1951
Barbary Shore is published by Rinehart on 24 May and receives almost uniformly negative reviews — Max Gissen in Time calls it "paceless, tasteless, and graceless," a line Mailer never forgets. In June, Mailer travels with Mickey Knox to Palm Springs, California — the setting for The Deer Park. Over the year he separates from Bea and begins living with Adele Morales in New York (85 Monroe Street, March–June; 14 Pitt Street, September 1951 through June 1952); Bea and Susan move to Mexico. He meets William Styron and James Jones — the three young postwar novelists become immediate friends.
Winter — separation from Bea
Over the winter, Mailer separates from Bea Silverman Mailer — his wife since 7 January 1944 and the co-dedicatee (with his mother) of The Naked and the Dead — and begins living with Adele Morales, a New York painter he met through Jean Malaquais. Bea and Susan will move to Mexico later in the year.
From March through June, Norman and Adele live at 85 Monroe Street in New York; from September 1951 through June 1952, at 14 Pitt Street.
January
21 January 1952 (prospective) — British publication of Barbary Shore by Cape, London (recorded in the 51.1 entry for completeness; the date falls in 1952).
May
24 May — Publication of Barbary Shore (51.1) by Rinehart — novel, 312 pp., $3.00. Dedicated “To Jean Malaquais.” The reception is almost uniformly negative; Max Gissen in Time labels the novel “paceless, tasteless and graceless,” a line Mailer never forgets.
Mailer will later reflect on the novel’s Trotsky-inflected politics: “I started Barbary Shore as some sort of fellow-traveler, and finished with a political position which was a far-flung mutation of Trotskyism. And the drafts of the book reflected these ideological changes so drastically that the last draft of Barbary Shore is a different novel altogether and has almost nothing in common with the first draft but the names” (Marcus interview, 64.1).
June
3 June — Harvey Breit’s interview “Talk with Norman Mailer” (51.2) appears in the New York Times, Sec. 7, p. 3 — a substantive exchange on the influence of Moby-Dick on NAD: “I had Ahab in it, and I suppose the mountain was Moby-Dick. Of course, I also think the book will stand or fall as a realistic novel”.
June — Mailer travels with his close friend Mickey Knox, the actor, to Palm Springs, California — the setting that will become the “Desert D’Or” of The Deer Park. This is the formative trip for the novel.
Over the year — meeting Styron and Jones
Mailer meets William Styron (author of Lie Down in Darkness, 1951) and James Jones (author of From Here to Eternity, 1951) during the year. “The three young novelists become friends immediately”. The friendships with Jones and Styron will shape the 1950s — and, in Styron’s case, eventually sour in the 1960s.
October — Humanist and Esquire
October–November — “Authors and Humanism” (51.3) appears in The Humanist 11, p. 201. Mailer answers the editor’s question “Are you a humanist?” by reference to Marx, Freud, and his current atheism. The essay will be reprinted in Humanist 41 (March–April 1981).
November
November — Mailer’s letter to the editor (51.3a) in Esquire offers his support for the release of Ezra Pound from the psychiatric ward where Pound had been confined since 1945 — Mailer’s first appearance in Esquire, the magazine with which he will become most closely identified over the next two decades.
Over the year — The Western Defences and the Warfel reference
- “The Defence of the Compass” (51.4) appears in The Western Defences, ed. Sir John George Smyth (London: Wingate), 134–44 — an essay on “the Colossi,” the prospect of a military collision between Soviet state capitalism and U.S. monopoly capitalism. The arguments closely echo Barbary Shore; the essay is clearly composed “shortly before or after the novel appeared.” Mailer will substantially revise and shorten it as “The Meaning of ‘Western Defense’” (54.1) for Dissent in 1954.
- “Norman Mailer” (51.5) — a 102-word Mailer statement on his plans for future work appears as a biographical entry in American Novelists of Today, by Harry R. Warfel (New York: American Book Co.), 276: “I have no concerted program. I would like to experiment and to grow, but I pursue this aim through no particular standards. Technique must always be secondary to the world one constructs in a novel”.
Related pages
- 1950 | 1952
- Barbary Shore | Talk with Norman Mailer | Authors and Humanism | Letter to the Editor [on Ezra Pound] | The Defence of the Compass | Norman Mailer [entry in American Novelists of Today]
- Adele Morales | Mickey Knox | William Styron | James Jones | Beatrice Silverman | Jean Malaquais | Susan Mailer
- Rinehart & Company | The Humanist | Esquire
- Putney, Vermont | Palm Springs, California
- Norman Mailer: The Art of Fiction XXXII (64.1) | The Meaning of 'Western Defense' (54.1)