Letter to Eiichi Yamanishi (16 October 1963)
To his Japanese translator: The Presidential Papers is about to appear, and Mailer is at work on a serial novel for Esquire into which he is even considering folding the second Patterson–Liston fight. He floats the idea of a Japanese magazine running the installments month by month.
Writing in haste to his longtime Japanese translator Eiichi Yamanishi, Mailer reports that copies of The Presidential Papers are two weeks off and that he has left instructions at Putnam’s to send Yamanishi one of the first. He describes the new project — an 80,000-word “short novel” to run in 10,000-word monthly installments in Esquire — and, tellingly of how open-ended his plan still was, says he is “thinking of incorporating the second [Patterson–Liston] fight” into it. He cites the $125,000 advance (from Dial and Dell, not Esquire) partly so Yamanishi might command a higher price from a Japanese magazine interested in the serial.
Related pages
- Norman Mailer's Letters on An American Dream, 1963–1969 | Eiichi Yamanishi | The Presidential Papers | An American Dream