Mailer Family Establishing Writer's Colony at Late Author's Home in Provincetown, MA
Members of Norman Mailer's family are in the process of developing a new writer's colony based at Mailer's longtime home in Provincetown, Massachusetts, it was announced at Carnegie Hall this evening at the end of a memorial ceremony in honor of the late writer.
Lawrence Schiller, who collaborated with Mailer on a number of books and counted him among his closest friends, said that an advisory board, consisting of Günter Grass, Joan Didion, William Kennedy, and Doris Kearns Goodwin, has been formed.
"Distinguished scholars in residence will be invited to assist those who have been selected for fellowships at the college level," Mr. Schiller said, noting that several universities have already expressed interest in partnering with the colony.
Sam Radin, Mailer's first cousin and the executor and trustee of his Estate, said that the colony (which will be called the Norman Mailer Writer's Colony) will be "anchored around" Mailer's home, where he and his wife Norris Church lived and worked for many years. "His writing studio will be preserved exactly as he left it," Mr. Radin said.
Mailer died in November at the age of 84.
Though I enjoy Mailer as a commentator and celebrity and a figure of notoriety, it's good to read about him as a writer for a change.
Michael Palin's documentary about Hemingway got better with a visit to Hemingway's former home in Cuba, where his writing room (with a half-read Naked and the Dead on the shelf)is preserved in the way planned here for Mailer's room, so this all sounds great.
At one time in Brooklyn, according to either Hilary Mills or Peter Manso, Mailer had a writing room you had to climb a rope ladder to get to. (This was maybe his version of the bridge Hemingway crossed to his study in Key West.) (That said, only people who have not read them carefully say Mailer and Hemingway are similar as writers.)