1996
A year of political journalism and tributes between books. Mailer covers the 1996 campaign in two long pieces — an Esquire essay-interview with Patrick Buchanan, 'Searching for Deliverance,' and 'War of the Oxymorons' on the conventions, his first appearance in George. He gives interview codas on Oswald and Picasso, writes centenary statements on Fitzgerald and Dos Passos, and is the subject of Barry Leeds's memoir 'Mailer and Me.' He appears at an American Writers event in Paris and receives a PEN Oakland award.
Political journalism
In a campaign year Mailer returned to political writing. Esquire ran his essay-interview with Patrick J. Buchanan, “Searching for Deliverance” (96.5, August, cover-billed “Armies of the Right”), on the shared populist roots of Right and Left; and in November George — John F. Kennedy Jr.’s magazine — published “War of the Oxymorons” (96.8), his nonfiction narrative of the Republican and Democratic conventions, his first appearance there.
Codas and tributes
Two interviews with Peter DePree in the Bloomsbury Review (96.2, 96.3) revisited the previous year’s books — Mailer recalling that he heard of Oswald‘s shooting while with George Plimpton, and of J.F.K.’s while with Norman Podhoretz. He contributed centenary statements on F. Scott Fitzgerald (“What would any of us have been without Fitzgerald?”, 96.6) and John Dos Passos, whose U.S.A. he called “the most successful portrait of America in the first half of the twentieth century” (96.9), an approving comment on William Burroughs (96.7), and a short French squib in praise of the flea market (96.1). The Mailer scholar Barry Leeds published the memoir “Mailer and Me” (96.4).
Honors and appearances
Mailer appeared at an American Writers event in Paris on 27 September alongside Richard Wilbur, and received a PEN Oakland / Josephine Miles award.
Related pages
- 1995 | 1997
- “Searching for Deliverance” (96.5) | “War of the Oxymorons” (96.8) | “Mailer and Me”