Mailer Centenary Projects

Compiled by J. Michael Lennon, as of May 22, 2022, ahead of the 2023 centenary of Mailer’s birth and the seventy-fifth anniversary of The Naked and the Dead. The list ran on Project Mailer in June 2022. Dates and plans are as he gave them at the time; publisher descriptions that followed several entries there are left out.

Oxford University Press Mailer Bibliography (2022), compiled by Maggie McKinley.
The Naked and the Dead, 75th anniversary edition, includes three additional prefaces and 23 wartime letters to wife Beatrice and parents; edited by J. M. Lennon (Library of America, January 10, 2023). 800 pp.
Norman Mailer in Context. 34 essays by different hands on all aspects of Mailer’s life and art, edited by Maggie McKinley, president of Mailer Society. 400 pp. with introduction, notes, index, and extensive bibliography (Cambridge University Press, 2021).
Along Heroic Lines by Christopher Ricks. Contains long essay, “Norman Mailer: Just Off the Rhythm” (Oxford University Press, 2021).
Mailer TV series. James Gray, director (Ad Astra, The Two Lovers, etc.); based on Lennon’s 2013 biography (2023).
The Two Mailers, Off-Broadway play based in part on The Big Empty (2006), by John Buffalo and Norman Mailer. Ronald K. Fried, playwright; Julian Schlossberg, producer. Production delayed due to Covid.
Norris, play by Bonnie Culver, based on the memoir, A Ticket to the Circus (2010) by Norris Church Mailer. One-woman show, starring Anne Archer; directed by Michelle Danner. Streaming June 2022.
Mailer documentary, Showtime/Triage production; Jeff Zimbalist, director (2023).
The Mysterious Country: The Grace and Fragility of Democracy, J. M. Lennon and J. B. Mailer, editors. Mailer’s commentary on the challenges to democracy in the U.S. (Skyhorse Publishing, January, 2023). 289 pp.
Harlot’s Ghost (adaptation; Mark Gordon, producer, Eric Rochant, showrunner) TV series, 2023.
Jack and Norman, by Jerome Loving. Nonfiction account focused on Mailer’s relationship with Jack Abbott (Thomas Dunne/St. Martin’s, 2017). 240 pp. Film version in the works, with Colin Firth as Abbott.
Fearless: Five Jews Who Changed American Culture (Leonard Bernstein, Betty Friedan, Norman Mailer, Mel Brooks, Pauline Kael) by New Yorker essayist, David Denby (Holt, likely 2024).
In Another Place: With and Without My Father, Norman Mailer by Susan Mailer, Northampton House Press, 2019. Memoir translation (Random House/Penguin Chile, November, 2022).
Helltown: The Untold Story of a Serial Killer on Cape Cod by Casey Sherman (Sourcebooks, July 2022). Mailer’s links to the story of murderer Tony Costa, in late 60s Provincetown, are discussed in this nonfiction book.
Mailer at 100: Conversations, Correlations, Confrontations. Essays by Robert Begiebing on Mailer and Whitman, Jung, Emerson, Didion, Millet, Hemingway, Joseph Ellis (LSU Press, 2023).
The Shores of Bohemia: A Cape Cod Story, 1910–1960 by John Taylor Williams (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, May, 2022).
Lindsay Whalen, biography of Mary Oliver, including material on Mailer and his assistant Molly Malone Cook, Oliver’s partner. Penguin, forthcoming.
David Mikics, Mailer’s Battles, now seeking a publisher.
David Bromwich, Norman Mailer. Yale Jewish Lives series, estimated 2024.
Mailer’s 1954–55 Marijuana Journal: “Lipton’s,” edited by J. Michael Lennon, Jerry Lucas, Susan Mailer (Mailer Society, 2023). Includes Mailer’s correspondence with psychologist-author Robert Lindner. Total length approximately 75,000 words.
Mailer Remembered (working title), limited edition of approx. 100 short memories of Mailer by friends, family and admirers. Edited by G. R. Lucas and Maggie McKinley (Mailer Society, 2023).
Mailer’s Last Days: New and Selected Remembrances of a Life in Literature. Memoir/essays by J. Michael Lennon (Etruscan Press, November 1, 2022).
Love of My Life by Barbara Mailer Wasserman, 15 memoir narratives (Arbitrary Press, 2021).
Mailer Review, v. 16, Mailer Centenary Issue. Editor, Phillip Sipiora (2023).
ARTE (European public television) documentary on Mailer, in production. Gero von Boehm, producer (2023).
You Owe It to History: The Lies I Told to Get the Truth. Memoir by Lawrence Schiller. Introduction by David Margolick. Now seeking a publisher.
Dune Shacks of Provincetown, photographs by Jane Paradise. Foreword by Michael Mailer. (Schiffer Publishing, August 28, 2022).
The Fight by Norman Mailer. Edited by J. M. Lennon and Nina Wiener. Conceived by Lawrence Schiller. Photographs by Neil Leifer and Howard Bingham. Heavily illustrated. Trade edition of 2018 oversize edition. (Taschen Books, June 2022).