A Calculus at Heaven
A novella of Pacific combat, written for Robert Hillyer's English A-5 class in Mailer's senior year at Harvard and published in April 1944 in Edwin Seaver's anthology Cross-Section: A Collection of New American Writing (New York: L.B. Fischer) — Mailer's first book appearance and the dry run, in form and theme, for The Naked and the Dead.
Publication
Cross-Section: A Collection of New American Writing, edited by Edwin Seaver. New York: L.B. Fischer, April 1944, pages 317–53.
The novella was written for Robert Hillyer’s English A-5 class in Mailer’s senior year at Harvard. Its original working title, “The Foundation,” was drawn from a line in André Malraux’s Man’s Fate: “All that men are willing to die for, beyond self-interest, tends… to justify that fate by giving it a foundation in dignity”.
This was Mailer’s first book appearance — four years before The Naked and the Dead. He was twenty-one.
Relation to The Naked and the Dead
Mailer’s own retrospective note in Advertisements for Myself (59.13) says the novella “does make an interesting contrast to The Naked and the Dead” (48.2). The Pacific-combat subject matter, the multi-character structure, and the moral-philosophical ambition all anticipate NAD; the difference is that “A Calculus at Heaven” was written by a Harvard senior who had not yet been in the Army, whereas NAD was written after Mailer’s own service in the Philippines and Japan (see 1944, 1945).
Lennon also notes that Cross-Section (1944) was, through its Simon and Schuster successor volume, the same series that carried the advance NAD excerpt (48.1) in March 1948 — a four-year arc in one editor’s anthology from Mailer’s first book appearance to the advance preview of his debut novel.
Excerpt reprint: “The Captain” in The Artesian
Per Lennon 44.1, an excerpt titled “The Captain” was reprinted in The Artesian, “with Mailer, bearded, on the front cover. This quarterly was published in Ann Arbor, Mich., where John W. Aldridge, presumably, made the arrangement for publication. Aldridge, then a close friend of Mailer’s, taught at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor”.
Reprints
Per Lennon 44.1:
- The Artesian (Ann Arbor, Mich.) — excerpt titled “The Captain,” as above.
- Advertisements for Myself (59.13).
- 67.11.
- 82.19.
Related pages
- 1944 | The Greatest Thing in the World | Right Shoe on Left Foot | Maybe Next Year
- "The Naked and the Dead" (advance excerpt) | The Naked and the Dead
- Edwin Seaver | L.B. Fischer | John W. Aldridge | Harvard University
- Advertisements for Myself (59.13) | A Calculus at Heaven (44.1)