Lipton’s Journal

Mailer’s Quest for Wholeness and Renewal

Authors

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.68910/mq4f9k64

Keywords:

Lipton's Journal, psychoanalysis, jazz

Abstract

Norman Mailer kept a journal of self-analysis for approximately four months in the mid-`1950s. This record was called the Lipton’s Journal. It took a Jungian approach to analyze Mailer’s life and work and the ways in which they might be modified. Further, it records his discovery of jazz as an important pathway to artistic renewal. Mailer’s self-analysis through Lipton’s Journal was transformational and foundational and it would become the key to all his future work, beginning in the 1960s. Reading the journal, we witness both the how and the why of Mailer’s personal transformation.

Author Biography

  • Robert J. Begiebing, Southern New Hampshire University

    Robert J. Begiebing, Professor of English Emeritus at Southern New Hampshire University, is the author of eleven books, including fiction, criticism, memoir, collected journalism, and poetry. His fiction has been supported by the NH Council on the Arts, the Langum Prize for Historical Fiction, and by a Wallace Foundation Research Fellowship. In 2023, he received the Robert F. Lucid Award for Norman Mailer at 100.

The Mailer Review v.16: 20 Years of the Review

Downloads

Published

2026-11-04

Issue

Vol. 16 (2026): Special Edition: 20 Years of the Review

Section

II. Expanding the Archive: Intertexts, Sources, and the Recovery Project

How to Cite

Begiebing, Robert J. “Lipton’s Journal: Mailer’s Quest for Wholeness and Renewal”. The Mailer Review, vol. 16, no. 1, Nov. 2026, pp. 45–62, https://doi.org/10.68910/mq4f9k64.