Special Preface to the Bantam Edition
Mailer's special preface to the Bantam paperback edition of The Presidential Papers (63.37), May 1964 — the post-Kennedy-assassination preface foreshadowed by Mailer's December 1963 contribution to 'The Fate of the Union: Kennedy and After' (63.38). The same preface appears in the first British edition of 63.37 (André Deutsch, late April or early May 1964). The first American edition of 63.37 has a jacket photograph of Mailer in a J.F.K.-style rocker; the same picture is used on the cover of the Bantam edition, but the photograph has been altered to remove the rockers. Reprinted in 76.13 (the 1976 Berkley reprint). See 14.4.
“Special Preface to the Bantam Edition.” The Presidential Papers. New York: Bantam, May 1964, softcover, v–vii.
Mailer’s preface to the Bantam paperback edition of The Presidential Papers (63.37) — written in the aftermath of the Kennedy assassination (22 November 1963), and foreshadowed by Mailer’s December 1963 contribution to “The Fate of the Union: Kennedy and After” (63.38) in the New York Review of Books. The same preface appears in the first British edition of 63.37 (André Deutsch, late April or early May 1964).
The rocker removed
The first American edition of 63.37 has a jacket photograph of Mailer in a JFK-style rocker. The same picture is used on the cover of the Bantam paperback edition, but the photograph has been altered to remove the rockers — per the published Lennon Days (p. 354): “the photo on the jacket showing Mailer sitting in a J.F.K.-style rocking chair, designed before Kennedy’s assassination, is changed to eliminate the rocker when used on the cover of the 1964 paperback edition.” The “Special Preface” addresses the changed circumstances of reading the book after Dallas.
Rpt: 76.13 (the 1976 Berkley reprint of The Presidential Papers with a new Mailer preface; 64.15 is reprinted alongside the 1976 introduction).
Related pages
- 1964 | The Presidential Papers | The Fate of the Union: Kennedy and After
- Norman Mailer: JFK, Superman Comes to the Supermarket (14.4)
- Preface to The Presidential Papers (76.13) | Special Preface to the Bantam Edition (64.15)