1991
On 2 October Random House publishes Harlot's Ghost, Mailer's 1,310-page novel of the CIA — his longest book, ending 'TO BE CONTINUED' — to a vast, divided press and a public feud with the critic John Simon. The novel reaches the bestseller lists, and on 13 November Governor Cuomo names Mailer the first New York State Author. Mailer becomes writer-at-large at Vanity Fair (a review of American Psycho, a Gulf War essay), and Carl Rollyson publishes the third Mailer biography.
Vanity Fair, and the road to publication
Early in 1991 Mailer became writer-at-large at Vanity Fair, announced in his March review of Bret Easton Ellis’s American Psycho, “Children of the Pied Piper” (91.1); in May he published the Gulf War essay “How the Wimp Won the War” (91.2). Through the summer and fall Harlot’s Ghost arrived in pieces — three excerpts in Rolling Stone (91.4–91.6), and others in the Paris Review, Partisan Review, New York, the New York Review of Books, and the New York Times Book Review — and Mailer gave a long sequence of interviews, among them Scott Spencer’s New York Times Magazine cover piece “The Old Man and the Novel” (91.10), J. Michael Lennon‘s “Mailer’s America” (91.17), and Christopher Hitchens‘s “Stormin’ Norman” (91.25).
2 October — Harlot’s Ghost
2 October — Random House published Harlot’s Ghost (91.26), 1,310 pages at $30, dedicated to Jason Epstein and ending “TO BE CONTINUED.” The reviews were enormous and split — Burgess, Koenig, Hitchens, Rushdie, and Sheed for; Menand and (in 1992) Kazin against — and the loudest noise came from Mailer’s feud with John Simon, whose front-page New York Times Book Review pan he answered with a 1,500-word rebuttal (91.48). The promised sequel, Harlot’s Grave, never came.
Honors and a third biography
The novel reached the bestseller lists nationwide, and on 13 November Governor Mario Cuomo named Mailer the first New York State Author, with a $10,000 prize (the poet Audre Lorde was named State Poet the same day; 91.44, 91.47, 91.47a). The year also brought the third book-length biography, Carl Rollyson‘s The Lives of Norman Mailer (91.22), and word that Mailer hoped next to finish “a short, interpretive biography” of Picasso (95.38) before turning to the Harlot’s Ghost sequel.
Related pages
- 1990 | 1992
- Harlot’s Ghost (91.26) | The Lives of Norman Mailer | “Children of the Pied Piper” | John Simon
- How the Wimp Won the War (91.2) | Stormin' Norman (91.25) | Portrait of Picasso as a Young Man: An Interpretive Biography (95.38)