David H. Light
Retired high-school principal and Mailer collector; a founder of the Norman Mailer Society and its treasurer from the 2003 founding until 2017, afterward a continuing Board member.
David H. Light was one of the founders of the Norman Mailer Society and its treasurer for its first fifteen years. A career educator, he spent thirty-eight years in high-school education, thirty of them as a principal, and he kept a large collection of Mailer’s books and magazines (contributor note, The Mailer Review 2, 2008). At the 2005 conference he was billed as principal of Scituate High School, speaking on “Collecting Mailer” (2005 conference).
Founding and treasury
In his tribute for The Mailer Review’s 2008 memorial issue, “From a Novelist in Waiting,” Light traced his Mailer reading from The Naked and the Dead in seventh grade (1961) through Marilyn, a 1973 anniversary gift, and recalled first meeting Mailer at a Boston signing for The Gospel According to the Son in April 1997. After that, he wrote, he joined J. Michael Lennon, Barry Leeds, and John Whalen-Bridge in creating the Society (Bibliography 2008). At the founding meeting, held on 22 May 2003 at the American Literature Association conference in Cambridge, Massachusetts, Leeds’s slate named Light interim treasurer (minutes). He gave the treasurer’s report at the 2003 inaugural conference in Brooklyn and at the business meetings that followed.
The sources tell the founding a little differently. In the 2008 tribute the founders are Light, Lennon, Leeds, and Whalen-Bridge. In a 2017 letter to members Light adds Robert Lucid and places the meeting “in Boston” (A Message from David Light). The minutes record a meeting of twelve people in Cambridge.
Light was elected to a full term as treasurer in 2007. At that meeting Lennon gave him a signed photograph of Mailer in thanks for his work (2007 minutes). He also took on much of the Society’s conference logistics. Lennon called him “the maestro” of the 2008 Provincetown conference (2008 conference). He served on the planning committee for the 2009 Washington conference, arranged the hotel rooms for the 2011 joint meeting with the James Jones Society in Austin, and wrote the members’ letters for the 2015 and 2016 conferences. In 2012 he proposed that the 2013 meeting, held for Mailer’s ninetieth birthday, go to Wilkes University (2012 minutes). His 2014 summary of accounts showed the Society’s balance falling from $95,291.63 in 2008 to $49,484.62, mostly because of its share of the cost of printing The Mailer Review. He then moved that the Review stay in print for 2015 on the understanding that later printed volumes would need new funding (2014 Executive Board minutes).
He gave his last treasurer’s report in October 2017, “after serving in that capacity since the Society’s inception,” and Jason Mosser succeeded him (2017 minutes). Light stayed on the Executive Board; he was re-elected in 2019 (2019 minutes), and the Society’s website still lists him as a Board member.
Related pages
- Norman Mailer Society | J. Michael Lennon | Barry H. Leeds | John Whalen-Bridge | 2003 | Bibliography 2008