Norman Mailer: Works and Days

1963

Mailer's periodical-blizzard year and the year of the JFK assassination. Meets Beverly Bentley on 10 March in New York; covers the 22 September 1962 Patterson-Liston I aftermath in 'Ten Thousand Words a Minute' (February Esquire); reads at Carnegie Hall on 31 May. Publishes more than thirty pieces in the year — including all twelve remaining Big Bite Esquire columns, five remaining Responses and Reactions Commentary columns, the major literary critic essay 'Some Children of the Goddess' in the July Esquire, and 'The Mary McCarthy Case' in the 17 October NYRB. The Presidential Papers, his second miscellany, appears on 8 November from Putnam's — two weeks before the Kennedy assassination of 22 November, after which the jacket photograph showing Mailer in a Boston rocking chair is changed for the 1964 paperback. In the fall, Scott Meredith becomes Mailer's literary agent and negotiates the An American Dream sale to Dial Press and the movie rights to MGM. The December Big Bite ends with Mailer's public announcement: 'One is tempted to call this novel An American Dream.' Divorces Lady Jeanne Campbell in Juarez on 16 December and marries actress Beverly Bentley in his Brooklyn apartment on 29 December.

Norman Mailer, Provincetown, 1963

January — NYRB debut, Big Bite continues, Playboy debate

January — Mailer’s first appearance in The New York Review of Books is “Punching Papa” (63.1) in the inaugural Winter 1963 issue — a review of Morley Callaghan‘s That Summer in Paris. Per Lennon, the inaugural issue “probably appeared in February”; the Winter 1963 dateline reflects the journal’s planned but slipped first publication during the 114-day New York newspaper strike of December 1962 – April 1963.

The third installment of The Big Bite (63.2) appears in the January Esquire — comment on television, the astronauts, and totalitarianism. Playboy publishes both Mailer’s and Buckley‘s opening statements from the 22 September 1962 Chicago debate (63.15) — “A Liberal’s View by Norman Mailer” and “A Conservative’s View by William F. Buckley Jr.” — under the umbrella title “The Real Meaning of the Right Wing in America.”

An untitled poem (63.14) appears in Way Out, the renamed continuation of Balanced Living.

February — Ten Thousand Words a Minute, R&R II, Buckley debate transcript, more Way Out poems

February — Esquire: “Ten Thousand Words a Minute” (63.3), Mailer’s long account of the 25 September 1962 Patterson–Liston I fight in Chicago and of the press-conference aftermath. “One of Mailer’s most anthologized essays,” per Lennon. Mailer also comments on his 22 September 1962 Buckley debate.

Commentary publishes “Responses and Reactions” II (63.16) — second of six bi-monthly columns on Buber’s Tales of the Hasidim.

Playboy publishes the transcript (63.22) of the 22 September 1962 Chicago debate. New Statesman publishes the poem “Classes” (63.23) on 8 February.

Way Out (February issue) carries two more poems, “Smog Doggerel for the Haze” and “Static” (63.21), alongside Robert Anton Wilson’s “An Open Letter to Norman Mailer.”

March — Beverly Bentley meeting; Big Bite; Harvard talk

10 March — Mailer meets actress Beverly Bentley in New York (per JML Days revised RTF and the published Days, p. 354). Bentley will become Mailer’s fourth wife on 29 December.

24 March — Mailer appears at Harvard and discusses existentialism and psychoanalysis: “I am profoundly cynical about psychoanalysis.” Paul S. Cowan’s account in The Harvard Crimson (63.26) the next day.

Esquire: Big Bite (63.4) on American journalism, the Kennedys, and U.S. policy toward Cuba.

Spring — Hipster and the American Right; Harvard Advocate poem

“The Hipster and the American Right” (63.24) in Phoenix (University of Chicago), spring. An untitled poem (63.25) in The Harvard Advocate, Vol. 97 — Mailer’s first Advocate appearance since his student-editor days of 1941–1942 (41.1, 42.1, 42.2).

April — Left conservative; R&R III; Big Bite

Esquire: Big Bite (63.5) — meditation on the coming of spring, fear, apathy, and the possibility of war with Russia.

Commentary: R&R III (63.17).

Playboy’s April issue carries Mailer’s letter “Reading from Left to Right” (63.27), in which he complains about being labeled “a liberal” in his January debate with Buckley — and describes himself, perhaps for the first time, as a “left conservative.” The phrase will recur across Mailer’s later political position-pieces.

May — Brooklyn Heights interview, Big Bite, Carnegie Hall eve

Esquire: Big Bite (63.6) — comment on the coming “architectural plague.”

30 May — Jan Henry’s interview in the Brooklyn Heights Press (63.28) — Mailer describes himself as a “Left Existential Conservative” and discusses Deaths for the Ladies and the book he is working on under the working title “Frankie and Johnny: The Presidential Papers of Norman Mailer.”

Same day, the Voice article-interview (63.29) by Millicent Brower on the eve of the Carnegie Hall reading.

31 May — Carnegie Hall reading

31 May — Mailer’s reading at Carnegie Hall — covered by:

Summer — First Presidential Paper, Big Bite, R&R IV

Dissent (summer): “The First Presidential Paper” (63.32) — Mailer’s standalone essay reprinted as the introduction to The Presidential Papers (63.37), titled “A Prefatory Paper — Heroes and Leaders.”

Esquire: Big Bite (63.7) — important remarks on the decline of the novel.

Commentary: R&R IV (63.18).

July — Some Children of the Goddess; Ex Libris [no — 62.12a was the Ex Libris in 1962]; Antidote

July — Esquire publishes Mailer’s long essay “Some Children of the Goddess: Further Evaluations of the Talent in the Room” (63.8) — titled “Norman Mailer versus Nine Writers” on the table of contents — Mailer’s longest sustained literary criticism since 59.10. Calder Willingham will respond in December.

Harper’s Bazaar: the questionnaire “Antidote” (63.33), in which Mailer’s anathema, “The worst celebrity in America is of course J. Edgar Hoover,” causes the article to be placed in his FBI file.

August — Big Bite (American totalitarianism); R&R V; Cosmopolitan profile

Esquire: Big Bite (63.9) — an essay on American totalitarianism.

Cosmopolitan: Frederick Christian’s profile (63.34) — overview of Mailer’s life including his involvement with the Actors Studio (which is also Beverly Bentley’s professional home).

Commentary: R&R V (63.19).

14 August — The March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom (the King “I Have a Dream” speech). Mailer’s reflections appear in the December Big Bite (63.13).

September — Big Bite (Algren); Lasky JFK review

Esquire: Big Bite (63.10) — comment on Nelson Algren and violence in America.

29 September — Mailer’s review of Victor Lasky’s J.F.K.: The Man and the Myth in Book Week (63.35).

October — Big Bite (dread); R&R VI; Mary McCarthy Case

Esquire: Big Bite (63.11) — the “dread” column. The first third reprinted as introduction to The Presidential Papers’s “Seventh Presidential Paper: On Dread”; the remainder later reprinted in Existential Errands as “Two Oddments from Esquire.”

Commentary: R&R VI (63.20) — final installment of the Commentary column. Mailer departs from Buber and discusses the minority status of Jews and Negroes; reprinted as introduction to “The Tenth Presidential Paper — Minorities” in 63.37.

17 October — “The Mary McCarthy Case” (63.36) in NYRB — Mailer’s review of Mary McCarthy‘s The Group. “Perhaps Mailer’s finest book review,” per Lennon.

November — The Presidential Papers

Esquire: Big Bite (63.12) — JFK, Cuba, Jackie Kennedy, politics, death. The column is contemporary with the book.

8 November — Publication of The Presidential Papers (63.37) by G. P. Putnam’s Sons — Mailer’s second miscellany after Advertisements for Myself (59.13). The dust jacket carries the now-famous photograph of Mailer seated in a JFK-style Boston rocking chair against a white background. Discarded titles: The Devil Revisited; Frankie and Johnny, Or, The Murder of Good Ideas. Multi-name dedication: “Beverly Rentz Sugarfoot Bentley; Jean Louise Slugger Campbell; my daughters: Susan, Dandy, Betsy, Kate; my adopted daughter: Jeanne H.W. the Invaluable Johnson…”

22 November — President Kennedy is assassinated in Dallas. Mailer’s Presidential Papers is two weeks into its first-edition run; the dedication is set; the Big Bite and Responses and Reactions columns are running. The rocker-jacket Boston-rocker photograph will be changed for the May 1964 Bantam paperback (64.15). The events of late November and December — including Mailer’s reactions at Wesleyan (63.37a) and in the NYRB (63.38) — frame what Mailer would later call “that autumn of assassination which would change the psychic history of America forever” (preface to the 1976 Berkley reprint, 76.13).

Fall — Scott Meredith becomes literary agent; the An American Dream deal

In the fall, Scott Meredith becomes Mailer’s literary agent (per JML Days RTF and the published Days, p. 354). Meredith successfully negotiates the sale of An American Dream to Dial Press (E. L. Doctorow one of Mailer’s editors) and the movie rights to MGM. This is the beginning of a thirty-year representation that runs until Meredith’s death in 1993, and it marks Mailer’s structural shift from Putnam’s to Dial Press as his primary American book publisher.

December — Wesleyan; Big Bite finale; Last Night; NYRB tribute; second marriage

Esquire (December): The Big Bite (63.13) — fourteenth and final installment, closing the November 1962 – December 1963 run. The column ends with Mailer’s announcement: “One is tempted to call this novel An American Dream.” Same issue: “The Last Night” (63.39), Mailer’s apocalyptic short story, later concluding Cannibals and Christians (66.11).

11 December — Mailer speaks at Wesleyan University. Richard Woodley’s account in the Middletown (Conn.) Press of 12 December (63.37a).

16 December — Mailer divorces Lady Jeanne Campbell in Juarez, Mexico.

26 December — Mailer’s 175-word JFK-tribute symposium contribution in the New York Review of Books (63.38). Echoes the “Special Preface to Bantam Edition” of Presidential Papers (64.15) Mailer would write in May 1964.

29 December — Mailer marries actress Beverly Bentley at his 142 Columbia Heights Brooklyn apartment. The fourth marriage.

Also published in 1963: Mailer’s letters in Myrick Land’s The Fine Art of Literary Mayhem (63.40), the chapter recapitulating Mailer’s 1959 “Quick and Expensive Comments on the Talent in the Room” (59.10).

Mailer’s autumn correspondence — eighteen 1963 letters tracing the conception and serial composition of An American Dream, gathered in J. Michael Lennon’s Letters on An American Dream (04.7) — dates from these months: to his British publisher Andre Deutsch and translator Eiichi Yamanishi, to friends Mickey Knox and Fig Gwaltney, and many others. The December letters respond directly to the Kennedy assassination.

The periodical-blizzard year

Per the published Days, p. 354: “In 1963, he publishes more than thirty pieces (poems, book reviews, essays, interviews, columns, letters, debates and a short story) in a dozen different places, the beginning of a periodical blizzard that continues unabated until the mid-1970s.” Lennon’s Works register confirms the count at 42 entries — more than any year for Mailer to date and a high-water mark for journalistic output across his career.

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Last updated: 2026-05-27