With and Without my Dad, Norman Mailer - 92Y, New York
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continuing education

With and Without my Dad, Norman Mailer

Susan Mailer with J. Michael Lennon

As Norman Mailer's first born, Susan Mailer was a witness to her father’s growing fame, to the changes in his personality during the tumultuous 1960s, and to the arrival of her eight siblings from his five subsequent wives.

After her parents’ divorce in 1952, her mother moved from New York to Mexico, and Susan shuttled between the two countries, becoming bicultural and bilingual from an early age. She graduated from Barnard in 1971, and in her late twenties, married a Chilean economist who was exiled in Mexico. They moved to Chile in 1980 during Pinochet’s dictatorship, where Susan later became a psychoanalyst, a teacher, a mother, and grandmother. Her memoir moves with energy and flair as she describes both the pain and joy of shifting from one culture to another, culminating in her emergence from the shadow of her father’s rock star persona as she came into her own.

Susan Mailer and Norman Mailer’s authorized biographer, J. Michael Lennon, will explore her story, but also that of the five years she spent writing her memoir. They will discuss how her psychoanalytic training aided her comprehension of her father’s complex personality, and how delving into her past turned out to be a second analysis for her. They will examine the similarities and differences between the act of writing and practicing analysis. And also, how becoming a writer has helped her maintain a continuing dialogue with her father, after his death in 2007.

A book signing follows the event.

Susan Mailer

Susan Mailer, Norman Mailer’s first born, lived between New York and Mexico during her childhood and adolescence …

Susan Mailer

Susan Mailer, Norman Mailer’s first born, lived between New York and Mexico during her childhood and adolescence. She graduated from Barnard College in 1971 and moved to Chile with her husband in the early 1980’s, where she became a psychoanalyst. She has been visiting professor at the Catholic University, Universidad Andrés Bello and Universidad Alberto Hurtado, all based in Santiago, where she also has her private practice and supervises. Susan is a co-founder of the Psychoanalytic Association of Santiago and is a member of the International Psychoanalytic Association (IPA), and IARPP, International Association of Relational Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy. Her articles have been published in Latin American psychoanalytic journals and books, as well as in Psychoanalytic Dialogues in the USA. In 2013 she was the key-note speaker at The Norman Mailer Society conference. Since then she has actively participated in the conference events that take place every year and is a member of the Board. Her pieces have been published in the Norman Mailer Review.

Her memoir, In Another Place, With and Without my Father Norman Mailer, was recently published in November 2019 by Northampton House Press.

J. Michael Lennon

J. Michael Lennon is Norman Mailer's authorized biographer. In 2018, his edition of Mailer’s 1960s writing was published in two volumes by the Library of America …

J. Michael Lennon

J. Michael Lennon is Norman Mailer's authorized biographer. In 2018, his edition of Mailer’s 1960s writing was published in two volumes by the Library of America. His biography, Norman Mailer: A Double Life (2013), was chosen as an "Editors' Choice" book by the New York Times Book Review and was one of Amazon's top twenty nonfiction books of the year. In 2014 he edited Selected Letters of Norman Mailer. Other books include: Norman Mailer: Works and Days (2018), the recipient of a Choice Magazine award for "outstanding scholarly title"; and three edited volumes: Conversations with Norman Mailer (1988), The James Jones Reader (1991), and Mailer's The Spooky Art: Some Thoughts on Writing (2003). He is the past president of The Norman Mailer Society and serves as Chair of the Editorial Board of The Mailer Review. He is a regular reviewer Times Literary Supplement (London), where he has written on Didion, DeLillo, Vidal, and Muhammad Ali. His work has also appeared in New Yorker, Paris Review, NYRB, James Jones Literary Society Journal, Playboy, Creative Nonfiction, Hippocampus, Provincetown Arts, Chicago Tribune, Washington Post, New York, New England Review, and Journal of Modern Literature, among others. He co-authored Mailer's last book, On God: An Uncommon Conversation (2007), and in 2012, edited Mailer's biography of Marilyn Monroe, Norman Mailer/Bert Stern: Marilyn Monroe, for Taschen Books. He also edited the Taschen edition of Mailer's The Fight (2016), and contributed the introduction to the Taschen edition of Mailer's essay on JFK, "Superman Comes to the Supermarket" (2014). He was professor of English and executive director of the Institute of Public Affairs at the University of Illinois-Springfield from 1972-1992, and is Emeritus Vice-President for Academic Affairs and Emeritus Professor of English at Wilkes University. He continues to teach at Wilkes in the Maslow Family Graduate Program in Creative Writing, which he co-founded, and for The Mailer Center, and serves on the advisory boards of both, and also Etruscan Press. He served from 2005-2007 as a literary consultant at the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, University of Texas-Austin.

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