2006

Mailer, 83, publishes The Big Empty, a book of dialogues with his son John Buffalo Mailer, and gives the interviews surrounding it; a Tokyo interview carries the first public notice of his last completed novel, The Castle in the Forest, due in early 2007.

Norman Mailer, 2006

At eighty-three, in Provincetown, Mailer publishes a book of dialogues with his youngest son and works toward the novel that will be his last.

February

Nation Books publishes The Big Empty (06.2), a softcover collection of conversations between Mailer and John Buffalo Mailer on politics, sex, God, boxing, morality, myth, poker, and bad conscience, dedicated to Norris Church Mailer.

March

On 3 March the French ambassador to the United States, Jean-David Levitte, decorates Mailer — at eighty-three — as a Chevalier of the French Legion of Honor, the country’s highest distinction, “for [his] contribution to literature and for his ties to France.” Mailer recalls his postwar Sorbonne years and his love of a language he “never could master.” The reception and insignia ceremony was held at the Cultural Services of the French Embassy on Fifth Avenue.

Invitation to the Legion of Honor reception in honor of Norman Mailer, 3 March 2006

Spring

The book draws a run of interviews and conversations: the Nerve interview (06.3) with father and son, Howard Halle’s “Still Punching” in Time Out New York (06.4), the list-essay “The March of Progress” in The Nation (06.5), and Daniel Swift’s Financial Times piece (06.6). An ALSC keynote interview by J. Michael Lennon also appears in print this winter (06.1).

Fall

In a Tokyo Asahi Shimbun interview (06.7) Mailer warns of a flag-waving American totalitarianism — and gives the first public notice of his forthcoming novel, The Castle in the Forest (07.10), due in January 2007. In November he and John Buffalo appear together again in Sue Fox’s “Relative Values” (06.8). A German omnibus interview (06.10) also appears.

Also in 2006

Phyllis Silverman Ott-Toltz, the sister of Mailer’s first wife Beatrice Silverman, publishes the memoir Love Bade Me Welcome (06.9), discussing her early acquaintance with Mailer and their later affair.

The Norman Mailer Society

October 12–14 — The Norman Mailer Society holds its 4th annual conference in Provincetown, on the theme “The Political Norman Mailer.” Conference program (PDF).

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