The bulk of Mailer's literary files document his fiction and non-fiction books. Notes, drafts, galley proofs, correspondence, and publicity files give evidence to the development and impact of all of Mailer's key publications, including The Naked and the Dead (1948), Barbary Shore (1951), The Deer Park (1955), An American Dream (1965), The Armies of the Night: History as a Novel, The Novel as History (1968), Of a Fire on the Moon (1971), The Executioner's Song (1979), Ancient Evenings (1983), Harlot's Ghost (1991), and Oswald's Tale: An American Mystery (1995).
Mailer's Harvard course work and writings are the earliest materials in Series I., dating from the late 1930s and early 1940s. The Harvard material includes numerous papers and short stories Mailer wrote for his English writing classes, as well as engineering and math coursework, grade reports, and university pamphlets and memorabilia. Also present are materials related to his activities in The Signet Society and copies of the Harvard Advocate containing his first published piece, "The Greatest Thing in the World." Of particular significance is a spiral notebook containing a handwritten journal started by Mailer on December 13, 1941. In the journal, Mailer records his thoughts on writing and reasons for becoming a writer. Also found in the Harvard materials are No Percentage, an unpublished novel begun in 1941; A Transit to Narcissus, begun in 1942 in the form of a play entitled "The Naked and the Dead," but not published until 1978; and a novella, "A Calculus at Heaven," also begun in 1942 but not published until after Mailer's induction into the army in March 1944.
Mailer's army papers consist of one folder of notes, pamphlets, and official documents, such as his discharge papers. A more detailed record of his army service is found in letters to and from his first wife, Bea, located in the Correspondence series.
Numerous drafts, fragments, and clippings represent Mailer's contributions to periodicals such as Commentary, Dissent, Esquire, Harper's, The New York Review of Books, The Paris Review, Playboy, Vanity Fair, and The Village Voice. Also present are handwritten and typed drafts of published and unpublished short stories and reviews, as well as forewords and blurbs he wrote for other authors. Other literary works include transcripts of interviews by and of Mailer, drafts of speeches, notes and drafts from Mailer's coverage of boxing and political conventions, memoirs, and numerous poems, drawings, and doodles.
In addition to literary works, Series I. contains publicity and production material for Mailer's late 1960s films Beyond the Law, Wild 90, and Maidstone. Mailer's 1986 film Tough Guys Don't Dance is well documented with screenplay drafts, production notes, viewer comments, and videotaped screen tests. Also present are screenplays Mailer wrote for three television movies directed by Lawrence Schiller: The Executioner's Song, American Tragedy, and Master Spy: The Robert Hanssen Story, as well as several never-used screenplays.
Other materials include records from his 1969 New York City mayoral primary campaign, and of his 1984 to 1986 tenure as president of the American chapter of P.E.N. Correspondence is found throughout the series and there is much overlap in content with files in Series II. Correspondence and Series III. Legal and Financial. General research and clippings files are also found throughout Series I., reflecting Mailer's interests in topics such as cancer and its causes, President Kennedy's assassination, the Watergate break-in, the CIA, and the wars in Vietnam and Iraq.
Files for some of Mailer's works contain materials for multiple genres or versions created at the same time. For example, files for An American Dream include manuscripts for the eight-part serialization that appeared in Esquire, as well as manuscripts for the published book. The Executioner's Song includes materials from the book, the Playboy magazine excerpt, and the television movie based on the book. The Deer Park material includes drafts, galley proofs, and proof plates for the version cancelled by Rinehart publishers, as well as material for the published Putnam version.
Dr. J. Michael Lennon and Donna Pedro Lennon's detailed bibliography of Mailer's major printed items, Norman Mailer: Works and Days (2000), was the key source used for identifying titles and chronology during processing of the papers at the Ransom Center. Due to the chronological order of the files and in an attempt to preserve any evidence of Mailer's use of the documents, related materials with the same title but different publication dates are not always filed together. For example, documents for Mailer's various versions of The Deer Park: A Play are filed separately from The Deer Park book materials because they were created as separate theater projects well after the book was completed. Similarly, original manuscripts for A Transit to Narcissus reside in files dated 1942 to 1943, when they were first created, and are also found in files dated 1978, which is when the book was first published in facsimile form. And drafts created of Mailer's compilations of earlier writing, such as Advertisements for Myself and The Time of Our Time, can include original manuscripts of the earlier pieces. The index of works and titles provided at the end of the finding aid identifies all locations of a particular work, including those with variant titles.
In general, Mailer's more recent work, dating from the 1970s onward, is represented by a greater volume of material than earlier works. The later files contain numerous copies of handwritten and typed drafts faxed between Mailer and his typists. Extensive research files created for some of his projects--notably Of a Fire on the Moon, The Executioner's Song, Harlot's Ghost, Oswald's Tale and Master Spy: The Robert Hanssen Story--add to the volume. Audiotape dictation exists for some of works dating from the 1980s onward.
Both incoming and outgoing letters are found throughout the papers, but the bulk are located in Series II. Correspondence. Major correspondents include friends, writers, critics, editors, and publishers such as: Jack Abbott, John Aldridge, James Baldwin, Vance Bourjaily, William F. Buckley, Jr., Truman Capote, Don Carpenter, Don DeLillo, Joan Didion, Jason Epstein, Allen Ginsberg, Francis "Fig" Gwaltney, Lillian Hellman, Ernest Hemingway, Irving Howe, James Jones, Ken Kesey, Mickey Knox, Michael Lennon, Robert Lucid, Jean Malaquais, Dwight McDonald, Henry Miller, Willie Morris, Adeline Naiman, Joyce Carol Oates, Norman Podhoretz, Richard Poirier, George Plimpton, Dotson Rader, Lillian Ross, Norman Rosten, Robert Silvers, William Styron, Diana and Lionel Trilling, Gore Vidal, Eichii Yaminishi, and Kurt Vonnegut. An index of all incoming correspondents is provided at the end of the finding aid.
The Correspondence series dates from Mailer's entry into Harvard in 1939. Extensive correspondence between Mailer, his parents, and his first wife, Beatrice Silverman, dates from Mailer's army service from 1944 to 1946. In his letters, Mailer writes of army life and describes characters, scenes, and plots for what became The Naked and the Dead. These letters serve as the early rough draft of the novel.
Third-party correspondence is found throughout the papers with large accumulations located in legal files and literary business files. Other third-party correspondence exists between Mailer's parents and between other family members. Photocopies of letters between Gary Gilmore and Nicole Baker are found in the research materials for The Executioner's Song. Of special note are letters from Marilyn Monroe to Marjorie Stengel (149.1), Shelley Winters to Marlon Brando (522.3), and John Dos Passos to Stanley Rinehart (scrapbook, box 1008)
A relatively small amount of email correspondence is present in the form of hardcopy printouts. Much of it involves Mailer's wife, Norris Church Mailer, or his assistants, and is not directly addressed to or from Mailer.
Also of note are close to 200 audio cassette tapes, dating between 1975 and 2002, containing Mailer's dictation of outgoing letters. In addition, numerous computer disks, dating from the early 1990s onward, contain drafts of outgoing correspondence. Transcriptions and printouts exist for the some of the dictated and electronic format letters. Many of the electronic files have not yet been accessed and their contents remain undetermined.
Other types of correspondence include fan mail, requests for appearances, letters-to-the-editor intended for publication, and business and legal communications.
Folders from 1954, 1968, and several years in the 1970s are labeled "Handwriting Files" and contain letters or fragments of letters sent by Mailer to a handwriting analyst, along with the analyst's comments. Authors of some of these letters are not indicated, but many are and include friends, family, and other writers.
Of particular significance are Mailer's letters with literary translator Eiichi Yamanishi. Dating from the late 1940s to the 1980s, Yamanishi carried on extensive correspondence with Mailer discussing the composition and meaning of Mailer's works as Yamanishi translated them into Japanese.
The series is in chronological order by individual year or span of years. Files are ordered alphabetically within the chronological groupings. Some chronological headings are divided into two alphabetical runs of letters answered and letters unanswered. There are also several topical accumulations, such as the Jack Abbott letters (1978-1985) and P.E.N. files (1983-1991), that are filed chronologically by their earliest date. The filing arrangement is not consistent and reflects the various methods in which Mailer's correspondence was created and maintained over the years. When apparent, the original headings from the correspondence folders have been transcribed onto the new folders and also used in the following container list.
Up to 1991, correspondence files generally contain incoming letters with carbons of Mailer's outgoing response attached. From 1991 onward, many of the correspondence files contain incoming letters only or printouts of computer generated responses. Folders labeled "Lett 1" to "Lett 79" indicate computer file and disk labels that contain computer generated outgoing letters related to the incoming letters in those folders.
In addition to correspondence, the series contains manuscript material from Mailer and from others throughout, as well as business and personal financial information. There is much similarity in content with files found in series I. Literary and Other Activities and series III. Legal and Financial, particularly for materials dating from the 1970s onward.
Series III. Legal and Financial includes office files from Charles "Cy" Rembar (Mailer's cousin and long-time attorney) and the Scott Meredith Literary Agency. The materials have been arranged into two subseries reflecting these sources. Much of the correspondence located in the Legal and Financial series is similar in nature to correspondence found in the Literary and the Correspondence series. Likewise, some bills, receipts, and financial statements similar to those found in the Legal and Financial series remain filed in the Correspondence series to best preserve original order and context.
Charles "Cy" Rembar served Mailer in various capacities, including literary agent, legal representative, and financial advisor. Rembar's professional relationships with Mailer date from the beginning of Mailer's literary career in the late 1940s up to the early 1980s. His extensive files document the business aspects of Mailer's writing and give evidence of Mailer's various legal entanglements over the years, such as the stabbing of his second wife, Adele, and lawsuits related to his 1973 book on Marilyn Monroe. These materials also include records of Mailer's first five marriages and subsequent divorces, as well as draft copies and contracts for many of Mailer's works, particularly those from the 1940s and 1950s. Of note is a file related to Mailer's father, Isaac Barnett "Barney" Mailer, and his investigation by the Civil Service Commission Loyalty Review Board due to his son's reputed communist affiliation.
In addition to legal files, Rembar's materials include corporate records for several film-related companies Mailer formed in the late 1960s, as well as extensive financial records such as Mailer's personal bank statements and bill and receipt files. Records created by Mailer's father--a practicing accountant--were placed in Rembar's possession after Barney Mailer's death in 1972. They contain income tax records and detailed financial statements for Mailer, as well as investment portfolios for Mailer and several of his family members and friends. Also present are Barney Mailer's own bank statements from the 1960s.
Rembar's legal files were received at the Ransom Center in large file transfer boxes. Their seemingly random order has been maintained, with client and case number filing information transferred to their new folders. The bulk of the financial records in the subseries are in chronological order.
The records of Mailer's literary agent, Scott Meredith, complement Rembar's files. Meredith's files, retrieved after his death in 1993, date from the mid-1960s to the early 1990s and include domestic and foreign contracts, legal documents, earnings statements, and publication and copyright information for the majority of Mailer's literary works from that period. Similar information for earlier Mailer works is located in the Cy Rembar files in Subseries A. Of note in the Meredith files are early agreements with Robert Lucid detailing Lucid's never completed authorized biography of Mailer.
Meredith's files are in chronological order. Original folder headings are retained and are generally an accurate indicator of the files' contents, although some headings indicate biographical information for Mailer when none is present. A small number of Mailer manuscripts are present in these files. These items are listed in the works and titles index at the end of the finding aid.
Additional Meredith materials can be found in small amounts throughout Series I. Literary and Other Activities and Series II. Correspondence.
The Family and Personal series contains juvenilia, materials from other family members, personal possessions and memorabilia, scrapbooks, address and appointment books, awards, gambling records, and photographs. It is the smallest series by volume and contains the earliest dated materials.
The bulk of the Family subseries consists of writing, correspondence, and other materials created by or collected by Mailer's parents, his sister Barbara, and his first two wives, Beatrice Silverman and Adele Morales. Also present are small amounts of incoming and outgoing correspondence with other family members dating from the 1920s to the 1960s. Much of the correspondence in the series is either to or from Mailer, but significant amounts of third-party correspondence is present, particularly between Mailer's parents. Materials are arranged alphabetically by creator.
Materials from Mailer's mother include correspondence, handwritten notes and drafts about Mailer's family, and narratives describing her travels to Europe, Israel, South Africa, and Hawaii. Also present are scrapbooks she created from clippings for The Naked and the Dead, Barbary Shore, Advertisements for Myself, and Mailer's Village Voice contributions.
Mailer's father's materials include correspondence, personal mementos, a small amount of business records, and one audio tape labeled "Norman Mailer (on Barney)," which was transferred to the Ransom Center Sound Recordings Collection.
Materials from Mailer's sister and his first wife, Bea, contain mostly short stories and other writing.
Juvenilia consist of materials created by Mailer before he entered Harvard at age sixteen. Arranged alphabetically, the materials include handwritten and typed short stories, schoolwork, and scrapbooks containing clippings of airplanes and other machines. Of note is a two-volume, handwritten story titled Martian Invasion, written in 1933; and Mailer's first published work, "Model Airplanes," which appeared in Physical Scientist, a mimeograph flyer printed at his high school in 1938. Also included with the juvenilia is memorabilia such as Boys High School patches, pennants, and yearbooks.
Address and appointment books date from the early 1950s to the mid-1990s. Included are notebooks, planners, calendars, and a rolodex bearing handwritten entries from Mailer and his spouses, children, and secretaries. Preserved in these records are business, social, and personal engagements for Mailer and his family as well as names, phone numbers, and addresses for friends, colleagues, and business associates.
Awards files include several folders of certificates, clippings, correspondence, and photographs documenting a small number of the many awards and honors received by Mailer over the years. Included are records of Mailer's nomination for the Gutenberg Award in 1949, an honorary doctoral degree from Rutgers University in 1969, and the Austrian Cross of Honor in 2002.
Photographs form the largest portion of the Personal subseries. Included are photographs of Mailer, his wives, children, other family members, and friends. They date from the 1940s to the 2000s, although several images of Mailer's family likely date from earlier in the 1900s. Among the notable images are photographs by Diane Arbus, Richard Avedon, Alfred Eisenstaedt, Robert Frank, and Inge Mörath.
Photographs are arranged chronologically, excepting several folders containing images of wives, family, and friends filed at the end of the subseries. Snapshots taken by Mailer and by friends and family are found throughout. Prints of dust jacket photos are present for several of his major books. Also present are several boxes of still images from Mailer's movies, Wild 90, Beyond the Law, and Maidstone. Mailer's 1969 New York mayoral campaign is well documented. Research photos of locations related to Harlot's Ghost, Oswald's Tale: An American Mystery, and Master Spy: The Robert Hanssen Story fill several boxes. A small number of additional photographs are located in Series II. Correspondence with incoming letters.
Other materials in Subseries B. include gambling records; drawings, doodles, and a watercolor painting by Mailer; and a small number of passports and other official documents.
Manuscript drafts for published and unpublished works by other people are found in Series V. Works By Others and to a lesser extent in Series II. Correspondence. Included in this series are literary and academic works by Mailer's family and friends, other well-known writers, aspiring authors, and students. Present are works from Jack Abbott, Joan Didion and John Gregory Dunne, Norman Podhoretz, José Torres, Diana Trilling, and Dotson Rader. The works are arranged in alphabetical order by author name.
The largest segment of materials in the series consists of manuscripts for Norris Church Mailer's novel Windchill Summer. Dr. J. Michael Lennon's manuscripts for Norman Mailer: Works and Days constitute the second largest body of materials. In addition, the series contains numerous biographical notes and manuscripts by Mailer scholar and friend Dr. Robert Lucid, and original materials for Norris Church Mailer's stage play Go-See.
The bulk of the material consists of typed draft manuscripts, but artwork and drawings are also included. Several computer disks with electronic files have been transferred to the Ransom Center Electronic Records Collection. Some works by other people are located in other series. For example, the majority of materials for Jack Abbott's In the Belly of the Beast are filed in their original location in Series II. Correspondence.
Series VI. consists of magazines, journals, and other serial publications containing Mailer essays, articles, and interviews. The material does not represent a complete collection of Mailer's output, but does include complete volumes of several significant and rare examples, such as the November-December 1941 edition of Story containing "The Greatest Thing in The World." Other publications found in the series include Commentary, Dissent, The New York Review of Books, and Partisan Review, as well as several foreign language magazines containing reprints of Mailer works or original articles. Materials in the series are arranged in alphabetical order by serial title.
1231 books arrived at the Ransom Center with the Mailer Papers. Included were multiple copies of Mailer's works, foreign editions, anthologies, and books used by Mailer for research on specific topics. These do not comprise Mailer's entire personal library, the bulk of which he retained. These volumes have been removed from the archive and cataloged separately with the Center's Library.
130 VHS, Betamax, and U-Matic video tapes representing Mailer television appearances, documentaries, research material, and production material from the film Tough Guys Don't Dance have been transferred to the Ransom Center's Moving Image Collection. Also transferred were two 8mm commercial films on George Foreman, one 8mm home movie, and three 16mm home movies.
1297 quarter-inch audio cassette tapes, 97 quarter-inch audio tape reels, seven audio tape microcassettes, and four CD-Rs have been transferred to the Ransom Center's Sound Recordings Collection. The bulk of the recordings are Mailer's dictation of correspondence and manuscripts. Also present are numerous interview tapes created by Mailer and collaborator Lawrence Schiller for the books The Executioner's Song (1979) and Oswald's Tale: An American Mystery (1995), and the television movie Master Spy: The Robert Hanssen Story (2002). Transcriptions of many of these tapes are found within files for the particular works located in Series I. Reel-to-reel recordings of television and radio programs dating from the 1950s through the 1960s include interviews with Mailer and news reports of his 1969 New York mayoral campaign. Use of audio and video materials may require production of listening and viewing copies.
359 computer disks, 47 electronic files, 40 CDs, six mini data cartridges, three laptop computers, and one Ampex magnetic tape spool have been transferred to the Ransom Center's Electronic Records Collection. The bulk of the electronic content was created by Mailer's assistant, Judith McNally and consists of correspondence or literary drafts.
The following items have been removed from the archive and housed with the Ransom Center's Personal Effects Collection:
Two red and black Boys High School felt pennants and one red and
black Boys High School felt patch
Platen from the typewriter used to type The Naked and the Dead
"I Support Vietnam Veterans Against the War" button pin
13 "Fifth Estate | Counter-Spies Are Watching Big Brother" button
pins
Hotel key
Ceremonial key to the City of Miami Beach
Framed check for $1.00 from Cannon Films
"Passing through the Netherworld" boxed Senet board game
One Paper Mate ink pen
Two olive drab boot laces
Two decks of handmade baseball game cards
Dog chain collar with tags
Red and white cardboard box with hinged lid
Kewpie doll party invitations box
Wallet file containing voodoo/magic materials and booklets
Two World War I South African military uniform insignia
| Norman Mailer Papers Finding Aid | ||||||
| Title Page | Biographical Sketch |
Scope and Contents |
Series Descriptions |
Folder List | Index of Correspondents |
Index of Titles and Works |
Reference queries to: reference@hrc.utexas.edu
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