What the Society noticed about Mailer in 2009: books, films, articles, events, and the people around him. Each item links to its source where one survives.
January
- 16 — Playboy’s January issue prints 27 previously unpublished Mailer letters on film, acting, and celebrity, to Brando, Baldwin, Capote, Vidal, and others.
- 16 — Dwayne Raymond recounts the time Esquire nearly sent Mailer on the road with Barack Obama: “When Mailer Almost Profiled Obama.”
February
- 1 — On what would have been Mailer’s 86th birthday, Carolyn Kellogg of the Los Angeles Times celebrates the second volume of The Mailer Review: “Norman Mailer Is Not 86 Today.”
- 4 — Norman Solomon draws on Mailer and Joan Didion to question the “war on terror”: “Why Are We Still at War?”
- 14 — The Guardian publishes a selection of Mailer’s letters on writing, with notes by J. Michael Lennon. Read them.
- 17 — On the New York Review of Books podcast, J. Michael Lennon talks with Sasha Weiss about Mailer’s letters and ambitions. Listen.
March
- 5 — The Mailer estate gives its film holdings, including original negatives and outtakes of Wild 90, Beyond the Law, and Maidstone, to the Harvard Film Archive.
April
- 29 — In The American Conservative, John Buffalo Mailer looks back at the 1969 Mailer–Breslin mayoral campaign: “Summer of ’69.”
- 30 — Liz Smith reports Norris Church Mailer at work on her Random House memoir, A Ticket to the Circus. Read the column.
May
- 4 — Publishers Weekly looks at Lawrence Schiller’s work to keep Mailer’s legacy alive, from the Mailer Writing Awards to the Writers Colony: “Keeping the Mailer Spirit Alive.”
June
- 16 — Taschen announces Norman Mailer: MoonFire, a $1,000 illustrated edition of Of a Fire on the Moon, reports Publishers Weekly.
July
- 16 — For the fortieth anniversary of Apollo 11, the Harry Ransom Center shares Mailer’s research materials for Of a Fire on the Moon.
- 20 — Brian Layden, one of the first seven Norman Mailer fellows, reports from Mailer’s Provincetown house in the Irish Times: “In the Steps of Mailer.”
September
- 4 — The Village Voice revisits Mailer’s Lego model of his ideal New York, built from a single prefabricated box-girder unit. Read it.
- 7 — The Guardian reprints a jungle-warfare passage from The Naked and the Dead.
- 17 — Mailer’s first film, shot as The Naked and the Dead went to press and restored by the Harry Ransom Center, has its world premiere at the New York Film Festival. Program
November
- 19 — On the World Socialist Web Site, James Brookfield answers an earlier critique by reconsidering Barbary Shore and Mailer’s work: “Considering Norman Mailer and His Work: A Letter.”
December
- 17 — The New York Observer follows John Buffalo Mailer, playwright and actor, into Oliver Stone’s Wall Street 2. Read it.