Letter to Mickey Knox
A long, intimate letter to his close friend Mickey Knox on Kennedy's death (ranked with Pearl Harbor and FDR's death), the Oswald–Ruby 'dull miserable mess,' and how the assassination turned The Presidential Papers into a 'curiosity.' Also catches up on the serial's third installment and mutual friends.
A long, candid letter to his close friend Mickey Knox, then abroad. Mailer describes the national mood after Kennedy’s death — women crying in the streets, seventy-two hours before the television — and ranks it with Pearl Harbor Day and the death of Roosevelt as events “having something profoundly in common.” He suspects no grand conspiracy behind Oswald and Ruby (“two lonely guys… a dull miserable mess”), mourns above all “a cultural loss,” and judges that The Presidential Papers, “a good book” while Kennedy lived, is now “just a curiosity.” The letter then ranges over the strain of the third installment (“like being an old pro and fighting an eight-round fight when you’re not in the best of shape”), the unsold “movie piece,” an old debt, and Roger Donoghue‘s wedding.