Elisabeth Malaquais, remembrance
Reflections: Norman Mailer at 100, ed. Gerald R. Lucas and Maggie McKinley (The Norman Mailer Society, 2023), p. 70; transcribed from the final interior PDF
From Reflections: Norman Mailer at 100 (The Norman Mailer Society, 2023), p. 70.
With Norman’s blessing, I have edited the letters (original English, translated into French) which Norman Mailer and Jean Malaquais exchanged between 1949 (soon after they met) and 1986. This Correspondance (le cherche midi, Paris 1998), which contains very interesting literary, social and political analyses, is also precious in that it sheds, in its uncompromising frankness, a fascinating light on the public and private personas of the two writers.
What I would like, however, to share is an intimate memory of an occasion upon which, for a split second, I saw revealed a very complex mix of emotions which spoke to a quality of delicacy rarely highlighted, it seems to me, in Mailer.
22 March 1963
Jean Malaquais and Elisabeth Deberdt are getting married in New York City. At City Hall, much to Norman’s regret: it should take place, he had insisted, in his own apartment of Brooklyn Heights, officiated by a rabbi. «Pas question!» had been Jean’s retort. After all, just an administrative procedure, to be disposed of with no frills. So, Mailer and Beverly Bentley as Jean’s witnesses, Saul Steinberg and my sister, Nicole Schwob, mine. Are we ready to be pronounced husband and wife? Jean utters a strong yes. At that very instant, my gaze falls on Norman: a tear rolls down his cheek. He promptly wipes it and then it’s my turn.
Elisabeth Malaquais