That;s neat, Barry. My brother had the paperbacks, & in our Grade 8
class, we had a library hour once a week, when we had to read (ha: I
was reading all the time), so one week I had From Here to Eternity, &
the next The Naked and the Dead.
Quite a bit later, I guess I was in university by then, I read The Deer
Park, which I thought really interesting despite the reviews....
But it's been quite awhile since I picked up a new Mailer....
Though I did read Advertisements, & Death for the Ladies (fun, but not
what I thought of as really 'poetry'....)
Doug
On 16-Nov-07, at 8:04 AM, Barry Alpert wrote:
> I feel lucky that a very sophisticated 11th grade English teacher,
> William
> Teunis, introduced me at age 16 to Norman Mailer's writing by allowing
> for
> the possibility of writing a book report on "The Naked & The Dead",
> though
> in retrospect I'd say that I was more attracted to "Advertisements For
> Myself" which I read on my own shortly afterwards. What I must have
> intuited was Mailer's performative strengths. For a very long period
> after
> that exposure, I was frustrated by my inability to witness Maileer
> perform
> in public, though I did witness numerous "literary peerformances" in
> real
> life by the novelist Stanley Elkin on the campus of Washington
> University
> in St. Louis. All I could conclude was that Mailer didn't give
> readings at
> universities or go on book tours. Finally, that seemed to change,
> perhaps
> in the nineties, & I was able to catch 4-5 performances and establish a
> cordial relationship with him.
>
> I should add that Mailer did publish a book of poems at the end of
> what is
> sometimes termed the "first period" of his career, Death For The Ladies
> (And Other Disasters) NY: Putnam's, 1962.
>
>
Douglas Barbour
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we are responsible for what they do.
Paul Goodman
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