A Note on “The Collision,” Norman Mailer’s First Short Story

Authors

  • J. Michael Lennon Wilkes University Author

Keywords:

“The Collision”, juvenilia, Brooklyn, Crown Heights, “The Martian Invasion”, hockey

Abstract

J. Michael Lennon introduces “The Collision,” the hockey story Mailer wrote in January 1933 at the age of ten, recounting the Mailer family’s years in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, the story’s survival in a typescript sent to relatives in South Africa and recently returned by cousin Stephen Chipkin, and its place before Mailer’s juvenile novel “The Martian Invasion.” Lennon weighs whether the story’s breathless energy anticipates Mailer’s mature prose.

Author Biography

  • J. Michael Lennon, Wilkes University

    J. Michael Lennon is the late Norman Mailer’s archivist, editor, authorized biographer. Norman Mailer: A Double Life appeared in 2013, and Selected Letters of Norman Mailer in 2104. His work has appeared in Paris Review, New Yorker, New York, Times Literary Supplement, Creative Nonfiction, NYRB, Mailer Review, Playboy, Hippocampus, and Provincetown Arts, among others. Currently, he is working on a new book, “Sixteen Handshakes to Shakespeare: From Bishop to the Bard.”

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Published

2016-09-28

Issue

Vol. 10 No. 1 (2016): 10th Anniversary Issue

Section

Reflections

How to Cite

Lennon, J. Michael. “A Note on ‘The Collision,’ Norman Mailer’s First Short Story”. The Mailer Review, vol. 10, no. 1, Sept. 2016, pp. 10–13, https://mailerreview.org/journal/article/view/553.