In Another Place With and Without my Father Norman Mailer

by Susan Mailer

Norman Mailer, Susan Mailer's father, was among the most celebrated, talented, and controversial writers of the 20th Century. Notoriously combative and egotistical, her father enjoyed a good fight both physically and verbally. Whether cheered or booed, Mailer was front and center in America's cultural battles for more than 50 years. He married six times and was father to nine children. Susan, born in 1949, is the eldest.
Susan's parent's separated when she was a baby. She grew up shuttling between her mother's home in Mexico and New York. Later she would marry a Chilean activist, spending the majority of her adult life in Chile, where she is practicing psychoanalyst.
In Another Place tells the story of her intense and complex relationship with her father, her five stepmothers and nine siblings, and the joys and pains of being part of the large Mailer clan. It is a tale of separation, and of the rewards and struggles of living in two very different cultures. Of being someone who belongs everywhere and nowhere, always longing for a life In Another Place.

302 pages, Hardcover

First published November 5, 2019

Reviews

[Lisabet Sarai · Rating 5 out of 5]

I don’t usually read memoirs—in particular, the sensational and exploitative memoirs often penned by the children of celebrities. However, In Another Place was highly recommended by a close friend. Meanwhile, I’ve always found Norman Mailer intriguing. Brilliant author, legendary bad boy, respected intellectual and feminist whipping post, his influence still looms large over twentieth century culture. I will admit to being curious to see him through the eyes of his eldest daughter.

Susan Mailer’s memoir could hardly be further from those whining exposés I try to avoid. Rather, it is a delicately balanced, emotionally subtle account of the author’s complicated relationship with a father who clearly loved her but was not always successful in expressing this love, either in words or in deeds. The author avoids hysterics and hyperbole. Her account is dignified and restrained, even when she’s recounting severely traumatic events. Nevertheless, one closes the book with a strong sense of both Susan herself and her paradoxical parent. Her measured treatment does not mute the memoir’s powerful impact.

I suspect that this was difficult book to write. The awkward title encapsulates the problem. Ms. Mailer spent her childhood and teen years shuttling between two countries and two cultures: vibrant, sociable Mexico, where her mother lived and practiced medicine, and trendy, competitive New York, her father’s domain. Wherever she was, she felt the pull of her other life. Of course, children of divorced patterns often experience this sort of conflict. In her case, geographic distance and her father’s fame exacerbated the pain of the split. Hence the memoir’s subtitle. Including the name “Norman Mailer” is more than just a ploy to sell books. As the child of an acknowledged literary genius, Ms. Mailer felt special pressure to impress her father with her intelligence, her talent and her “guts”. At the same time, she was trying to find her way as an individual, to build a life in which she was more than just “Norman Mailer’s daughter”.

It took great courage for the author to revisit her psychologically turbulent early years as she does in this volume.

The book also explores the destructive effects of fame on private life and personal relationships. Norman Mailer, it appears, sometimes believed in his own myth. Propelled into the limelight before he was thirty by his best-selling debut novel The Naked and the Dead, he faced the problem of topping his own personal best. Ms. Mailer does not shy away from portraying his egotism as well as his insecurity. At the same time, she shows how sincere he could be, how charming, loving and generous, as well as diligent, almost driven, when it came to his writing.

In Another Place follows a linear trajectory in time, starting just before Susan’s birth and stretching to her father’s death in 2007. The book includes many of the well-known (and sometimes infamous) incidents in Mailer’s life: his stabbing of his second wife; his run for Mayor of New York; the ad-lib weekend making the experimental film “Maidstone”, including his violent brawl with co-star Rip Torn; the infamous Town Hall- “A Dialogue on Women’s Liberation” - where Mailer moderated, and baited, a panel of renowned feminists. However, Ms. Mailer also chronicles other, more private moments with her father: ski weekends in Vermont, bullfights in Mexico, late night conversations, angry tantrums, and memorably, fun- and love-filled visits at the “Big House” in Provincetown, where Norman Mailer played benevolent patriarch to his nine children and their offspring. The portrait that emerges is fascinating, nuanced and multi-faceted, enlightened by the author’s professional knowledge as a practicing psychoanalyst as well as by the insights and perspective that come with age.

The description above might suggest that this is a book about Norman Mailer, but in fact Susan herself is at the center of the tale. The memoir is an effort to put her own life in perspective, using the mirror of her relationship, to reconcile the fact that she will always be Norman Mailer’s daughter with the recognition that she is much more.

I have not said much about the writing. Ms. Mailer’s prose is crisp, concise and evocative. The structure of the book balances drama with history in a pleasing alternation. The author’s reminiscences do not shy away from negative emotion but are never self-indulgent.

In short, I was deeply impressed by this brave, honest, skillfully crafted work. Even if you’re generally not a fan of memoirs, I recommend it.

[Gerald Lucas · Rating 5 out of 5]

In Another Place is a great read, especially for those interested in Norman Mailer. While I think there is little to glean about Norman that an aficionado wouldn’t already know, you shouldn’t read this book for that. Read it instead for the story of a daughter’s relationship to her celebrity father and how that relationship displaces her life. Read it for how she learns to bridge that distance between herself and and her relationships, and more importantly how she is able to ultimately come to terms with herself and her own sense of belonging. Spoiler alert: while Norman explicitly charges Susan with keeping the family together — “This family, our family, is a fine tapestry. I want you to make sure it doesn’t unravel.” — it’s her time with the family that allows her to do that. For me, this is the one of the central messages of the book: the necessity of a strong, close community to make one feel human and needed.

Read this book. It is touching, heartbreaking, sober, subtle, and rich. It’s a multi-colored tapestry that tells the story of the redemptive power of family and community — of a daughter overcoming and even benefiting from physical and emotional distance throughout her life. It gives a new, personal perspective on public stories and shows a very human side to Norman Mailer the celebrity. Even without Norman, In Another Place would be compelling. With him, it’s a tale like no other.

[Robert Begiebing · Rating 5 out of 5]

Susan Mailer’s book is memoir of incredible honesty, providing a first time look into the Mailer family’s lives, especially Norman Mailer as husband and father. It’s all from the inside, I mean, in a way even the best biographer couldn’t replicate. It’s strange to someone who has looked for years at Mailer’s work from the standpoint of his professional life. And what’s more, Susan Mailer is the only child who was there through it all—all the wives and siblings, one after the other. So, there’s a sweep to it that no one else could provide, an inside story that makes a major contribution to Mailer studies.
Susan’s own story beyond her father is interesting in itself and unusual enough to generate interest for any reader. As most readers of memoirs can attest, one feels suddenly as if one knows the writer as a person much more than one could have known her otherwise. It takes guts to expose one’s own life so honestly and in such detail.

[Beth Browne · Rating 5 out of 5]

I was predisposed to like this book because I like memoirs and I love reading about writers writing. This is a writer writing about a writer writing, which is like the trifecta of memoirs for me. But, for some reason, I didn't have high expectations for the book either, I just wanted to read the story. The book pretty much blew me away, especially as I sobbed through the last few chapters. The best books give me what I call "a book hangover" in which I find it difficult to read another book afterwards because the story and characters of a book linger in my mind and I'm not quite ready to give up the vivid world the writer has woven for me. This book gave me a doozy of a book hangover.

It occurred to me as I read that the book is actually something of an autobiography and a biography of Norman Mailer and a memoir of the father-daughter relationship. It's the development of this relationship that is so skillfully done, with deep insight and raw honesty. I basically fell in love, both with Susan and her father and their crazy-big extended family so that at the end of Norman's life, I felt like I experienced the loss right alongside her. She had me hooked!

This is a beautifully written book and one I recommend very highly. I hope to see more from this very talented writer.

[Esther Amini · Rating 5 out of 5]

Open, honest, insightful and beautifully written.

[Raoul · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very personal memoir of Norman Mailer's eldest daughter. This had a somewhat more personal aspect as she married a Chilean and has lived in Chile for some years.

[John Marricco · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very enjoyable memoir.

[John Dalziel · Rating 5 out of 5]

With a knowledge of Susan Mailer's professional credentials, the reader could understandably come to her book with some expectation of an analytical exploration of her relationship with her father.

Instead, the book she has chosen to give us is a clear-eyed, lucidly written memoir in which she, as the first born of Norman Mailer's nine children, tells the story of her passage from a confused and emotionally insecure childhood, through potentially damaged adolescence and young womanhood to the non-judgmental maturity and acceptance that allows her to share the experience of a life "with and without" a parent whose first loyalty would always be to an ambition to which all other responsibilities seem to have been secondary.

Susan Mailer was born fourteen months after the publication of The Naked and The Dead and her father was, as he told more than one interviewer in the later years, experiencing the shift in identity that came with the exposure to such fame at the age of twenty-five.

While some years from declaring his ambition to create a revolution in the consciousness of his time, he was already on the threshold of a life in which his actions and behaviour would attract equal attention as his work did. He would late in life confess to Susan, " I wanted to have the freedom to live without a daughter or a wife," and though such selfishness of intent would not survive his pursuit of the existential life, resulting in six marriages and nine children, most of whom would at times be exposed to emotional and even physical danger by his proclivity for explorative risk taking, Susan would come to understand and be prepared to share his "essence": the imperative to write.

That imperative has produced a memoir that will be read not only by those with an interest in Norman Mailer; its honesty and sometimes under- stated subtleties should find empathy with an even wider audience. After all, unique and at times turbulent as her life has been, the details of which each reader is best left to discover, it is still an all too universal story of less than happy lives haphazardly shaped by imperfect parents, who themselves are not yet comfortable with their place in the world.

Even to his most ardent and long-time reader, Mailer could be disappointing and often embarrassing to defend and explain, but one constant was a, perhaps characteristically idiosyncratic, belief that a person with a talent for exceptional writing would be in possession of a character and potential which should be allowed entitlement outside what society regards as the norm. If it was a notion that on one occasion had tragic consequences,still, at this time, and in consideration of his conviction that we live more than one life, we can indulge the sentiment that wherever he is now, he will be proud that the one of his children he thought lacked artistic aspiration has written such a valuable and enriching memoir.

And remembering that he always had the grace to admit that he could be wrong, he would concede that his dislike of "page turners" is irrelevant in this instance. His daughter's book manages to bring honour to the term.

He might remind us that he knew all along: "Existentialism is the kind of philosophy that makes for legendary children."

John Dalziel

[Michele Golodetz · Rating 5 out of 5]

This beautiful memoir by Susan Mailer describes the impact of growing up under the shadow of her famous, temperamental, and loving father, Norman Mailer. “In Another Place” not only presents the journey of defining her identity away from her father, but also the subtle unease that living in many different countries had on her sense of where she belongs. The author takes the reader through her childhood of frequent moves between her mother’s home in Mexico City and her father’s in New York, the tumultuous decade of the 60’s, and her life in Chile, which began during Pinochet’s dictatorship. With the passage of time and experience she is able to move beyond hurt and resentment towards the self-absorption and imperfections of her parents, and place herself in their shoes with mature empathy as well as confidence in what she has become. What stands out above all else is Ms. Mailer’s resilience to painful changes. In spite of her father’s larger than life public persona, he raised a family of eight siblings, from six different wives, who loved their father and each other. “In Another Place” is a poignant, at times humorous, inspiring, moving memoir.

[BookTrib.com]

From a literary career that garnered two Pulitzer Prizes and a National Book Award to his infamous clashes with prominent members of the Women’s Liberation movement, Norman Mailer was among the most celebrated, talented and controversial writers of the 20th Century. Now, In Another Place (Northampton House Press), his daughter Susan Mailer tells the story of her “intense and complex” relationship with her father, her mother and her five stepmothers (as well as his numerous mistresses), along with the benefits and many drawbacks of being the eldest child of nine siblings.

A CHILD STANDING ASTRIDE TWO WORLDS
Susan was born a year after the publication of Norman’s The Naked and the Dead (1948), widely regarded as one of the finest literary works to come out of the World War II experience, and the bestseller that propelled him to fame at the age of 25.

Her parents separated soon after she was born, however. She grew up spending half or more of her year in Mexico with her mother and the remainder of her year in New York with her father. It is a tale of painful separation and divided loyalties, of the difficulties of navigating two cultures while feeling like “someone who belongs everywhere and nowhere.”

A “FAIR WEATHER FATHER”
Norman’s infamous machismo and egotism, contentiousness and, yes, violence are all on display. As the ultimate insider, Susan reveals a host of family dramas that, until now, remain unchronicled in Norman Mailer biographies. But even those that are better known—such as Norman’s knife assault on his second wife, Adele (a.k.a. “The Trouble”)—are given new perspective and treated with greater humanity through Susan’s eyes.

The rest of the review: https://booktrib.com/2019/11/in-anoth...

[alexander hicks · Rating 5 out of 5]

Susan Mailer has written a lively, warm, variously evocative memoir of her father Norman and the emotions attached to living both with him-- in early childhood, in her dad's later years and in between -- and without him -- in Mexico and Chile. Susan Mailer's memories of her generally warm but sometimes uneasy relations with her father are moving. Her recollections of experiences of some of Norman Mailer's colorful celebrity friend and acquaintances - Jose Torres and Woody Allen -- will amuse. The memoir of her first early years in Chile under the shadow of the Pinochet dictatorship adds memorably to the nuanced accounts we already have of the Pinochet years from the final chapter of Nobelist Pablo Neruda's "Memoirs" and Jose Donoso's "Curfew," especially by introducing the reader to the intricacies of a pro-Allende visitor from the land CIA intruders. Her memories of Norman Mailer family patriarch and the rich solidarity among his nine children with touch the heart in ways that readers unfamiliar with more Mailer's domestic life than a multitude of wives and a sensational event or two, warm in unexpected ways.

[M · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting memoir by the daughter of Norman Mailer, Susan. She is the oldest child of Mailer, a controversial and bestselling author. She details her life with her father as he became a famous writer, and married six women and fathered her eight brothers and sisters. Years of traumatic encounters with her father, she finally comes to terms with his faults and can accept him to be the person he is. She works with therapists and becomes a therapist herself and she works through the situations her parents put her in throughout her life. An interesting story of an famous writer and his demons.

[James Taylor · Rating 5 out of 5]

What's it like to grow up as the eldest daughter of Norman Mailer, a husband to six wives, father to nine children, and one of the greatest writers of the last century? Susan Mailer tells you in gorgeous prose and intimate detail. Rich in personal anecdotes, psychological insights (Ms. Mailer is a psychoanalyst), and often emotionally harrowing, the author weaves a written tapestry as complicated and splendid as the family she describes. Highly recommended.