Norman Mailer vs. Everyone

What she may not be entitled to, however, is to attack my editor for The Spooky Art on grounds that are without basis.

Let me put on record Dr. J. Michael Lennon’s letter to the Times (January 22, 2003). When he received no answer to the first, he sent a second, also without reply.

“To the Editor: In her review of Norman Mailer’s The Spooky Art: Some Thoughts on Writing (The Arts, Jan. 22), Michiko Kakutani claims that “all too often dates for statements are not supplied.” She is in complete error. I am the editor of the collection and the source notes come to ten closely printed pages. Mr. Mailer felt it was important for interested readers to see the provenance of all his comments, be they an essay or two lines from an old interview. I fear that the sloppiness Kakutani imputes to Mailer fits her review more closely than his text.

J. Michael Lennon

Professor of English, Wilkes University”

Conceivably, Kakutani didn’t look all that closely at what she was writing about. In any event, she came forth with this imputation of careless work on the part of Dr. Lennon, an academic of some stature. Did she skip over the ten full pages of source notes in the Appendix? Dr. Lennon uses the word sloppy to characterize this. I would call it slovenly. She was slovenly.

Mind you, this is in no way a request that some Times person other than Michiko Kakutani be assigned to me in the future. If I were Janet Maslin, Richard Eder, or any of the other professional daily book reviewers, I would be a hair reluctant to give Norman Mailer a positive review given Kakutani’s control of the bandstand. I expect she has an acute sense of tenfold repayment for any transgressions against her critical dominance. Rather, I choose to put this information on recording the hope that the Times will agree to a quiet meeting with one or two of the people who have received this letter, plus Ms. Kakutani and myself. I must say I hope to receive a reply. I would rather keep all this in camera than disseminate it to the teeming raptors of the Internet. Did I say raptors? I mean raptures, teeming raptures.

Yours sincerely,

Norman Mailer

Norman Mailer was the author of more than thirty books, including The Naked and the Dead; The Armies of the Night, for which he won the Pulitzer Prize; The Executioner’s Song, for which he won a second Pulitzer Prize; Harlot’s Ghost; Advertisements for Myself; and The Deer Park. He died in November 2007.

With approval from the Norman Mailer Estate through Norman Mailer Licensing, LLC. © 2009, The Norman Mailer Estate, All Rights Reserved.

The original Mailer letters are located at the Harry Ransom Center, The University of Texas at Austin.