On April 23, 2007, Mr. Mailer received the Hadada Award from The Paris Review in a New York ceremony. Novelist E.L. Doctorow, a longtime friend of Mr. Mailer’s, and his editor for An American Dream (1965), presented the award, which was created by the late editor of the Review, George Plimpton. New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg gave the “Salute” to Mr. Mailer, who was interviewed as part of the event by Review editor, Philip Gourevitch. The interview will be published in the Review, the first time a writer has had two interviews published there. Mr. Mailer’s interview with Steven Marcus appeared in the winter-spring 1964 number, reprinted in Conversations with Norman Mailer (1988), edited by J. Michael Lennon.
From Works and Days
The award came at the Paris Review’s Revel 2007 gala at the Puck Building in New York, where the magazine honored Mailer for lifetime achievement. Asked onstage to define a novel, Mailer answered: “A novel is history… Histories are made of rotten bricks. Novels lay straw in the mortar” (“Ancient Evening”). That summer the Paris Review published “The Art of Fiction, No. 193,” its second Art of Fiction interview with Mailer, forty-three years after his conversation with Steven Marcus.
In Works and Days
- The Paris Review’s 2007 Revel in Mailer’s year
- E. L. Doctorow, who presented the award
- George Plimpton — American writer, participatory journalist, and founding editor of The Paris Review; a longtime friend of Mailer who gave the remarks at Mailer’s August 1973 MacDowell…
- Steven Marcus — American literary critic and Columbia University professor.
- Conversations with Norman Mailer — The collection of Mailer interviews edited by J.
- J. Michael Lennon — Norman Mailer’s authorized biographer, archivist, and close friend; Emeritus Professor of English at Wilkes University and Chair of the Editorial Board of The Mailer…