Twelfth Round: An Interview with Norman Mailer
Robert Begiebing's Harvard Magazine interview, which Lennon calls one of the three or four most important Mailer ever gave: the best on his Harvard years, with comment on all aspects of his career and at length on Ancient Evenings.
“Twelfth Round: An Interview with Norman Mailer,” by Robert Begiebing in Harvard Magazine (85, March–April 1983, with a cover photograph of Mailer) — one of “the three or four most important interviews Mailer has given,” and on the subject of his Harvard years the best of all, with notably interesting remarks on the Harvard Advocate (see 41.1, 75.14, 77.2). Mailer comments on every phase of his career and at length on the forthcoming Ancient Evenings (83.18), closing with an anecdote about Ralph Ellison, with whom he attended a 1959 conference in Iowa (see 59.15–59.18). Reprinted in Conversations with Norman Mailer (88.6); collected by Begiebing in The Territory Around Us (2015). A full transcription, reprinted by Begiebing’s permission, is held at full text.
Related pages
- Robert Begiebing | Ancient Evenings (83.18) | 1983
- The Greatest Thing in the World (41.1) | Preface to Fiction Writer's Handbook (75.14) | Our Man at Harvard (77.2) | 2 Symposium Authors Say Write for Elite, Not Masses (59.15) | Eggheads in the Tall Corn (59.18) | Conversations with Norman Mailer (88.6)