Mailer Goes Egyptian
Marie Brenner's long, sympathetic New York magazine portrait of Mailer on the eve of Ancient Evenings, gathered during visits to his Brooklyn Heights apartment, with Norris Church Mailer also quoted.
“Mailer Goes Egyptian,” a long and sympathetic portrait by Marie Brenner in New York (28 March 1983), assembled from visits to Mailer’s Brooklyn Heights apartment on the eve of Ancient Evenings (83.18). Norris Church Mailer is also quoted. Brenner draws Mailer out at length on the novel; on his parents (“my father was an elegant, impoverished figure out of Chekhov”); on his Jewishness; on how he met Norris; on other writers (Lillian Ross, William Styron, John Updike, Ernest Hemingway); on the 1981–1982 Jack Abbott affair; and on the challenges of the professional writer’s life. A full transcription, reprinted by permission of Marie Brenner, is held at full text.