A Fire on the Moon
The first of Mailer's three Life installments on the Apollo 11 moon landing, later reordered into Of a Fire on the Moon (1971). At 26,000 words, billed by Life as the longest nonfiction piece it had ever run in one issue. Mailer's first of five pieces for Life; cover photograph of Mailer.
“A Fire on the Moon” (Life, 29 August 1969, 24–41; cover photograph of Mailer) is the first of a three-part series on the 1969 Apollo 11 moon shot — the beginning of what becomes, with much reordering, Of a Fire on the Moon (71.1). It is the first of five pieces Mailer would write for Life.
Per Ralph Graves’s “Editor’s Note: Norman Mailer at the Typewriter,” this first installment of 26,000 words is “the longest non-fiction piece Life has ever published in one issue.” Graves quotes Mailer on the scale: “I can’t write anything in 5,000 words, and 10,000 words is just for poker money.”
Related pages
- 1969 | The Psychology of Astronauts | Of a Fire on the Moon
- The Psychology of Astronauts (69.83) | A Dream of the Future's Face (70.1)