Norman Mailer: The Prisoner of Celebrity
Mark Bowden's interview in the Philadelphia Inquirer Magazine, 2 December 1984 — the last of the reports built on the May Random House launch dinner and a later news conference. Valuable for Mailer's fullest statement on his refusal to plot a book in advance.
“Norman Mailer: The Prisoner of Celebrity,” Mark Bowden’s article-interview, appeared in the Philadelphia Inquirer Magazine on 2 December 1984 (40–44) — by Lennon’s reckoning the last and most reflective of the many reports built on the May Random House dinner that launched Tough Guys Don’t Dance (84.17) and on a later news conference at Random House, by which time the novel had climbed to the middle of most bestseller lists (see 84.5, 84.6, 84.8). The piece is valuable for Mailer’s long statement on his lifelong refusal to outline: knowing a book’s plot in advance, he said, “would be like being married to someone whose every habit you knew.” Bowden, then a Philadelphia Inquirer staff writer, would later become the author of Black Hawk Down.