Barbara Mailer Wasserman

Dear Members of the Norman Mailer Society,

It is with regret that my first official email as President of the Society bear sad news. As you may already know, Barbara Wasserman passed away yesterday, Sunday, January 18th, at the age of 98. It is my understanding that her final days were spent surrounded by family and festooned with love.

Barbara was a founding and stalwart member of the Norman Mailer Society, and by all accounts its most prominent and proud matriarch. In her support of the Society and Mailer’s legacy, she seconded the motion to create the Lucid Award, authored insightful accounts of her brother’s life and times, and attended almost as many NMS conferences as have ever been held (with Peter Alson close by her at every turn). In the face of age and infirmity, Barbara kept growing and exploring and learning with all of us. Her passing is like the closing of a generational chapter in America, and her voice amid our curious chorus will be sorely missed.

Please join me in offering condolences to Peter and the entire Mailer family during this difficult time.

Matthew S. Hinton

[Barbara’s guestbook has been posted in the New York Times. If you would like to send us your memories, too, do so below. —Ed.]

Biography

Barbara Wasserman first came to Provincetown in the summer 1946 to visit her brother Norman who was beginning work on a war novel, The Naked and the Dead, while living in North Truro. Over the next sixty years, she returned almost every summer and in 1995, with her husband, Al Wasserman, purchased an apartment at 616 Commercial Street, not far from her brother’s home at 627. In New York City, where she lived all her life (b. 1927), she worked as a film researcher at CBS, and as an editor and as administrative assistant to the President of Simon & Schuster. In 1967, she edited an anthology of women writers, The Bold New Woman, including work by Susan Sontag, Edna O’Brien, Maria Irene Fornes, Doris Lessing, Marge Piercy, Susan Brownmiller, and Rosalyn Drexler. A revised, expanded edition, also published by Fawcett, appeared in 1970 with contributions from Joan Didion, Vivian Gornick, and Pauline Kael. Wasserman published a collection of memoir pieces, Love of My Life, 2021 by Arbitrary Press.