Carnegie Hall
The Manhattan concert hall where Mailer gave a four-part public reading on 31 May 1963, describing himself as 'the closest a middle-aged man can get to being a bullfighter.'
Carnegie Hall — the West 57th Street concert hall in Manhattan, opened 1891 — was the site of Mailer’s 31 May 1963 public reading, a four-part event (poems from Deaths for the Ladies; selected prose; a question-and-answer session; and remarks on what Mailer at the time was calling “an existential evening”) covered by four contemporary press accounts and which Mailer would later describe to a New York Post reporter as “the closest a middle-aged man can get to being a bullfighter” (63.31a).
The four contemporary accounts are:
- “The Novelist Comes to Carnegie Hall” — Millicent Brower‘s pre-event interview in the Village Voice of 30 May (63.29);
- “Carnegie Hall Audience Listens to Norman Mailer’s Thoughts” — Brian O’Doherty’s account in the New York Times of 1 June (63.30);
- “Existential Leader or Just Another Reader?” — Darryl Henriques’s more extensive coverage in the Brooklyn Heights Press of 6 June (63.31);
- “Norman Mailer at Carnegie Hall” — Ralph Blumenfield’s New York Post account of 1 June (63.31a).
The reading falls between Mailer’s January 1963 Big Bite and Responses and Reactions column launches and the November 1963 publication of The Presidential Papers. Carnegie Hall will recur in Mailer’s life as the venue for several later public events.
Related pages
- 1963 | The Novelist Comes to Carnegie Hall | Carnegie Hall Audience Listens to Norman Mailer's Thoughts | Existential Leader or Just Another Reader? | Norman Mailer at Carnegie Hall