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Photo courtesy Michael Lennon
Michael Lennon, founder of the Norman Mailer Society and his subject, Norman Mailer. |
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Mailer: a man of his words
By Sue Harrison
Banner Staff
Mailer the novelist is the focus of the fifth annual conference of the Norman Mailer Society, being held this Thursday through Sunday in Provincetown.
The society was co-founded by Michael Lennon, the authorized Mailer biographer. Lennon has a way with words, millions of words. He’s just finished turning 45,000 letters written by Norman Mailer (totaling over 20 million words) into a compact 700 letters which will be released soon in book form. But for now his attention is on the upcoming conference.
Most events will take place at the Provincetown Inn, 1 Commercial St., and most are limited to society members except the Friday and Saturday evening readings and literary house tour. Society membership is $30, $10 for students. Conference fee is $100 and provides entrance to a wide variety of talks, films, panel discussions, an art exhibit, meals and parties all Mailer inspired and themed.
“This year we are looking at Norman’s novels like “The Naked and the Dead” or “Harlot’s Ghost,” Lennon says by phone from his Provincetown home. He has just returned from New York where Mailer is recuperating from surgery on his lung that reportedly went well. Mailer was expected to be released from intensive care and moved into a private room midweek.
Lennon says that the conference this year has undergone some changes. The panel discussions have been shortened by limiting speakers to presenting shorter papers, allowing for more audience interaction during the Q&A following each paper.
On Thursday the conference kicks off with Michael Chaiken, director of film and new media at the Maysles Institute in New York, who will present an evening of Mailer on film and television.
Friday morning, Lennon will talk about Mailer and the contemporary novel followed by three other presentations and a roundtable discussion of Mailer’s novel “The Castle in the Forest.” The afternoon continues with discussions about “Castle” and then shifts to a second roundtable on culture, religion, Russian connections.
Provincetown Arts magazine publisher Chris Busa will lead a literary walking tour of Provincetown starting at 650 Commercial St. and making a large loop around to end at Berta Walker Gallery. The tour passes by homes or former homes of the Mailers, Michael Cunningham, Mary Oliver, John Reed, Eugene O’Neill, John Dos Passos, Susan Glaspell, Mary Heaton Vorse, the Provincetown Art Association, Fine Arts Work Center and studio of art colony founder Charles Hawthorne among others. It ends at the gallery when a reception for the art exhibition begins (see story this page).
Wilkes University Graduate Creative Writing Readers’ Theatre will hold readings at FAWC Friday evening (open to the public, free).
On Saturday, more roundtables looking at ideology and politics and “An American Dream” take place. Taylor Joy Mitchell will talk about American dreamers Norman Mailer and Amiri Baraka (who was just here for the Tennessee Williams Festival). There are many more topics scheduled as well.
On Saturday Lee Siegel, literary editor of The New Yorker, will give the keynote address and later there will be a reading of Mailer’s play “Earl and Lyndon” by New York actors Sam Coppola and Ed Setrakian at The Provincetown Theater, 238 Bradford. St. (open to public, $15). Mailer’s daughters Danielle and Maggie will then host a party at the Mailer home.
To join the society, go to the Provincetown Inn on Friday morning.
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Plenty of reasons to see ‘Reasons to Live’
Movie listings for Oct. 12-18
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Oct 11th, 2007