What the Society noticed about Mailer in 2012: books, films, articles, events, and the people around him. Each item links to its source where one survives.
February
- 3 — In Psychology Today, Maureen Seaberg reads a passage of Marilyn as evidence that Monroe was a synesthete: “Was Marilyn Monroe a Synesthete?”
March
- 19 — A sample from volume five of The Mailer Review: Gary D. Rhodes, “Reinventing a New Wheel: The Films of Norman Mailer.”
May
- 14 — Taschen publishes Lawrence Schiller’s Marilyn & Me, his memoir of photographing Monroe for Paris Match in 1962. More
- 24 — The Criterion Collection’s Eclipse series releases Mailer’s experimental films of the late 1960s, including Maidstone. More
June
- 15 — John Buffalo Mailer shares an online video of Norris Church Mailer’s memorial, combining the speeches with video.
September
- 7 — During the 2012 conventions, a Los Angeles Times writer wonders what Mailer would have made of Clint Eastwood and the whole political spectacle: “What Would Norman Mailer Say?”
October
- 7 — Ahead of the Mailer Center’s annual gala, Ronald K. Fried picks three essential Mailer books in the Daily Beast: “The Essential Norman Mailer: Remedial Reader.”
- 16 — Robert Atwan, founder of The Best American Essays, names the ten best essays since 1950 in Publishers Weekly, Mailer among them.
- 24 — J. Michael Lennon speaks at Eastern Illinois University on “James Jones, Norman Mailer, and William Styron: The Three Best Young Writers in America, 1952,” November 8.
- 29 — Film historian Michael Chaiken talks with D. A. Pennebaker about Mailer’s films, Wild 90 and Beyond the Law among them, in a 2012 video conversation.
- 29 — On his blog, the filmmaker Adam Curtis posts a documentary on Mailer’s 1969 run for mayor of New York as Londoners go to the polls: “White Negro for Mayor.” BBC
November
- 10 — Matthew Barney floats a nearly four-story replica of Mailer’s New York home down the East River for his Ancient Evenings project, the Wall Street Journal reports.
- 10 — The New York Times reports on intimate KGB files about Lee Harvey Oswald’s years in Minsk. Read it.