The Ordeal of Norman Mailer
Gerald Walker's long 1961 profile of Mailer, built on interviews conducted in the weeks after the November 1960 stabbing of Adele — a vivid contemporary account of the arrest, the Bellevue commitment, the disrupted 92nd Street Y reading, and Mailer's philosophy of violence and Hip. An about-Mailer profile; full text held (rights and venue pending).
Read an excerpt (rights pending)
Gerald Walker. “The Ordeal of Norman Mailer.” Magazine title to confirm, June 1961.
A long profile drawn from interviews Walker conducted with Mailer in the weeks after the 21 November 1960 stabbing of Adele. It opens with the two “strangely related conversations” of that day — Mailer’s Mike Wallace taping (on his planned run for mayor and his wish “to attempt an entrance into the mystery of murder”) and Adele’s hospital statement to a detective — then narrates the arrest, the Bellevue commitment (“It’s merely for observation”), the Birdland and Provincetown scrapes, the curtain-dropping at the 92nd Street Y reading, and Mailer’s defenses of his philosophy of violence and Hip (with long quotation from “The White Negro”). Walker’s refrain — Mailer’s many voices — frames a man who “makes himself up.” Full text on the full-text page (rights pending).