Maybe Next Year
Mailer's third Harvard Advocate story, June 1942; later reprinted in Donald Hall's Harvard Advocate Anthology (1950), in Advertisements for Myself (59.13), and in 67.11 and 82.19 — the most reprinted of the Harvard-era stories after 41.1.
Publication
The Harvard Advocate, June 1942, pages 25–27. By project convention, the volume citation follows the printed issue (Vol. CXXVIII); Lennon 42.2 gives “LXXVI.” See the note on the May 1942 companion page for the volume correction.
Composition and working title
A typescript of the story is held in the Norman Mailer Papers at the Harry Ransom Center, University of Texas at Austin. The folder-tab on the archival copy carries an archivist’s hand-written note: “First version called ‘Horror Tale: outmoded’ / ‘March 9, 1942’.” This gives the story a documented composition date roughly three months before its June Advocate appearance, and a discarded working title that reads as a wry authorial verdict on an earlier draft. The typescript is paginated 1–7 with a title page; the parents’ recurring shouting voices, which break into the boy’s narration throughout the story, are hand-underlined in the typescript.
A full-text transcription is deferred for the present pass.
Mailer on the story
When Mailer reprinted “Maybe Next Year” in Advertisements for Myself (59.13), he attached a retrospective note: “the prose is Salinger-ish, but the inspiration was by Faulkner”.
Reprints
Per Lennon 42.2:
- The Harvard Advocate Anthology, edited by Donald Hall (New York: Twayne, 1950).
- Advertisements for Myself (59.13).
- 67.11.
- 82.19.
(Cross-references to the 1967 and 1982 entries to be catalogued when those years are ingested.)
Related pages
- 1942 | The Greatest Thing in the World | Right Shoe on Left Foot
- The Harvard Advocate | Harvard University
- Maybe Next Year (42.2) | Advertisements for Myself (59.13)