2007

Mailer publishes his last completed novel, The Castle in the Forest, in January — the young Hitler narrated by a minion of the Devil — and gives dozens of interviews around it; in October the conversation-book On God appears. He makes his last public appearance on 22 July and dies in New York on 10 November 2007, aged 84.

Norman Mailer, 2007

Mailer’s last year: a final novel, a last book of conversations, an extraordinary run of interviews, and, in November, his death.

January — The Castle in the Forest

On 23 January Random House publishes The Castle in the Forest (07.10), Mailer’s last completed novel — the boyhood of Adolf Hitler narrated by Dieter, a minion of the Devil, dedicated to his grandchildren. An advance excerpt, “The Boy and the Bees” (07.1), and Tom Junod’s Esquire profile “The Last Man Standing” (07.2) precede it. The novel — and Mailer’s claim that “the Devil was present at the conception of Hitler” as God was at the conception of Jesus — sets off an enormous press response through the winter (07.3–07.30): on Hitler and evil, the “incestuary” theme, the unconscious, and his renewed feud with the New York Times critic Michiko Kakutani.

Spring

April 23 — At the Paris Review’s Revel 2007 gala (Puck Building, New York), Mailer is honored with the magazine’s Hadada Award for lifetime achievement, presented by E. L. Doctorow, with an onstage interview by editor Philip Gourevitch and a salute from Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg (07.26): “A novel is history.” The summer Paris Review carries the major omnibus interview “The Art of Fiction, No. 193” (07.31) and pages from his Ransom Center archive (07.32). In May he reads at Syracuse with his son John Buffalo Mailer (07.27).

Summer — last appearances

On 22 July, at Lincoln Center’s Walter Reade Theater, Mailer is interviewed before a screening of Maidstone — his last public appearance (07.37). On 28 July he appears at the New York Public Library with Günter Grass, publicly defending Grass over his belated Waffen-SS revelation and searching his own past in turn (07.33, 07.35).

Autumn — On God

On 16 October Random House publishes On God: An Uncommon Conversation (07.39), ten conversations between Mailer and J. Michael Lennon recorded in Provincetown, 2003–2006, with the New York cover excerpt “The Rise of Mailerism” (07.38). The Mailer Review prints two early archival pieces: the 1942 Naked and the Dead play (07.45) and sixteen Deer Park letters (07.46).

October — the Society conference

October 11–14 — The Norman Mailer Society holds its 5th annual conference in Provincetown, on the theme “Mailer the Novelist” — the last to convene during Mailer’s lifetime; he died less than a month later. Conference program (PDF).

November — death

Norman Mailer died of acute renal failure at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York on 10 November 2007, aged 84. Robert McCrum’s Observer essay-interview “The Author at Home” (07.41) appeared the day after; Andrew O’Hagan’s “The Lion in Winter: Five Snapshots” (07.42) followed. He had named Yeats’s “The Second Coming” his favorite poem: “There is something wrong, something unbalanced about this century.”

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Lois Mayfield Wilson

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