1944
Mailer is drafted into the U.S. Army in January, marries Bea Silverman on 7 January (she joins the Waves), completes the unpublished novel A Transit to Narcissus in February, is inducted at Camp Upton on 27 March, publishes the novella "A Calculus at Heaven" in Edwin Seaver's Cross-Section (L.B. Fischer, April) — his first book appearance — trains at Fort Bragg and Fort Ord, ships out from San Francisco on 6 December, and arrives in the Philippines by year's end. Reads Anna Karenina and The Decline of the West en route.
January
January — Mailer is drafted into the U.S. Army.
January 7 — Mailer marries Beatrice Silverman, whom he met in Chelsea in December 1941. Bea joins the Waves.
February
Mailer completes his second novel, A Transit to Narcissus — also based on his summer 1942 work at the Boston State Hospital. The book will not see print until 1978, when Howard Fertig issues a limited edition of 1,000 copies in New York.
March
March 27 — Mailer is inducted into the Army at Camp Upton on Long Island.
April
April — Edwin Seaver‘s anthology Cross-Section: A Collection of New American Writing is published by L.B. Fischer. It includes “A Calculus at Heaven” (44.1) on pages 317–53 — Mailer’s first book appearance. The novella, written for Robert Hillyer’s English A-5 class in his senior year at Harvard, is a Pacific-combat story that anticipates The Naked and the Dead in form and subject.
Summer
Spring–Summer — Mailer trains for four months at Fort Bragg, North Carolina.
August — Transferred to Fort Ord, California, as an artillery trainee.
December
December 6 — Mailer ships out from San Francisco on the U.S.S. Sea Barb.
December 25 — Arrives in New Guinea, Hollandia Harbor.
December 29 — Arrives at Leyte Gulf, Philippines.
Reading
While at sea and in transit Mailer reads Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina and Oswald Spengler’s The Decline of the West, “two works that influence him deeply”.
Context
The Pacific campaign. Mailer is twenty-one. The months in the Philippines and later in Luzon and occupied Japan (see 1945, 1946) become the primary raw material for The Naked and the Dead.
Related pages
- 1943 | 1945
- A Calculus at Heaven | The Naked and the Dead
- Beatrice Silverman | Edwin Seaver | L.B. Fischer | Harvard University