Bibliofemme News
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30/04/2005
Mailer sells archive to The University of Texas
Norman Mailer has sold his archive to The University of Texas it was announced earlier this week.
The archive, containing manuscripts, typescripts, galleys and over 10,000 letters will arrive at the University's Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center in July.
Mailer whose works The Executioner's Songs and The Armies of the Night won Pulitzer Prizes, recalled being a young writer in the 1950's and said he might have been a blogger if there had been an Internet back then. "In the '50s, you couldn't get anything interesting published," he said.
The collection also includes unpublished works; screenplays, short stories and a novel, No Percentage, written when Mailer was a student at Harvard University. Also included are two stories - Adventures of Bob and Paul and The Martian Invasion - written when Mailer was 8 and 11, respectively.
There are also files from his accountants and lawyers and old report cards, tax returns and car repair bills. "What's going to come back to haunt me?" Mailer joked at a press conference.
Mailer's Executioner's Song was about the life and death of Gary Gilmore, who in 1977 became the first convict executed in the United States in a decade.
Mailer, who said he's working on a new novel but didn't disclose what it's about, said writers have a responsibility to raise public consciousness on issues.
"Novels are very important to the health of democracy," he said.
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