Entangled Minds: Forty Years of Encountering Norman Mailer

IN 2004 AT THE INAUGURAL MEETING IN NEW YORK of the Norman Mailer Society, J. Michael Lennon kindly introduced me as early Mailer scholar. Since few in Mailer circles had heard from me in twenty years, I was pleased to find that several people actually remembered one of my three books on Mailer or the 1975 Partisan Review interview. Although in the dim past I had considered myself a Mailer scholar, when few of us existed, after changing careers a couple of times I lost touch with the field. My contact with Norman (as I had called him since our first meeting in 1972) since the mid-eighties was sporadic, more a function of my life changes than his. In recent years, through the magic of e-mail, I was able to stay in touch with him and Norris, and am grateful to Mike Lennon, the late Bob Lucid, Barry Leeds and others I knew in the old days for creating the Mailer Society and including me in its work. What is remarkable about the Society is how many of us have had long, fruitful relationships with Norman, his work, and his company of friends. Now that Norman has passed on, their stories will be told. Here is mine. In 1967 I became a PhD candidate in the English Department of a traditional Canadian university, there because of my then-husband's company transfer from New York to Toronto. The object of faculty comments about my unfortunate American degrees, I was determined to tough it out in a graduate school where women and specializing in American literature were anomalies. One day while browsing in the campus bookstore, I was drawn to a paperback with an intriguing title: Cannibals and Christians. After reading an excerpt or two, I bought the book. That was my first encounter with Norman Mailer, and he pushed back the limits of my mind almost immediately. I thought anyone who aimed at changing the consciousness of our time not only through his ideas but also his craft was worth a read. I've since learned of the quantum physics concept of entangled minds--fields of energy connected through conscious thought--and now recognize that my own entanglement with Norman Mailer began that day. Over the next year I read everything he had published. Then it was time to declare my dissertation topic. Needless to say, my faculty advisor was skeptical about the prospect of a study on Mailer. However, the departmental consensus, that one doesn't write about a living author, shifted a few weeks later when I announced my family's transfer back to the United States. At that point I think they figured I'd give up and fade away. Before leaving, however, I did manage to secure a professor's agreement to serve as dissertation supervisor if I could find a counterpart in an American university who knew enough about Mailer to critique the content of my writing. I was grateful to find Dr. Edward Mitchell at Ohio University, who not only served in that capacity but later recommended my much-revised dissertation to the Ohio U press for publication. By the end of 1971 I defended my work in front of a committee including an eighteenth-century scholar confused about why I had been allowed to write about such a controversial living author to begin with. Although I lived in Dayton, Ohio, at the time, I returned to Ontario to receive my doctorate in person, just to show that persistence paid off. Then the fun part began. With my new PhD in hand, I was hired as Assistant Professor of English at Wright State University in Dayton in the fall of 1972. That fall I learned that Norman Mailer was appearing at Ohio State University and I decided to attend. He was on the university lecture circuit in those days and clearly loved engaging the crowd. After his talk I waited to see if I could speak with him. Seizing the moment, I explained that I'd written my dissertation on his work and was interested in bringing him over to Wright State for a similar appearance. …

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