The Last Night
Mailer's apocalyptic short story — 'the concluding piece in Cannibals and Christians' — published in the same Esquire issue (December 1963) as the final Big Bite column (63.13). The nuclear-fantasy story was reworked in the 1990s by Mailer and his sixth wife Norris Church Mailer into an unpublished screenplay; the working title 'The Last Night / 1999' was set aside to avoid invidious comparison with Orwell's 1984. Reprinted in The Short Fiction of Norman Mailer (67.11), Pieces and Pontifications (82.19), 84.35.
“The Last Night.” Esquire, December 1963, 151, 274–80. Story.
Mailer’s apocalyptic short story — appearing in the same Esquire issue (December 1963) as the final Big Bite column (63.13). Per Lennon’s entry: “The concluding piece in Cannibals and Christians (66.11), Mailer’s nuclear fantasy was reworked into an unpublished screenplay by Mailer and his wife Norris Church. He once planned to call it ‘1999,’ but decided against it feeling comparisons with Orwell’s 1984 would be invidious.” The screenplay reworking falls in the 1990s and will be ingested separately when the project reaches the 1990s — the editor holds the screenplay itself.
Rpt: The Short Fiction of Norman Mailer (67.11), Pieces and Pontifications (82.19), 84.35.
Related pages
- 1963 | Esquire | Cannibals and Christians | The "Big Bite"
- The Short Fiction of Norman Mailer (67.11) | The Essential Mailer (82.19)