The Norman Mailer Writers Colony – July 2010
Reflections: Norman Mailer at 100, ed. Gerald R. Lucas and Maggie McKinley (The Norman Mailer Society, 2023), p. 26; transcribed from the final interior PDF
From Reflections: Norman Mailer at 100 (The Norman Mailer Society, 2023), p. 26.
As I sat working on my laptop in a worn leather chair in Norman Mailer’s house on Commercial Street in Provincetown, a stranger came into the room. “For a minute, I thought you were Norman’s ghost coming to kick me out,” I told Guy Davenport, whose job was to take care of the seven “fellows,” including me, who had come up to the Norman Writer’s Colony for the month. “Nah,” Guy said, “Norman would have loved to see you there working.” After that, I no longer felt like a trespasser in the house of the great man.
There’s much talk about the magical light in Provincetown, which, of course, is a painters’ town. But the most magical light I experienced there came from J. Michael Lennon, Mailer’s friend and biographer. After Mike read to the group from what was then his work-in-progress, I chatted with him over drinks until he said, “You really know your Mailer.” Well, of course I did. I’d grown up with Mailer, with his work that is, and I felt like he was a member of my family, a brilliant uncle, say, who offends some people who don’t really understand his essential irony.
One day I hiked up to the Provincetown cemetery to visit Mailer’s grave to thank him…well, for everything. That’s when I noticed that the years of his birth and death were exactly the same as another child of Brooklyn, my father. The news added a measure of emotion to my gratitude to Norman for inviting me to his house, as it were, though only his good karma was there to greet me. And I am grateful still for the experience, the friendship it brought me with Mike Lennon, and the access Mike gave me to all things Mailer, including Norman’s accomplished and generous family.
Ronald K. Fried