1994
A between-books year: Mailer researches his Lee Harvey Oswald book and looks for a publisher for his young-Picasso biography after leaving Random House over it. The year's most visible piece is his Esquire cover-story interview with Madonna, 'Like a Lady.' Otherwise he surfaces mainly in letters to editors — answering Pauline Kael, Garry Wills, and a challenge over Marilyn — and a memorial tribute to his late Provincetown friend Eddie Bonetti.
Nineteen-ninety-four was a between-books year, given to research on the Lee Harvey Oswald book — Oswald’s Tale: An American Mystery (95.16) — and to finding a home for his completed young-Picasso biography (95.38) after the standoff with John Richardson led him to leave Random House over it; by September New York was reporting why Random House would not publish it (94.8).
The year’s most visible work was his Esquire cover-story interview with Madonna, “Like a Lady” (94.7) — “Mailer on Madonna” — a wide-ranging talk on sex, AIDS, the media, and artistic growth. Otherwise Mailer surfaced mostly in letters to editors: answering Pauline Kael in The New Yorker (94.2, “You have to feel kinship with somebody to butt his head”), correcting Crescent Dragonwagon over the old Marilyn (73.30) plagiarism dispute (94.5), and rebuking Garry Wills — “For shame, Garry Wills. You sound like George Will” (94.6). He answered a one-word New York Times self-description poll with “Improvisational” (94.1), gave comments for Mikal Gilmore’s Shot in the Heart (94.3, on the Gary Gilmore story), and contributed a memorial tribute to his late Provincetown friend Eddie Bonetti (94.4).
Related pages
- 1993 | 1995
- “Like a Lady” | Madonna | Eddie Bonetti
- Oswald's Tale: An American Mystery (95.16) | Portrait of Picasso as a Young Man: An Interpretive Biography (95.38) | Marilyn: A Biography (73.30)