1950
A Days-only year — Lennon records no 1950 Mailer publications. Norman and Bea split their time between New York, Provincetown, and ultimately Putney, Vermont, where they settle in October for what will be the final push on Barbary Shore — the novel will be finished there and published by Rinehart the following May.
The year in one motion
Mailer continues work on Barbary Shore across three locations — New York, Provincetown, Massachusetts, and Putney, Vermont.
October — Putney, Vermont
By October the Mailers are settled in Putney, Vermont, where they will remain through September 1951. Mailer completes the final version of Barbary Shore in Putney — a novel whose drafts have, in his later description, migrated “from some sort of fellow-traveler” position to “a far-flung mutation of Trotskyism … the last draft of Barbary Shore is a different novel altogether and has almost nothing in common with the first draft but the names”.
Context
1949’s Waldorf Conference and break with the Progressive Party leave ideological marks on Barbary Shore; the Hollywood summer of 1949 (screenplay work for Goldwyn, Malaquais‘s daily presence) feeds the book in ways Mailer will later describe to Steven Marcus as “subterranean.” For the Hollywood context, see 1949; for the novel’s publication and reception, see 1951.