Mailer, Norman

Mailer, Norman	Gender: M
Birthname	Norman Kingsley Mailer
born on	31 January 1923 at 09:05 (= 09:05 AM )
Place	Long Branch, New Jersey, 40n18, 74w0
Timezone	EST h5w (is standard time)
	Rodden Rating C
	Collector: Rodden
Astrology data	10°42' 26°34 Asc. 24°52'

Norman Mailer
natal chart (Placidus)
natal chart English style (Equal houses)
natal chart with Whole Sign houses

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Norman Mailer

Biography

American novelist, journalist, poet, playwright, filmmaker, philosopher, lover and pugilist, considered a prodigious talent of the 20th century.

Mailer won the Pulitzer Prize for Literature for "Armies of the Night" in 1969 and "The Executioner's Song" in 1979. In the '50s and '60s, Mailer commanded respect from his publishers, literary critics and readers all over the world. By the '70s, he aroused much anger and controversy for baiting feminists, gays and people of color in public forums and in print. In the '80s and '90s, he had fallen out of fashion in the literary community.

Mailer was raised in a lower-middle class Jewish home. His father, Isaac Barnett Mailer, was an accountant who emigrated from South Africa to America via Great Britain. During the Great Depression, his father wandered around New York City looking for employment with his spats, walking cane and charming British accent. His mother, Fanny (Schneider) Mailer, supported the family by working as a secretary in a small fuel-oil business. Growing up in the household was rough for Norman and his sister Barbara. The family moved to Brooklyn when Norman was four. His parents fought hard in their stormy relationship. At an early age, Mailer became the apple of his parents' eyes. His mother and family expected great things from him. Feeling the pressure, Mailer excelled at P.S. 161 and Boys High School.

Mailer loved airplanes and dreamed of becoming an aeronautical engineer. In 1939, at the age of 16, Mailer entered Harvard University. He began his studies as an engineering major but the lure of writing became too strong. He started writing scores of short stories during his freshman year in college. Graduating from Harvard with an engineering degree, Mailer was inducted into the U.S. Army in 1943 during WWII. He went to the Pacific and served as an infantryman in the Philippines until the end of the war. Mailer participated in the U.S. occupation of Japan.

In May 1946, he was discharged from the U.S. Army and resettled in New York City. In fifteen months, he finished his book "The Naked and The Dead," published in 1948. The book was an immediate and critical success and Mailer began his fruitful writing career. Mailer's political philosophy grew closer to socialism and communism in the late 1940s. He became a member of the Progressive Party but later wrote "Barbary Shore," 1951, to air his disillusionment with Communism. In 1951, he moved to Greenwich Village in New York City and helped found the newspaper, "The Village Voice." In 1953, Mailer began writing a column for the paper. "The Deer Park" was published in 1955 with little critical or commercial success. In the 1960s, Mailer wrote a monthly column for Esquire magazine. In need of money, he wrote a monthly serial in Esquire magazine called "An American Dream." He wrote of the political climate in the late '60s with "Why are We in Vietnam," 1967 and "Miami and the Siege of Chicago" in 1968. His major acclaim occurred with the publication of "Armies of the Night" about his four-day anti-war protest in Washington D.C. He won the Pulitzer for non-fiction, Polk and National Book Award.

In June 1968, he ran an unsuccessful Democratic mayoral primary election campaign in New York City. In 1973, he wrote "Marilyn." His portrait of Gary Gilmore in "The Executioner's Song" earned him more critical acclaim and readers in 1979. Mailer went into films, acting in "Beyond the Law," 1968 and directing "Tough Guys Don't Dance" in 1987. In the '90s, Mailer turned out "Harlots' Ghost," 1991 about the CIA, "Oswald's Tale," 1995 and "The Time of Our Time" in 1998.

In 1944, Mailer married his first wife, Beatrice Silvermen and they produced a daughter Susan. He left her in 1951 and moved to Greenwich Village to start his paper. He married his second wife, Adele Morales in 1954, and she bore him two daughters. On 19 November 1960, Mailer repeatedly stabbed Adele with a pen knife at the end of an all-night party in their Manhattan apartment. She was seriously injured, and he was committed to Bellevue for observation. The doctors diagnosed the writer with a nervous breakdown and he was given a suspended sentence. Mailer considered this event key to his life. They divorced in 1962. He married his third wife that year, Lady Jean Campbell, and they had a daughter Kate. He married his fourth wife in 1963 and they had two sons. In 1975, he met an actress at a friend's home in Arkansas. He was so captivated by her beauty he had to leave the room. He married her in 1980 and Norris Mailer became his sixth wife, giving him his ninth child, John Buffalo, in 1978. Norris, raised as a Freewill Baptist, never swore and sparingly drank. Of his six wives, four were actresses. Of his nine children, five are actors or producers. Since 1957, Norman Mailer served on the Actors Studio board in New York City. He made his home in New York City and owned a Summer house on Cape Cod. The blue-eyed, white-haired stocky writer still stood with a massive neck and shoulders. He was a world champion talker who enjoyed expressing rapidly flowing sentences during his interviews.

In the 1950s, Mailer studied psychology and in 1959 he thought about becoming a psychoanalyst. It was at this time, Mailer experimented with orgone energy, peyote, mescaline, marijuana and "too much sex."

On feminism, he said, "Women sold out to the corporation. It was a middle-class revolution." On America: "Being American is like being married to a beautiful woman for 50 years and she gets worse and worse and worse-more selfish, stupid and benighted."

On progress: "I detest architecture, plastic, frozen food, political correctness and blind acceptance of the women's movement."

The author died of acute renal failure in New York on 10 November 2007. He was 84.

Link to Wikipedia biography

Relationships

associate relationship with Cameron, Angus (born 25 December 1908)

opponent/rival/enemy relationship with Henderson, Elmo (born 8 April 1935). Notes: Wrote a false statement about his mental health

parent->child relationship with Mailer, John Buffalo (born 16 April 1978)

spouse relationship with Mailer, Norris Church (born 31 January 1949)

role played of/by Houdini, Harry (born 24 March 1874). Notes: Mailer played Houdini in 1999 film "Cremaster 2"

Events

Social : Begin a program of study 1939 (Entered Harvard University)

Relationship : Marriage 1944 (First marriage)

Work : Published/ Exhibited/ Released 1948 (The Naked and the Dead)

Work : New Job June 1968 (Ran unsuccessfully for Mayor)
chart Placidus Equal_H.

Work : Prize 1969 (Pulitzer Prize)

Work : Published/ Exhibited/ Released 1979 (The Executioner's Song)

Relationship : Marriage 1980 (Sixth marriage)

Death by Disease 10 November 2007 (acute renal failure, age 84, in NY)
chart Placidus Equal_H.

Source Notes

B.C. in hand from Eugene Moore (Same in Contemporary Sidereal Horoscopes, Gauquelin Book of American Charts)

Al H. Morrison quotes him that his mom said he was born at 7:00 AM, and that she had changed the time later when the birth was recorded.

LMR quotes an article by Judy Klemesrud in the L.A. Herald Examiner of 29 April 1979 in which she interviewed Norris Church, Mailer's companion and mother of his eighth child who said "They were both born on January 31st, she in 1949 at 7:05 and he at 7:04."

The evidence is so impressive that in this case the birth certificate may be questionable.

Starkman rectified to 7.01.14 EST.

Sy Scholfield quotes from Norman Mailer: A Double Life by J. Michael Lennon (Simon and Schuster, 2014), page 13: "Dr. Slocum, the Schneider family physician, was summoned. A son was born at 7:04 a.m. on January 31, after Fan had been in labor for twelve hours... [at] Monmouth Memorial Hospital."

Mailer, Norman

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