I would have had a good deal easier life in academe if I'd specialized in one of the other authors in whose work I had an intense interest: Shakespeare, say, or Joan Didion, or Emily Dickinson. In 1965, when An American Dream was published, any critic could get a license for Mailer-bashing out of a vending machine on any street corner. When The Armies of the Night won both the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize, American Dream was suddenly declared a "contemporary classic," not merely by its publisher, but by many literary people who had been reviling it and its author. Yet Mailer could still, as Jimmy Breslin said, "get into trouble in a phone booth." When, in 1971, The Prisoner of Sex was published in Harpers (precipitating an editorial crisis which ultimately resulted in the resignations of the editor Willie Morris and much of his staff), Mailer again entered the realm of political incorrectness, which he's never really left. The reason is that he's fearless. He says and writes what he wants to, with no regard for consequences.

He was certainly growing larger in my consciousness. During the summer of 1963, I came very close to blows with an anti-semitic Mailer-reviler at a restaurant, although Mailer certainly didn't need me to defend him. A few years later, after I had taught at the University of Texas at El Paso and become friendly with every bartender in Juarez, I found myself in Athens, Ohio writing a doctoral dissertation on Mailer. I wrote to him again. He remained silent. Prodded once more, he indicated that planned meetings never went well, and that we'd meet spontaneously one day and have a drink, after the dissertation was done.

Well, I tried. In the summer of 1967, I finished the dissertation, got into my Mustang at 3:00 AM, and drove to Provincetown to find him. Thirty-four years later, after writing The Structured Vision of Norman Mailer and innumerable articles and letters, and after many meetings with Mailer, I'm still finding him.

So in late summer 1967, I left Brooklyn at 3:00 AM to visit Mailer spontaneously. Some hours later, with the midmorning sun beating on me and my adrenaline high wearing off, I pulled into the first gas station I saw, jumped out and started asking everybody, "Where's Norman Mailer?" Most bystanders looked at me blankly. Finally, one of the station attendants asked, "You mean that crazy writer fellow from New York?" and told me to drive down Commercial Street until I saw a white Corvette with New York plates. I ran back to my car, only to see the car he'd described pulling into the Howard Johnson's lot. It was jammed with kids, like a clown's circus car, and I astutely noted that the driver wasn't Mailer but a young woman, perhaps 18 years old. Conscious of the potential ironies of conclusion-jumping, I asked: "Do you happen to know the whereabouts of the famous writer, Norman Mailer?" Everybody laughed.

Reassured, I continued: "You're his kids, right?"

"No, I'm his secretary. These are his kids."

Mailer was away at a writers' conference. So much for spontaneity. So I followed the group into the restaurant (this was before the advent of anti-stalking laws), ordered the cheapest thing on the menu (french fries) and learned that despite my perception of myself as the foremost fan and expert on Mailer, I was still a jerk to everyone else.

Well, here I was, in my self-styled role as the primary devotee of (if not authority on) Mailer's works, and I'm told by this officious eighteen-year old woman, just out of her freshman year at Berkeley, whose job was babysitting and typing an occasional letter, that if I were to return on another occasion and approach the back door I might get a book signed. Not only that, but the advance copies of Why Are We in Vietnam? were in at the Provincetown bookstore. So I slipped away, spent my remaining gas and food money on a first edition of Vietnam (almost a decade between The Deer Park and American Dream, and now here's another novel barely two years after Dream), drove back to Brooklyn (the last few miles on fumes) and wrote another chapter.

In early 1968, Mailer read excerpts from the forthcoming Armies of the Night at Wesleyan. By now the dissertation was finished; I was a Ph.D., living and teaching in Connecticut. I drove over to Wesleyan and as he walked down the aisle to the stage, handed him a copy of the manuscript. I could see him leafing through it as others spoke. After his reading, I stood at the periphery of a group of academic questioners, not too unobtrusive in my jeans and cowboy boots. Finally, he looked me full in the eyes and said, "Do you have a question, or are you just gonna stand there?"

I didn't want to give him a bag of shit; I just wanted to shake his hand. So I stepped forward and said, "I don't want to give you a bag of shit. I just want to shake your hand." He looked at me more penetratingly. "What's your name?"

I told him.

"Did you write this?"

I admitted it.

"Let me borrow it for a month or so, okay? You seem to be the only guy who knows what I'm up to in An American Dream."

Subsequently, Mailer sent the manuscript back with some gracious comments. Among other things, he wrote:

I . . . did think your stuff on The Naked and the Dead was the best and most interesting criticism that I've read on the book and in fact gave me the desire to go back and read it again. . . . And your stuff on An American Dream was generally very good. If the rest of the book is up to what I saw you've not only a good thesis, but an exciting career ahead as a critic if that should continue to interest you. (30 July 1968)