1982
The Abbott trial dominates the winter and spring: Mailer testifies in January, accepts a 'very large responsibility' for Richard Adan's death, and is attacked across the media; Abbott is convicted of manslaughter on 22 January and sentenced to fifteen years to life in April. In June Little, Brown publishes Pieces and Pontifications, his fifth miscellany, edited with J. Michael Lennon. The TV miniseries of The Executioner's Song, from Mailer's own screenplay, airs in November; Hilary Mills's Mailer: A Biography, the first book-length life, appears the same month; and the first excerpts from Ancient Evenings begin to surface.
January–April — the Abbott trial
The year opened in a Manhattan courtroom. Jack Henry Abbott stood trial for the murder of Richard Adan, and Mailer — who had championed Abbott’s writing in In the Belly of the Beast (81.10) and supported his parole — testified on 19 January (82.2) and faced the press afterward. Pressed on remorse, he answered, “I can’t give you my blood, but you can have my psychic blood”; across a series of statements he accepted “partial responsibility” and then “a very large responsibility for the death of Richard Adan” (82.3, 82.4, 82.5, 82.10), allowing that the victim’s family had “an absolute right to hate and revile me” (82.7). On 22 January Abbott was convicted of first-degree manslaughter — “It’s a fair verdict,” Mailer said (82.6) — and on 16 April he was sentenced to fifteen years to life (82.11, 82.12). On 24–25 February Mailer discussed the affair at length on a two-part Dick Cavett Show on PBS (82.10). The full run of trial coverage is gathered on the Belly of the Beast hub page.
June — Pieces and Pontifications
21 June — Little, Brown published Pieces and Pontifications (82.16), Mailer’s fifth miscellany, in two halves: Pieces, his short essays of the 1970s, and Pontifications, a selection of his interviews edited with an introduction by J. Michael Lennon. It was dedicated “For my sister, Barbara.” On the book’s publication Michiko Kakutani interviewed him for the Times Book Review (82.14), drawing out his sense of moving from “embattled artist” to “alchemical artist.”
In August the British house New English Library issued the omnibus The Essential Mailer (82.19), combining his short fiction and Existential Errands.
Fall — The Executioner’s Song on screen, and a first biography
A four-hour television miniseries of The Executioner’s Song, produced and directed by Lawrence Schiller from Mailer’s own screenplay, aired on NBC in November. A Writers Guild arbitration awarded Mailer sole screen credit over an earlier script by Tracy Wynn (82.1a, 82.1b); Schiller chose Mailer’s version because, he said, “Norman gave me a better script about characters.” The film had premiered in September at the Deauville American Film Festival in France, with Rosanna Arquette, who played Gilmore’s girlfriend.
In late October and November Mailer showed his own films — Wild 90, Beyond the Law, and Maidstone — in Boston for the first time in a decade, sparring with audiences afterward (82.19a, 82.20, 82.21). In mid-November Empire Books published Mailer: A Biography (82.23) by Hilary Mills, the first book-length life of Mailer, valuable for its interviews with his wives and friends.
Ancient Evenings begins to surface
The Paris Review carried the first advance excerpt from the long-gestating Egyptian novel Ancient Evenings (82.24), a passage on the embalming process prefaced by an “Author’s Note” on the seven parts of the Egyptian soul — the first public glimpse of the book that would appear in 1983.
Related pages
- 1981 | 1983
- Pieces and Pontifications (82.16) | Mailer: A Biography (82.23) | Jack Henry Abbott | Richard Adan
- Introduction to In the Belly of the Beast (81.10) | The Essential Mailer (82.19)