Chapter One

LIT BIZ

I am tempted to call this section Economics, for it concerns the loss
and gain (economically, psychically, physically) of living as a writer.
Let’s settle, however, for a term that may be closer to the everyday
reality: Lit Biz. Spend your working life as a writer and depend on
it–your income, your spirit, and your liver are all on close terms with
Lit Biz.

In 1963, Steve Marcus did an interview with me for The Paris Review, and
I have taken the liberty of separating his careful and elegantly
structured questions into several parts in order to give a quick shape
to my first years as a writer. For those who are more interested in what
I have to say about writing in general than about myself in particular,
you are invited to skip over these autobiographical details and move on
to a few comments on my first two books, The Naked and the Dead and
Barbary Shore. Or, if you are in search of directly useful nitty-gritty,
move even further, to “The Last Draft of The Deer Park.”

steven marcus: Do you need any particular environment in which to write?

norman mailer: I like a room with a view, preferably a long view. I like
looking at the sea, or ships, or anything which has a vista to it. Oddly
enough, I’ve never worked in the mountains.

sm: When did you first think of becoming a writer?

nm: That’s hard to answer. I did a lot of writing when I was young.

sm: How young?

nm: Seven.

sm: A real novel?

nm: Well, it was a science fiction novel about people on Earth taking a
rocket ship to M