Pieces and Pontifications

Mailer's fifth miscellany, in two halves: Pieces, a gathering of short essays of the 1970s, and Pontifications, a selection of interviews edited with an introduction by J. Michael Lennon. Published by Little, Brown on 21 June 1982; dedicated 'For my sister, Barbara.'

Pieces and Pontifications first-edition jacket (Little, Brown, 1982)

Pieces and Pontifications, Mailer’s fifth miscellany, published by Little, Brown on 21 June 1982 ($20; 400 pp. in two parts). It collects two sides of his 1970s output: Pieces (208 pp.), short essays of the decade, and Pontifications (192 pp.), a selection of interviews edited with an introduction by J. Michael Lennon. Most of the interviews in Pontifications were trimmed by Mailer for the book. The dedication reads, “For my sister, Barbara.” Discarded titles included “After ‘The White Negro’” and “Sinking in the Seventies.” A number of the essays and interviews are reprinted in The Time of Our Time (98.7; see 76.15).

Mailer’s own gloss on the book’s two halves: here are “two sides of myself as I survived the Seventies — my literary ghost looking for that little refinement of one’s art which becomes essential as one grows older, and the cry of the street debater, front and center, who always speaks in the loudest voice.” Several of the year’s interviews and letters orbit the book — the Kakutani Times Book Review conversation on its publication (82.14), and reprints of earlier pieces gathered into Pontifications (e.g., 81.6, 81.7, 81.16, 81.23, 73.40).

The reviews split sharply. John Leonard (New York Times, 3 June 1982) and Michiko Kakutani (82.14) were admiring; Mark Feeney (Boston Globe) judged it “not Mailer’s best, but brilliant anyway.” Against these, Susan Brownmiller (Chicago Tribune) was mixed, and Stefan Kanfer’s Time notice (“Adrenaline and Flapdoodle,” 28 June) was hostile enough to draw a public complaint from Mailer that he had been quoted out of context (82.18).

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