1966
Mailer's second son, Stephen McLeod Mailer, is born to Beverly Bentley on 10 March; in June Mailer buys a house at 565 Commercial Street in Provincetown, his home through 1969. The first stage version of The Deer Park (with Beverly as Lulu Meyers) is mounted in Provincetown in August; the Warner Brothers film of An American Dream premieres on 26 August; and Dial publishes his third miscellany, Cannibals and Christians, on 29 August. Through the year Mailer speaks at anti-Vietnam War rallies with Robert Lowell, Susan Sontag, and others.
Winter and spring
Early February — Mailer takes part, from the audience, in a Theatre for Ideas panel on Vietnam with Arthur Schlesinger Jr. and others (66.2); his account of the December 1965 MLA talk and its press coverage runs through several pieces this winter (66.3, 66.4, 66.5, 66.7).
March — The Dell paperback edition of An American Dream appears.
10 March — Mailer’s second son, Stephen McLeod Mailer, is born to Beverly Bentley.
Summer
June — Mailer purchases a house at 565 Commercial Street in Provincetown, where he will live with Beverly and their children until 1969.
August — The first stage version of Mailer’s 1955 novel The Deer Park, with Beverly Bentley as Lulu Meyers, is presented at Act IV, a Provincetown theater — a forerunner of the full New York production of The Deer Park: A Play in 1967 (67.13).
26 August — The Warner Brothers film version of An American Dream premieres.
28 August — Mailer’s review of Mark Lane‘s Rush to Judgment, an analysis of the Warren Commission Report, appears in Book Week (“The Great American Mystery,” 66.10).
29 August — Dial Press publishes Cannibals and Christians (66.11), Mailer’s third miscellany, dedicated “To Lyndon B. Johnson, whose name inspired young men to cheer for me in public.”
Fall
During the year Mailer speaks at several anti-Vietnam War rallies alongside Robert Lowell, Susan Sontag, and other writers — the public, oppositional stance that will culminate in the 1967 March on the Pentagon and The Armies of the Night (68.8).
Context
The Vietnam War escalates; the antiwar movement gathers force. The National Organization for Women is established on 29 October.
Related pages
- 1965 | 1967
- Cannibals and Christians | Stephen Mailer | Provincetown, Massachusetts
- An American Dream | Warner Brothers | Mark Lane | Norman Mailer's Letters on An American Dream, 1963–1969
- A Band of New York Intellectuals Meets with Prof. Schlesinger for a Talk-In on Vietnam (66.2) | What Norman Means . . . . (66.3) | What about Immolation? (66.4) | Modes and Mutations: Quick Comments on the Modern American Novel (66.5) | Pearl or Jew? (66.7) | The Deer Park: A Play (67.13) | The Great American Mystery: A New Dissent on the Methods and Findings of the Warren Commission (66.10) | The Armies of the Night: History as a Novel, The Novel as History (68.8)
Referenced by 18
Works
- 3 Poems (East Side Review)
- A Band of New York Intellectuals Meets with Prof. Schlesinger for a Talk-In on Vietnam
- Cannibals and Christians
- Henry Miller
- His Childhood Was a Happy Time: Norman Mailer Remembers Long Branch
- In and Out of Books: Mailer
- Modes and Mutations: Quick Comments on the Modern American Novel
- On Cannibals and Christians
- The Great American Mystery: A New Dissent on the Methods and Findings of the Warren Commission
- The Writer and Hollywood: Norman Mailer
- What Norman Means . . . .
- Will Success Spoil the "Village Voice"