Statement for Class Record
Mailer's 157-word statement for the Harvard Class of 1943: Fifteenth Anniversary Report, summarizing his publishing from 1953 to 1958 — the source of a phrase he later corrected and glossed in Advertisements for Myself.
Statement for class record. In Harvard College, Class of 1943: Fifteenth Anniversary Report, 148. Cambridge: Harvard University.
Mailer’s 157-word statement summarizes his publishing activities from 1953 to 1958. He speaks of “the slapping [sic] of one’s creative rage by our most subtle and clear totalitarian time, politely called the time of conformity.” In the “First Advertisement for Myself,” the opening essay of Advertisements for Myself (59.13), Mailer notes that “slapping” should have read “sapping” and concludes that “what I was trying to say was simply, ‘The shits are killing us’”.
This is the third of Mailer’s Harvard class-record statements: 49.4 (1949), 53.5 (1953), 58.6 (this one), and 83.59 (1983).
Related pages
- 1958 | Harvard University | Statement for Class Record
- Advertisements for Myself (59.13) | Statement for Class Record (49.4) | Statement for Class Record (58.6)