Isaac Barnett "Barney" Mailer
Norman Mailer's father. Born in Lithuania on 18 January 1891 and raised in South Africa, he served in London during World War I before emigrating to the United States in 1919, married Fanny Schneider in Manhattan on 12 February 1922, and settled first in Long Branch, New Jersey and then in Brooklyn. Dies 12 October 1972.
Born in Lithuania in 1891, Isaac Barnett Mailer — known to family as Barney — grew up in South Africa, where his parents Benjamin and Celia had emigrated in 1890. He served in London during World War I and arrived in the United States in 1919, staying initially with his sister Anne and her husband, David Kessler.
Barney married Fan Schneider on 12 February 1922 in Manhattan. Their son Norman was born on 31 January 1923 in Long Branch, New Jersey; their daughter Barbara Jane on 6 April 1927. In fall 1928 the family moved from Long Branch to Cortelyou Road in Flatbush, Brooklyn; in January 1932 they moved to 555 Crown Street in Crown Heights — their home for the balance of Norman’s childhood.
Barney worked as an accountant. Lennon’s biography Norman Mailer: A Double Life (2013) describes him as a dapper and inveterate gambler whose debts weighed on the household through the Depression and after — a shaping fact of Norman’s Brooklyn childhood, though not directly pursued in the Days RTF entries used here.
Barney dies on 12 October 1972, in the year of Existential Errands and St. George and the Godfather — recorded in Lennon’s 1972 Days entry.
Related pages
- pre-1923 | 1923 | 1928 | 1932
- Fanny "Fan" Schneider Mailer | Barbara Jane Mailer
- Benjamin Mailer | Celia Schapochsik Mailer
- Long Branch, New Jersey