1967
A prolific year: The Deer Park: A Play opens at the Theatre de Lys (31 January, 127 performances); Mailer is inducted into the National Institute of Arts and Letters in May; he publishes four books — The Short Fiction of Norman Mailer, The Deer Park: A Play, Why Are We in Vietnam?, and The Bullfight; makes two experimental films, Wild 90 and Beyond the Law; and on 21 October joins the March on the Pentagon, the experience that becomes The Armies of the Night.
Winter
31 January — The Deer Park: A Play (67.13) opens at the Theatre de Lys in New York, closing 21 May after 127 performances. Mailer underwrites the production and loses money; the cast includes his wife Beverly Bentley, ex-wife Adele Morales, Rip Torn, and Mickey Knox. The opening and its 500-guest after-party — including a fistfight — are widely reported (67.1–67.6).
Spring
May — Mailer is inducted into the National Institute of Arts and Letters. The Short Fiction of Norman Mailer (67.11) is published by Dell on 11 May.
Summer
7 August — Dial publishes The Deer Park: A Play (67.13) in book form. Mailer also adapts Why Are We in Vietnam? into a one-act sketch, staged on 19 August at Act IV in Provincetown.
Fall
15 September — Putnam’s publishes Why Are We in Vietnam? (67.15), written in roughly five months the previous year. It will be a finalist for the National Book Award. Mailer’s self-interview “Mr. Mailer Interviews Himself” (67.16) accompanies publication.
Mid-November — The Bullfight (67.20), a photographic narrative with Mailer’s essay on the bullfighter Amado Ramirez, appears from the CBS Legacy Collection.
21 October — Mailer takes part in the March on the Pentagon alongside Robert Lowell, Noam Chomsky, and Dwight Macdonald — the experience that becomes, the following spring, The Armies of the Night (68.8, “The Steps of the Pentagon”).
Films
Mailer makes two experimental films, Wild 90 and Beyond the Law, co-produced by his close friend Buzz Farbar. (The films premiere in early 1968 and fall outside Lennon’s Works register, which excludes film; Mailer’s essays on the filmmaking — “Some Dirt in the Talk” (67.21) on Wild 90 — are included.)
Context
The Vietnam War and the antiwar movement dominate the national mood; the October March on the Pentagon is a turning point in Mailer’s life as a public writer.
Related pages
- 1966 | 1968
- Why Are We in Vietnam? | The Deer Park: A Play | The Short Fiction of Norman Mailer | The Bullfight: A Photographic Narrative with Text by Norman Mailer
- The Armies of the Night: History as a Novel, The Novel as History | Buzz Farbar | Theatre de Lys
- Norman Mailer's "Deer Park": Countdown Drama (67.1) | Norman Mailer Has Calmed Quite a Bit (67.6) | Mr. Mailer Interviews Himself (67.16) | Some Dirt in the Talk: A Candid History of an Existential Movie Called Wild 90 (67.21)
Referenced by 36
Works
- A Requiem for the Rube
- A Statement of Aims by the Playwright
- Anything Goes: Taboos in Twilight
- Following the Bouncing Talk of Norman Mailer
- Foreword to The Beard, by Michael McClure
- In Clay's Corner
- It Happened Last Night
- Joe Shaw and the Hip Boxing Syndicate
- Lament for Ignacio Sánchez Mejías (translation)
- Mailer — Man of Fevered Words
- Mailer Says U.S. Dangerously Split
- Mailer's Street Scene: Renewal on Sunday
- Mr. Mailer Interviews Himself
- Mr. Mailer Passes Out the Cigars
- Norman Mailer Has Calmed Quite a Bit
- Norman Mailer, Playwright
- Norman Mailer's "Deer Park": Countdown Drama
- Opening Night at the Theater
- Some Dirt in the Talk: A Candid History of an Existential Movie Called Wild 90
- The Bullfight: A Photographic Narrative with Text by Norman Mailer
- The Crazy One
- The Deer Park: A Play
- The Short Fiction of Norman Mailer
- They Seek Out Saul Bellow
- Two Untitled Excerpts from Speech at Fifth Avenue Vietnam Peace Parade
- Uncle Norman Makes the Obscene
- Why Are We in Vietnam?
- Why We Are Interviewing Norman Mailer