman Mailer” appears in the Village Voice.
1963	January-February	Playboy publishes in two parts the NM-Buckley debate.
1963	February 	“Ten Thousand Words a Minute,” NM’s account of the first Patterson-Liston fight, is published in Esquire.
1963	March 	NM meets Beverly Bentley.
1963	March 24 	NM speaks on existentialism and psychoanalysis at Harvard.
1963	May 31 	NM presents “An Existential Evening” at Carnegie Hall, discussing the FBI, President Kennedy and Communism with the audience.
1963	Summer 	“The First Presidential Paper,” NM’s essay on heroes and leaders, is published in Dissent.
1963	July-August 	NM and Beverly drive cross-country and back, stopping in Arkansas, Las Vegas (where they see Liston defeat Patterson for the second time), San Francisco and Georgia.
1963	August 28 	Martin Luther King, Jr. delivers his “I Have a Dream” speech at the Washington Monument during the Civil Rights March on the Capital.
1963	Late Summer 	Scott Meredith becomes NM’s literary agent and helps broker the sale of an unwritten novel to Dial Press and Dell Books. NM proposes and Esquire editor Harold Hayes agrees to the serial publication of this novel in the magazine, January through August 1964.
1963	September 29 	NM’s review of Victor Lasky’s J.F.K.: The Man and the Myth appears in Book Week (N.Y. Herald Tribune).
1963	Mid-October 	NM turns in the first of eight installments of the novel to Esquire.
1963	November 8 	Putnam’s publishes The Presidential Papers, a collection of assorted prose focused on J.F.K.
1963	Mid-November 	The December Esquire containing NM’s final “Big Bite” column is published. NM announces in it that he will write a novel called An American Dream, in eight installments, beginning in the January 1964 issue.
1963	November 22 	President Kennedy is assassinated in Dallas. Vice President Johnson is sworn in as President.
1963	November 27 	NM begins working on the third installment.
1963	Mid-December 	The January issue of Esquire containing the first installment appears.
1963	November 16 	After obtaining a Mexican divorce from Jean Campbell, NM marries Beverly Bentley in New York.
1963	December 26 	NM contributes to a New York Review of Books symposium on J.F.K.
1964	Mid-January 	The fourth installment of the novel is completed.
1964	Late January 	NM debates William F. Buckley, Jr. in New York on a taped television program.
1964	January 29 	American premiere of “Dr. Strangelove, or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb”.
1964	February 3 	The Beatles arrive in America.
1964	February 11 	The fifth installment is completed.
1964	February 25 	NM is in the audience in Miami when Muhammad Ali defeats Sonny Liston for the heavyweight championship.
1964	March 17 	Beverly gives birth to Michael Burks Mailer, NM’s first son, at about the same time that he completes the sixth installment.
1964	April 20 	The seventh installment is completed.
1964	Late May 	Warner Brothers buys an option on the film rights to An American Dream.
1964	Early June 	The final long installment of the novel is completed. The Mailers go to Provincetown where NM will revise the Esquire version for book publication.
1964	July 2 	President Johnson signs the Civil Rights Act against discrimination.
1964	Mid-July 	NM break off work on the revision to the novel to cover the Republican Convention in San Francisco. His account, “In the Red Light,” appears in the November Esquire.
1964	August 7 	The U.S. Congress passes the Tonk Gulf Resolution in authorizing the President to use military force in Vietnam.
1964	September 	The Free Speech movement begins at the University of California at Berkeley.
1964	October 12 	An advertisement for An American Dream in book form appears in Publishers’ Weekly and gives a January 1965 publication date.
1964	November 3 	Johnson elected President.
1964	December 20 	Working on the Dial Press galleys, NM completes a second revision of the novel.
1965	Early January 	NM testifies on behalf of William Burroughs’s novel, Naked Lunch, at its Boston obscenity trial.
1965	January 27 	NM writes to his Japanese translator that Warner Brothers has purchased the film rights to the novel. It sells for $200,000.
1965	February 21 	Malcolm X is assassinated.
1965	March 	U.S. troops arrive in force in Vietnam, escalating the War.
1965	March 14 	Tom Wolfe’s negative review of the novel appears in Book Week (Washington Post).
1965	March 15 	Official publication date of An American Dream by Dial Press.
1965	March 19 	“The Big Comeback of Norman Mailer,” a positive review by John W. Aldridge, appears in Life. NM pays to reprint the heart of the review in the spring number of Partisan Review to “accompany” Elizabeth Hardwick’s negative review.
1965	March 27 	The novel rises to number four on the bestseller list of the Chicago Daily News.
1965	April 1 	NM travels to Alaska for a four-day visit, speaking at the University of Alaska. He uses his impressions for his 1967 novel, Why Are We in Vietnam?
1965	April 11 	The novel rises to number eight on the bestseller list of the New York Times Book Review.
1965	April 20 	NM arrives in London to promote the British edition of An American Dream, published by Andre Deutsch on 26 April.
1965	May 21 	NM speaks out against the Vietnam War at the Berkeley campus of the University of California.
1965	July 15 	NM speaks at a Harvard teach-in against the Vietnam War.
1965	Late July 	NM travels to Puerto Rico for the Jose Torres-Tom McNeeley prizefight and meets with Muhammad Ali.
1965	August 6 	Voting Right Act of 1965 signed into law by President Johnson.
1965	August 11 	Race riots break out in Watts, Los Angeles.
1965	Fall 	NM contributes to a Partisan Review symposium, “On Vietnam.”
1965	September 24 	Brock Brower’s biographical article on NM appears in Life.
1965	September 29 	National Endowment for the Arts signed into law by President Johnson.
1965	Late December 	NM addresses the Modern Language Association meeting in Chicago on the American novel. His talk is published in the March 1966 issue of Commentary.
1966	March 	The Dell paperback edition of An American Dream is published.
1966	March 10 	NM’s second son, Stephen McLeod Mailer, is born to Beverly.
1966	June 	NM purchases a house at 565 Commercial Street in Provincetown.
1966	August 	The first stage version of NM’s 1955 novel, The Deer Park, with Beverly Bentley as Lulu Meyers, is presented at Act IV, a Provincetown theater.
1966	August 26 	The film version of An American Dream premiers.
1966	August 28 	NM’s review of Mark Lane’s Rush to Judgment, an analysis of the Warren Commission Report on J.F.K.’s assassination, appears in Book Week (Washington Post).
1966	August 29 	Dial Press publishes Cannibals and Christians, NM’s third volume of collected prose and poetry.
1966	October 29 	National Organization for Women established.
Category:An American Dream Expanded
Category:Timeline