1985
Mailer spends the year as president of PEN American Center organizing and raising money for the 48th International PEN Congress, set for New York in January 1986 — a round of readings, the 'PEN Celebrations,' and a final public pairing with Gore Vidal in November. His mother, Fanny Schneider Mailer, dies on 28 August. He publishes his major craft essay 'The Hazards and Sources of Writing,' writes an introduction for his old friend John W. Aldridge, and is the subject of Peter Manso's oral biography Mailer: His Life and Times. He lets slip that he is at work on a long, secret novel — the future Harlot's Ghost.
Winter and spring — organizing the PEN Congress
Most of 1985 was given to Mailer’s work as president of PEN American Center, organizing and funding the 48th International PEN Congress set for New York, 12–18 January 1986. In February Publishers Weekly announced the plan (85.1): Mailer and PEN executive director Karen Kennerly would raise money by having sixteen American authors — Mailer, William Styron, Kurt Vonnegut, Saul Bellow, Woody Allen, Eudora Welty, William F. Buckley Jr., Joan Didion, John Irving, James Michener, Arthur Miller, Isaac Bashevis Singer, Susan Sontag, John Updike, Gore Vidal, and Tom Wolfe — read two at a time across eight evenings. The congress theme would be “the imagination of the writer and the imagination of the state,” with, Mailer insisted, “no invidious comparisons of governments.” The New York Times summarized the plan in March (85.2).
On 21 March he spoke at the University of North Dakota Writers Conference alongside Alex Haley, Amy Clampitt, and Jorie Graham, returning to a favorite refrain about The Executioner’s Song: “I realized God is a better novelist than the novelist” (85.3). In the summer the Michigan Quarterly Review published “The Hazards and Sources of Writing” (85.4), the expanded text of his 1984 Hopwood Lecture and, by Lennon’s estimate, his most important essay on his craft.
28 August — the death of his mother
28 August — Fanny Schneider Mailer, Mailer’s mother, died at 93. Born in Lithuania in 1891 and brought to America as an infant, she had been the fiercest believer in her son’s genius from his childhood in Long Branch and Brooklyn; her death removed the last of the parental generation.
Fall — the PEN Celebrations and the Vidal pairing
The autumn brought the fundraising “PEN Celebrations,” a series of readings building toward the congress. In September the Chicago Tribune previewed the forums and the final reading that would pair Mailer with Gore Vidal (85.4a). On 2 October Mailer led an American PEN press conference protesting what he called the “outrageous abuse” of an FBI search that seized the manuscript of the Puerto Rican writer Coqui Santaliz; he was joined by Rose Styron, Allen Ginsberg, and Frances FitzGerald (85.5). On 17 November he and Vidal appeared together at the final PEN Celebration — a deliberately undramatic burying of their old hatchet (85.6, 85.6a; Vidal, declining a Shaw reading, said, “They want to see us debate”). Three days later, on 20 November, Mailer received Lord & Taylor’s annual Rose Award for public accomplishment (85.7), the occasion of a wry exchange he repeated for the press: his wife reminded him, “You’re 62, and it’s not your birthday.” Year-end coverage praised his fundraising for the congress (85.8, 85.9), and to Edwin McDowell he revealed that he was “working on a long novel whose subject I would prefer to keep a secret” — the future Harlot’s Ghost (91.26).
Publications and notices
Beyond the essay, 1985 saw Mailer’s introduction to the Arbor House reissue of John W. Aldridge‘s After the Lost Generation (85.14); fine-press limited editions of the play A Fragment From Vietnam (85.11, Eurographica) and the essay Huckleberry Finn, Alive at 100 (85.12, Caliban Press); the poem “The Cathedral of St. Isaac in Leningrad” in Partisan Review (85.10); and reprinted interviews (Ruas, 85.15; Fishkin’s Yale seminar, 85.16). The year’s major secondary event was Peter Manso‘s oral biography Mailer: His Life and Times (85.13). In a lighter register, McCall’s named Mailer, at 62, one of “America’s Ten Sexiest Men Over 60” (October), alongside Cary Grant, Paul Newman, and Isaac Bashevis Singer.
Related pages
- 1984 | 1986
- PEN American Center | Fanny "Fan" Schneider Mailer | Mailer: His Life and Times | “The Hazards and Sources of Writing”
- Harlot's Ghost (91.26) | Introduction to After the Lost Generation (85.14) | A Fragment From Vietnam: A Play in One Act (85.11)