Lawrence Schiller, remembrance
Reflections: Norman Mailer at 100, ed. Gerald R. Lucas and Maggie McKinley (The Norman Mailer Society, 2023), pp. 86–87; transcribed from the final interior PDF
From Reflections: Norman Mailer at 100 (The Norman Mailer Society, 2023), pp. 86–87.
When I walked into the room, it was late in the day and Norman was sitting at one end of the dining room table reviewing page proofs and type samples from a still-untitled book. A view of the bay just outside the window.
“Read some of this. Mike and I have been talking about God and Random House loves it so much that they’re rushing it out,” Norman said with some satisfaction.
“What you mean is they want to get it into print before you die,” I replied.
He looked up at me and said, “I’m prepared to die, Larry. I won’t be alive by the end of this year.”
He was 84. “Lots to deal with, little time left,” Norman said as Mike Lennon came into the room. Norman seemed bored with the conversation and went back to editing the pages before him.
From the early 1990s, Norman and Norris divided their time between New York and P-Town, and he had written many of his 40 books in their home on Provincetown Harbor. It was here that Mike and three other Mailer admirers (Bob Lucid, Barry Leeds, and John Whalen-Bridge) convinced Norman to let them establish the Norman Mailer Society, a non-profit organization that would keep Norman’s work alive after he was gone.
Months later, when Norman was hospitalized in New York City, a nurse said nervously to him, “I’d like to write, but I don’t know how.”
“Well, what are you doing this weekend?” he asked.
“Going sailing with my boyfriend.”
“So when you get home, write about your weekend,” Norman replied, “and bring it to me and I’ll take a look at it.”
When I returned to visit Norman, he was in the ICU, pencil in hand, editing some text. The same nurse was there listening in awe as he went line by line through her typed pages. After he handed her his corrections, she read his notes, over and over and over. And Norman, tubes and IVs stuck all over his body, went back to reading the newspaper. A copy of the just-published On God was on his bedside table.
The vision of the Norman Mailer Society has succeeded. Every year since 2003 it has brought together educators, writers, fans, and Mailer family members to remember Norman, discuss his work and publish The Mailer Review. Norman had left his mark on the world, and now, members of the Mailer Society would be there for him.
Lawrence Schiller