nyuuzyou/wikis huggingface dataset:
An American Dream Expanded/Definition of Selfhood

===Definition of SelfhoodLetter to the Editor, Saturday Review, June 6, 1965===
While I cannot determine just what a literary hoax is, judging from the whirlings and groans of the reviewers, An American Dream [SR, Mar. 20] must be a real apostasy. The entire literary community has adopted a posture of shocked betrayal. Mr. Hicks in particular writes like a spurned lover or, more to the point, a disappointed investor. ...
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However, the main complaint of the critics is that violence and lust govern the actions of the protagonist of Dream, Stephen Rojack. Indeed Rojack acts as if the only significant actions of which he is capable are killing, maiming and copulating. . . .
Mailer first approached this theme in The White Negro. In this essay he identifies the condition of the hipster with that of the Negro. One rejecting, the other rejected by society, both are forced towards raw sex and brutality. Only the psychopathic act can redeem them. Seeking the “good orgasm” (fulfillment, sexual and otherwise), the hipster and Negro both are driven to promiscuity and murder. In Growing Up Absurd, Paul Goodman explores the same phenomena. Because they can find no man’s work within the societal framework, a whole group of young Americans, among whom Goodman includes delinquents, homosexuals, beatniks and hipsters, are led into rebellion by their need for real and fruitful challenge. Their antisocial behavior is a reaction to this de-virilization. Carrying the ideas contained in The White Negro into the creative plane, Mailer both describes and prescribes the psychotic state resulting from the hipsters’ alienation. Rojack is the hipster-psychopath seen from the inside out. Congressman, intellectual, teacher: none of these roles has satisfied him. Only in murder, the most terrible cutting off from society, is he completed. The whole novel is a sorting out, a solution developing from the act of killing. It is a dissolution, a letting go of the entire social man which places Rojack in position to rebegin his life. ... Bigger Thomas in Richard Wright’s Native Son illustrates this process in converse, completing the formula of The White Negro. Bigger kills and for the first time experiences the feeling of being an individual in the white world which has depraved him by oppression and direct denial of his manhood. Rojack comes to murder from the opposite direction (society, in conventional terms, has been good to him) to achieve the definition of selfhood. 
Apparently it is the picture of the future of the American intellectual which repels Mr. Hicks, et. al. They cannot accept Mailer’s identification of the intellectual seeking valid fulfillment with the socially corrosive attitude of the hipster. They refuse to consider the possibility that significant action, in our time, must be psychopathic and destructive. ...
Bill Powers
Athens, Greece
===Note===
Category:Full Text Letters
An American Dream Expanded/Publishers Weekly Currents, March 23, 1965

==Mailer on Herzog==
Midway through explaining his own views as a “moral nihilist” at the March 10 press conference for three authors held during NBA week, novelist Norman Mailer delivered some pithy comments on Herzog, the novel that had just won the National Book Award, and its author, Saul Bellow. “I have great admiration for Herzog as a novel,” said Mr. Mailer, “but it is not an intellectual book, it has no ideas in it. It has about the same relation to ideas that a cookbook has to good eating. Just about every idea man has ever had is referred to in it. There are all sorts of discussions but absolutely nothing new.”
==Mailer on Bellow==
What Herzog does have, in the Mailer view, is “a sense of compassion I haven’t come across in a long time. There is something almost Russian
about Herzog,” Mr. Mailer said. “You have to go back to Dostoeyevsky to find a parallel, but Herzog also has so much self-pity. What did impress me about it was that my heart was literally burning as I read it. It might be one of the most important books written in America in years and it might not, because it has mistakes. I do not know. But I do know that I do not see Bellow as lord of the intellectuals. He has the mind of a rather dull college professor who has read too many books and grasped the essence of none of them.”
Category:Full Text Excerpts
An American Dream Expanded/Word Count Comparison, Esquire and Dial Press Editions

Chapter 	Chapter Titles 	Esquire	Dial
1 	The Harbors of the Moon 	11,708 	11,394
2 	A Messenger from the Casino 	7,805 	
2 	A Runner from the Gaming Room	 	7,066
3 	A Messenger from the Maniac 	14,406 	14,540
4 	Green Circles of Exhaustion 	10,532 	9,566
5 	A Catenary of Manners 	16,153 	16,053
6 	A Vision in the Desert 	6,762 	5,004
7 	A Votive is Prepared 	9,620 	8,836
8 	At the Lion and the Serpent 	19,972 	22,696
Epilogue 	 	1,811 	
Epilogue 	The Harbors of the Moon Again	 	1,755
TOTAL WORD COUNT	TOTAL WORD COUNT 	98,796 	96,910
Andre Deutch, November 4, 1964

::::::::::::::::::::142 Columbia Heights
::::::::::::::::::::Brooklyn 1, New York
::::::::::::::::::::November 4, 1964
Dear Andre,
I've been meaning to call you each day, but each day I've not remembered until around cocktail time, which of course is bloody midnight for you. Now I've decided to do it with a letter. 
Look, quickly, here's the situation. If you're still interested in joint publication -which I think is a good idea, since if the reviews in one country are better than another, the foreign reviews can be used, and if the reception is good in both countries, something can be made of that-at any rate, if you're still interested, DialThe Dial version, delayed several times, appeared on 15 March 1965.
Deutsch published the British edition on 26 April. has decided not to publish until February 15 (an approximate date). It took me longer on the editing than I expected, their printing schedule took longer than they expected, and suddenly we were rushing to get a book out early for no reason that we could see. So as it stands, final page proofs will be ready in a week to two weeks. I'll get two copies off to you as soon as they exist, I swear. There's no sense in sending you anything any earlier because keeping up with the changes would have made for endless waste for you and for me. I know it's been anything but easy for you to have to wait this way, but I think when you read the book through you'll see that all these changes on which I've been working since June add up to something, the difference I hope between a book which is good and a book which is better than good. 
Now for the jacketThe photograph of Mailer by Anne Barry on the back of the dust jacket of the Dial edition was taken as Mailer shadowboxed with her. Mailer designed the front of the jacket, which superimposes a photograph of Beverly Bentley on the American fl,ag. A different version of the jacket appeared as the cover illustration of the 12 October 1964 Publishers' Weekly. A double-page advertisement in this number states that the novel would be published in January, but it was delayed while Mailer made additional revisions, including significant changes to the galleys., I'll send you a copy. I happen to like it quite a bit. It's an odd compelling jacket and quite different from what you saw in Publishers' Weekly. That is, the design is essentially the same, but they changed it in certain crucial and disappointing ways for PW. In any case, I like the jacket. I hope you'll like it, and I'll also enclose a photograph which I'm going to use for the book jacket. 
This is all in a rush, but I know you're waiting for the news, so hasten to dictate this letter.
::::::::::::::::::::Best,
::::::::::::::::::::Norman Mailer
P.S. Three cheers that you're setting the book rather than using offset. I'm really pleased with that.
===Notes===
Andre Deutsch, April 16, 1964

::::::::::::::::::::142 Columbia Heights
::::::::::::::::::::Brooklyn 1, New York
::::::::::::::::::::April 16, 1964
Dear Andre,
Up to my armpits in the serial—installment sevenMailer had almost caught up by the seventh installment, which was turned in only a few days late. is getting done. Only one more to go. The trouble is it will have to be about twenty thousand words long. So this is just to say that the agreement we made with Leonard Russell is all right with me. Hope to have a full book to show you soon.
::::::::::::::::::::Best to Diana,
::::::::::::::::::::Norman
===Notes===
Andre Deutsch, November 4, 1964

::::::::::::::::::::142 Columbia Heights
::::::::::::::::::::Brooklyn 1, New York
::::::::::::::::::::November 4, 1964
Dear Andre,
I’ve been meaning to call you each day, but each day I’ve not remembered until around cocktail time, which of course is bloody midnight for you. Now I’ve decided to do it with a letter. 
Look, quickly, here’s the situation. If you’re still interested in joint publication—which I think is a good idea, since if the reviews in one country are better than another, the foreign reviews can be used, and if the reception is good in both countries, something can be made of that—at any rate, if you’re still interested, Dial has decided not to publish until February 15 (an approximate date).The Dial version, delayed several times, appeared on 15 March 1965. Deutsch published the British edition on 26 April. It took me longer on the editing than I expected, their printing schedule took longer than they expected, and suddenly we were rushing to get a book out early for no reason that we could see. So as it stands, final page proofs will be ready in a week to two weeks. I’ll get two copies off to you as soon as they exist, I swear. There’s no sense in sending you anything any earlier because keeping up with the changes would have made for endless waste for you and for me. I know it’s been anything but easy for you to have to wait this way, but I think when you read the book through you’ll see that all these changes on which I’ve been working since June add up to something, the difference I hope between a book which is good and a book which is better than good.
Now for the jacket, I’ll send you a copy. I happen to like it quite a bit. It’s an odd compelling jacket and quite different from what you saw in Publishers’ Weekly. That is, the design is essentially the same, but they changed it in certain crucial and disappointing ways for PW. In any case, I like the jacket. I hope you’ll like it, and I’ll also enclose a photograph which I’m going to use for the book jacket.The photograph of by Anne Barry on the back of the dust jacket of the Dial edition was taken as Mailer shadowboxed with her. Mailer designed the front of the jacket, which superimposes a photograph of Beverly Bentley on the American flag. A different version of the jacket appeared as the cover illustration of the 12 October 1964 Publishers’ Weekly. A double-page advertisement in this number states that the novel would be published in January, but it was delayed while Mailer made additional revisions, including significant changes to the galleys. This is all in a rush, but I know you’re waiting for the news, so hasten to dictate this letter.
::::::::::::::::::::Best,
::::::::::::::::::::Norman
P.S. Three cheers that you're setting the book rather than using offset. I'm really pleased with that.
===Notes===
Andrew M. Gordon

was Professor Emeritus of English at the University of
Florida and Vice-President of the PsyArt Foundation, for which he organized
the annual International Conference on Psychology and the Arts. He
taught in the University of Florida programs in Paris and Rome and has
been a Fulbright Lecturer in American Literature in Spain, Portugal, and
Serbia, a Visiting Professor in Russia, Hungary, and Argentina, and a keynote
speaker at conferences in Japan, South Korea, and Egypt. Professor Gordon
is author of An American Dreamer: A Psychoanalytic Study of the Fiction of Norman Mailer; Empire of Dreams: The Science Fiction and Fantasy Films of Steven Spielberg; and, with Hernan Vera, of Screen Saviors: Hollywood Fictions of Whiteness, with Peter Rudnytsky, he edited Psychoanalyses/Feminisms.
Category:Contributors
Category:2017 Conference
Ann L. von Mehren

Ann Luppi von Mehren is in the English graduate program at the University of Memphis. She has published an article on Mailer's writing of espionage metaphors based on his interest in non-fiction espionage literature in The Mailer Review (2019), "Mailer's Journey inside the CIA with Harlot's Ghost," and an article in the Lincoln Humanities Journal (2016), "Publicizing Suspicions of Espionage on the News: The Leak of the Felix S. Bloch Case."
===Contributions===
Category:Contributors
Arnold Kemp, December 18, 1964

::::::::::::::::::::142 Columbia Heights
::::::::::::::::::::Brooklyn 1, New York
::::::::::::::::::::December 18, 1964
Dear Arnold,Kemp met Mailer in Bellevue Hospital where Mailer was under psychiatric observation after he stabbed Adele with a penknife on 20 September 1960.
The last time I wrote to you I thought I was done with the book, but in fact the galleys came back and I saw little sentences here and there that I could improve, so I made some changes. The result: the book will not be out until March. But I’ve got you on the list, and will send you a copy as soon as they’re ready, which ought to be sometime in early February.
You know, when SartreThe existentialism of Jean-Paul Sartre interested Mailer and he wrote about it in both Advertisements for Myself and The Presidential Papers, although Sartre’s existentialism is distinguished from Mailer’s by its atheism. won the Nobel Prize, it’s funny, but we have a different attitude. I think he should have taken it, and the reason I think is that it bugs the bourgeoisie more when people who are against them accept their biggest prizes rather than refuse them. For example, all these years Life magazine has been calling Jean-Paul Sartre an “apostle of despair.” Now all of a sudden, apostle of despair and Nobel Prize winner. That makes it harder for them to bullshit people. I believe in taking honors because if you use them properly they arm you. Some day if there were something really big going on and one wanted to write a letter to the New York Times, a mean stinging letter, and get it printed, there’d be just that much more leverage.
You know, another thing I disagree with you on is Goldwater’s rights stand.Mailer wrote about Barry Goldwater in his November 1964 Esquire essay “In the Red Light: A History of the Republican Convention in 1964.” I do think, believe it or not, that that was the main reason people voted against him. It’s not that white America loves black America, but what you’ve got to understand is that even without love there can still be guilt. There is a kind of gnawing guilt that pervades practically every white man’s attitude by now, a guilt they want to get rid of even though they fear the Negro, and I think they’ve come to the point now where they recognize that the only way to get rid of this guilt or at least begin to get rid of this guilt is to begin to give the Negro some of his basic minimal legal rights, and I think they did react against Goldwater for that reason. At any rate, this election cheered me up. For the first time I began to feel there might be something to this country, that maybe we’re a little more on the ball than not. Because secretly I felt that the first time some real slick bigot like Goldwater came along, he was going to stampede everybody. So for once it wasn’t so bad to know that I was wrong.
I know I can’t get to see your plays, because as I understand you’re not allowed to send them out, but I wish there was a way. I’d like to see the work you’re doing. Merry Christmas for now, ha ha, and happy New Year, yea, yea, yea.
::::::::::::::::::::Best,
::::::::::::::::::::Norman
===Notes===
Ashley M. Donnelly

Ashley Donnelly is an Associate Professor of Telecommunications at Ball State University. Her first book, Renegade Hero or Faux Rogue: The Secret Traditionalism of Television Bad Boys, was published by McFarland Press in May 2014. She publishes primarily on issues related to gender and contemporary American culture, and her work can be found in a variety of journals and edited collections on film and gender.
===Contributions===
Category:Contributors
Barbara Mailer Wasserman

is Norman Mailer’s sister. She has worked as a researcher for film and television documentaries, and as a book editor. In 1967 she published The Bold New Women, an anthology of contemporary women writers. Her memoir Love of My Life was published by Arbitrary Press in 2021.
Category:Contributors
Category:2021 Vol. 15 (MR)
Category:2008 Vol. 2 (MR)
Category:2007 Vol. 1 (MR)
Category:2022 Conference
Barbara Probst Solomon

was a novelist and essayist. Among her books are
Arriving Where We Started, The Beat of Life, Horse-Trading and Ecstasy, and
Smart Hearts in the City. She is the cultural correspondent of El Pais, and
the publisher and editor in chief of the literary journal The Reading Room.
She received the Third Women Together Award given at the
UN by the United Nations and The Women Together Committee for outstanding
service to the welfare of people and the promotion of links of
dialogue and culture throughout the world.
Category:Contributors
Category:2008 Vol. 2 (MR)
Category:2007 Vol. 1 (MR)
Category:2003 Conference
Barry H. Leeds

was an Emeritus Professor of English at Connecticut State University, was one of the co-founders of the Norman Mailer Society, and served as its Vice President since the Society’s founding in 2003. He wrote extensively on the life and works of his good friend, Norman Mailer, including his pioneering study, The Structured Vision of Norman Mailer (1969), and The Enduring Vision of Norman Mailer (2002), and countless essays and reviews. In 2014, he published a candid and moving memoir, A Moveable Beast: Scenes from My Life. He also served on the editorial board of the Mailer Review. His many contributions to understanding Mailer the man and Mailer the artist are one of the pillars of Mailer scholarship.
===Selected Publications===
* 
* 
* 
* 
===Links===
* 
* Remembering Barry Leeds
Category:Contributors
Category:2008 Vol. 2 (MR)
Category:2004 Conference
Category:2003 Conference
Barry N. Malzberg

Barry N. Malzberg, author of more than 50 books and over 250 short stories,
is a prominent American science fiction author and editor. Malzberg’s
1972 novel Beyond Apollo received the first John W. Campbell Memorial
Award for Best Science Fiction Novel and established his reputation for writing
controversial works predicated upon unreliable narrators and the often-problematic
psychological condition of his characters. His novel The Remaking of Sigmund Freud (1985) was nominated for both the Nebula
Award for Best Novel and the Philip K. Dick Award for best original science
fiction paperback published in the United States. Malzberg’s distinctive style,
defying tradition, is an integral part of his works that frequently include
dystopian themes and elements of metafiction. The Very Best of Barry N.
Malzberg, published in 2013 by Nonstop Press, includes nearly forty of the
author’s stories, including “A Galaxy Called Rome,” distinctive for being “not
a novelette but a series of notes,” and “What I Did to Blunt the Alien Invasion,”
a list of nine bullet points presented by a narrator of questionable
mental stability. He edited the science fiction magazines Amazing Stories and
Fantastic in the late 1960s and is a frequent reviewer and contributor to other
publications in the genre, including the SFWA Bulletin published by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America. Malzberg’s collection of critical
essays, The Engines of the Night (1982), won the Locus Award for best
nonfiction/reference book, and Breakfast in the Ruins (2007), nominated for
a Hugo Award, won the 2008 Locus Award for Best Related Non-Fiction. His
latest critical work, The Bend at the End of the Road (2018), includes essays
and commentary published during the past decade and provides an insightful
overview of the history of science fiction. Malzberg considers himself
an “unaccomplished” violinist and lives in Teaneck, New Jersey.
===Contributions===
Category:Contributors
Bernard Horn

Bernard Horn is Professor of English Emeritus at Framingham State University. His poetry collection, Our Daily Words, winner of the Old Seventy Creek Poetry Prize, was a finalist for the 2011 Massachusetts Book Award in Poetry. His translations of Yehuda Amichai’s poetry have appeared in The New Yorker and other magazines, and his poems have been featured on Writer’s Almanac and used to commemorate 9/11 on The Huffington Post. He is the author of Facing the Fires: Conversations with A. B. Yehoshua, the only book in English about Israel’s pre-eminent novelist, chaired the MLA Division on Literature and Religion, and was awarded a Fulbright and five National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowships.
===Contributions===
Category:Contributors
Betty Viamontes

Betty Viamontes is the author of the novel Waiting on Zapote Street: Love and Loss in Castro’s Cuba, based on the story of her family. Her novel was selected by the Gulf Coast Chapter United Nations book club for its February 2016 reading and has been presented at a local university due to its historical relevance. Some of her short stories and poems have been published in a literary magazine, an anthology, and a newspaper. She holds graduate degrees in business administration and accounting from the University of South Florida, where she also received a Graduate Certificate in Creative Writing. Currently, she is working on a short story collection that explores social issues within Cuba.
===Contributions===
Category:Contributors
Bill Lowenburg

Bill Lowenburg is a three-time scholarship recipient from the Norman Mailer Writing Center. He is the author of a novel, The Zorki Chronicles, and a photography monograph, Crash Burn Love. His photographs and articles have been published in BBC Top Gear, London Telegraph, Popular Photography, PBS Point of View, and numerous other journals and websites. He was also a research assistant to Michael Lennon for Norman Mailer: A Double Life. He received his boxing education serving as a sparring partner and assistant trainer for Larry Holmes’ original trainer, Earnee Butler. He has an MFA in Creative Writing from Wilkes University and works as a high school librarian.
Category:Contributors
Category:2019 Conference
Bill McLaughlin, December 18, 1964

::::::::::::::::::::142 Columbia Heights
::::::::::::::::::::Brooklyn 1, New York
::::::::::::::::::::December 18, 1964
Dear Bill McLaughlin,McLaughlin was a Mailer fan.
Going through old mail, I came across your nice long letter of August 19. Well, sir, you are the fortunate recipient of prompt response.
Actually, it’s so late in the day that I think I’d better use this occasion to wish you Merry Christmas, and let it go at that. I did enjoy your letter, though; particularly the criticisms of the last installment of An American Dream. I worked the book up some since then, you know, and while it’s superficially the same book, I think it’s a different book. Tightening prose is like tightening a drum: you get better sound. If you happen to read the book when it comes out, let me know your reaction. I’d be interested.
::::::::::::::::::::Yours,
::::::::::::::::::::Norman Mailer
===Notes===
Bob Batchelor

Bob Batchelor is a cultural historian and writer and he teaches at Miami University. Batchelor has written or edited more than 25 books, including Mad Men: A Cultural History (2016). He edits five book series for Rowman & Littlefield, including “Contemporary American Literature” and “The Cultural History of Television.” Among his books are John Updike: A Critical Biography (2013) and Gatsby: The Cultural History of the Great American Novel (2014). He is the founding editor of the Popular Culture Studies Journal and a member of the editorial advisory board of The Journal of Popular Culture. Batchelor also serves as director of marketing & media for The John Updike Childhood Home Museum in Reading, PA. 
=== Links ===
* Contributions
* Web Site
Category:Contributors