2001
Mailer takes the stage as Ernest Hemingway in the touring dramatic dialogue 'Zelda, Scott and Ernest,' with George Plimpton and Norris Church Mailer. On 11 September he watches the World Trade Center attacks from Provincetown and gives an early, characteristically provocative response to the London Times. Wilkes University dedicates a Mailer Room. He writes a foreword for Thomas Roma's prison-court photographs and keeps working on the long novel that will become The Castle in the Forest.
On stage as Hemingway
Through 2001 Mailer toured a dramatic dialogue drawn from the letters of F. Scott Fitzgerald, Zelda Fitzgerald, and Ernest Hemingway — “Zelda, Scott and Ernest,” with George Plimpton as Fitzgerald, Norris Church Mailer as Zelda, and Mailer as Hemingway (01.3, 01.5; see 02.1). The role drew him back to a lifelong rival: “He changed the way in which we write … [but] what he lacks — all great writers lack something — is a certain charity of mind” (01.5). Plimpton recalled having once nearly arranged a Mailer–Hemingway meeting that Mailer prepared for by summoning “a rough tough guy” friend (01.3).
September 11
Watching the attacks unfold on television from Provincetown, Mailer gave the (London) Times one of the first writerly responses, “Ruin More Beautiful than the Building” (01.4): the towers had been “two huge buck teeth,” the ruin was “more beautiful than the building,” and — for all his rage at the terrorists — “we are going to be the most hated nation on earth.” The attacks would drive much of his late political writing.
Provincetown, Wilkes, and work in progress
In April Wilkes University dedicated a Mailer Room (and Mailer gave the Rosen Lecture there). He wrote a foreword to Thomas Roma’s Brooklyn-court photographs, Enduring Justice (01.8); sat for long interviews on his career, Norris’s novel, and the writing of violence (01.1, 01.2, 01.9); and let J. Michael Lennon edit his 1999 James Jones symposium remarks for print (01.6). His editor Jason Epstein remembered the young Mailer as “brilliant, difficult, dangerous” (01.7). All the while he kept at the long novel that would become The Castle in the Forest (07.10).
Related pages
- 2000 | 2002
- “Ruin More Beautiful than the Building” | Foreword to Enduring Justice | George Plimpton
- The Very Literate Are Different: Zelda, Scott and Ernest on Stage (02.1) | The Castle in the Forest (07.10)