Norman Mailer: Works and Days

Massachusetts vs. Mailer

Dwight Macdonald's New Yorker essay on Mailer's brush with the Provincetown police — the most considered account of the summer's drunkenness arrest.

“Massachusetts vs. Mailer.” Article by Dwight Macdonald. New Yorker, 8 October 1960, 154, 156, 158, 160–66.

Macdonald’s account of Mailer’s Provincetown arrest and acquittal was reprinted in Norman Mailer: The Man and His Work, edited by Robert F. Lucid (Boston: Little, Brown, 1971), and in Macdonald’s own collection Discriminations: Essays and Afterthoughts, with an introduction by Norman Mailer (New York: Grossman, 1985) — the latter restoring the conclusion the New Yorker had excised, which had also been cut from the first (1974) edition of Discriminations.

First published: 1960-10-08
Form: essay
Lennon & Lennon: 60.8
Cite as: /works/1960-10-08-massachusetts-vs-mailer
Last updated: 2026-05-25