11.13.07 9:59 AM CST
• Here at Playboy
• Christopher Napolitano
It’s difficult to contemplate the loss of Norman Mailer. He was invested in so many projects, had so many visions, that I pity his biographer—sifting through Mailer’s life will be a huge task. Just consider the Mailer-Playboy connection. There’s enough to it that a simple blog entry will only scratch the surface. The record: In 2004 I was asked to be on a panel during the inaugural meeting of the Norman Mailer Society (the society itself deserves its own blog entry). To prepare, I gathered some of Mailer’s major contributions to the magazine, beginning with his participation in two Playboy Panels (“a series of provocative conversations about subjects of interest on the contemporary scene”) in July 1961 and June 1962. Then came The Role of the Right Wing in January 1963, featuring dueling essayists Mailer and William F. Buckley, which then served as their opening statements for a public debate staged in Chicago and recorded for Part II (February 1963). October 1967 featured a memoir, The Crazy One, and in the January 1968 issue Mailer sat for the Playboy Interview. Mailer made two huge contributions to Playboy in the 1970s that most people will recognize, sandwiched around the publication of a more obscure but equally ambitious screenplay (Trial of the Warlock, December 1976). The first was published in May and June 1975: The Fight, an amazing account of the Ali-Foreman fight in Kinshasa. (Mailer does a great job of recounting the experience in When We Were Kings.) And in October, November and December of 1979, came the monumental serialization of The Executioner’s Song. Aside from an excerpt of Ancient Evenings in December 1988, Mailer and Playboy parted ways until the publication of the 50th anniversary of the magazine in January 2004.
As features editor at the time, I was privileged to work with Mailer on the piece (Immodest Proposals). Mailer articulated many of his emotional truths in the essay—from the cold horror of plastic to the foolhardiness of the U.S. invasion of Iraq. It was a blast to work with him. He’d set aside certain days for the editing, during which we’d volley faxes back and forth. He knew every trick—and that included how to bargain for more time (his agents were adroit at bargaining for more money) and more space. He got both, and the results anchored a stellar issue. Yes, there was intensity and sometimes anger, but I never felt personally attacked; it was his passion finding an outlet over the phone receiver. The truth is, Mailer was gracious and solicitous and charmed people easily. We published him twice since then, once in December of 2004 (Reflections on Courage, Morality and Sexual Pleasure by Norman Mailer and John Buffalo Mailer) and again in our current issue, On the Authority of the Senses by Norman Mailer and J. Michael Lennon (from the new book, On God). Any of those last three pieces will give a reader a taste of the way he thought, though I’m partial toward Immodest Proposals. And I can’t think of any better legacy for Mailer and Playboy than the heyday of the collaboration in the 1970s—then and now, the magazine was able to catch the man at one of his many peaks.
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