Ancient Evenings
Mailer's vast novel of ancient Egypt, eleven years in the writing (1972-1982), narrated across the seven parts of the Egyptian soul and centered on the four lives of Menenhetet. Published by Little, Brown on 4 April 1983 to his 'best and worst reviews'; the first volume of a planned but unfinished trilogy.
Ancient Evenings, Mailer’s novel of the Egypt of the Twentieth Dynasty, published by Little, Brown on 4 April 1983 (709 pp., $19.95; London: Macmillan, 26 May). Its composition dates, 1972–1982, are given on its last page — eleven years of work, the longest gestation of any Mailer book. The dedication reads, “To my daughters, to my sons, and to Norris,” and a copyright-page note records his appreciation to Ned Bradford, Roger Donald, Arthur Thornhill, Scott Meredith, and Judith McNally. The discarded title was Master of the Secret.
The novel is built, as Mailer explained, “on the notion that the Egyptians had of the soul. They believed that when you died, you died with seven spirits, pieces of the soul, and they all went to different places” — and it is told across seven books, narrated by the dead nobleman Menenhetet and his great-grandson through magic, reincarnation, buggery, battle, and the court of Ramses II. Mailer called it the book in which he “succeeded in creating a psychology that’s comprehensive and owes nothing to Freud,” and ranked it without modesty: “This is my best book, or I’ve been married to the wrong woman for 11 years” (83.10, 83.13). It received, he said, “my best and worst reviews.”
Ancient Evenings was conceived as the first volume of a trilogy — a second novel set in the future (“The Boat of Ra,” aboard a spaceship) and a third in the present (“Of Modern Times”) — neither of which was written.
This page is the hub for the 1983 Ancient Evenings coverage
The novel’s publication generated the largest body of coverage of any Mailer book of the decade, and the year’s register entries below all turn on it. They are recorded as rows in the 1983 bibliography, pointing here.
- The Lotos Club luncheon (28 January) with out-of-town book editors, reported across 83.2, 83.3, 83.4, 83.5, and 83.7 (Digby Diehl’s being “the last and best”).
- Advance excerpts: Paris Review (winter 1982, 82.24), House and Garden (83.9), Playboy (83.17, 83.28), and Vogue (83.29); the (London) Sunday Times excerpt (83.42); three chapters reprinted in The Time of Our Time (98.7).
- The major interviews: the Marie Brenner portrait (83.13), the Begiebing Harvard Magazine interview (83.10), Time’s cover-inset piece (83.21), George Plimpton in People (83.40), Eugene Kennedy (83.20), the Medwick “Style Is Character” interview (83.34), and the “most exhaustive” conversation, William F. Ryan’s in Virginia Country (83.51).
- The tour and reviews, from San Francisco (83.19, 83.32, 83.33) to the English promotion (83.42, 83.43, 83.44, 83.46) — “received my best and worst reviews.”
Related pages
- “Twelfth Round” (Begiebing interview) (83.10) | “Mailer Goes Egyptian” (83.13)
- Scott Meredith | Norris Church Mailer | Little, Brown and Company | Macmillan (London) | 1983
- The Time of Our Time (98.7) | Mailer on Moses (83.44)