Introduction

"In Another Place brings us to many remarkable new places in the Mailer universe. Written with tenderness, acuity and unadorned psychological depth, Susan Mailer's memoir is a powerful look at the literary world." --Colum McCann, National Book Award-winning author of Let the Great World Spin

Norman Mailer, Susan Mailer's father, was among the most celebrated, talented, and controversial writers of the 20th Century. The Naked and the Dead (1948), inspired by his experience in World War II, was a bestseller and made him famous at the age of 25. Notoriously combative and egotistical, her father enjoyed a good ?ght 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 parents 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 a practicing psychoanalyst.

In Another Place tells the story of her intense and complex relationship with her father, her ?ve 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 di?erent cultures. Of being someone who belongs everywhere and nowhere, always longing for a life . . . In Another Place.

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Excerpt

Excerpt from Chapter 9

Diamond Eyes.

I was eight years old, and my sister Danielle, Dad’s second daughter and Adele’s first, was nine months. I was playing in the living room next to the chimney when Dad walked in and asked me to step into the library. “Hey, Diamond Eyes, come in here. Let’s have a talk.”

His serious tone made it sound important. I felt a sudden desire to run out into the snow-packed forest and play with the dogs instead. Anything, just to get away. But I went in obediently, thinking, Daddy’s in one of his moods. I sat in an armchair directly in front of him. He gazed at me somberly, and said something like, "Hey, Diamond Eyes, you’re looking good today.”

He had a habit of commenting on my appearance. In my teens his judgments could make me feel as special as a wet dishrag, or suddenly elevate me to a Sophia Loren-like self-image. “Diamond Eyes” was one of his nicknames for me, because he said my eyes sparkled and were crystal clear.

“I wanted to talk to you about something. You know you’re very important to me and I love you. I want you to know that. But it wasn't always so. There was a time when I didn't know if I loved you enough. I was afraid I wouldn't be able to give you what I’d received from my mother, your grandma. I didn't know if I could feel that kind of love when you were born, because I don't think I was ready to be a father. I wanted to be free, and your birth was a responsibility that felt like a chain around my neck. Your mother and I were already not happy by that time, but we didn’t think of divorce. I was famous and she resented it. And for me, being a father was a burden. You were a great baby—don't get me wrong—but I wasn't ready. Then, when you went to Mexico with your mom, I didn’t really consider what it meant. I think I might have even been a little relieved.

“I want you to know, honey, it's been hard not having you around most of the year. When you come to the States, it’s always awkward, isn't it? And just when we start getting used to each other, really digging being together, you have to leave. It’s hard on the soul. You know what I mean?”

I was sitting very still by then. I didn’t feel much except a great desire to have this “talk” over soon and be free to leave. But I was stuck. No escape yet. “Yes, Daddy,” I said.

“Every time you return to Mexico, I think it takes something out of us. Something we might never get back. I’m angry with your mother for going there, and angry with myself for having permitted it.”

“Why did you let her go, Daddy?”

“Well, there wasn’t much I could do. She was in love with Chavo, I was in love with Adele, and I didn't think it was fair to say, ‘You can't take Susie with you.’ You know, Grandma wanted you to live with her. She loves you very, very much. But I felt it just wasn’t right.”

I didn’t want him to go on a rag about my mother, so I said, “It’s okay. I like living in Mexico.” and I meant it.

I was eight years old, and my father was telling me he hadn’t really loved me when I was born. I wondered, What about Danielle? Did he love her now more than he had loved me, back then?

His piercing blue eyes were staring directly into mine, so it was hard to avert my eyes. This was a habit I later acquired from him: the intense, into-the-soul Mailer gaze. But just then, in that room, I was afraid of this Dad with the intense look, who was giving off a strange vibe. It certainly didn’t feel good to hear I hadn't been loved when I was born, and of course I never forgot those words. But at the same time, it felt special he was being so honest with me. I realized he must think I was strong enough to hear these truths.

This attitude became my trademark. I would later employ it in my work as a psychotherapist, and listen to almost anything without blinking, without taking it to heart, without getting enraged or having my feelings hurt. At eight, Dad's speech fed into my tough-kid persona, but even so, underneath that affirming recognition, that armor, I felt hurt. Why was he telling me this? By then my father believed that total honesty, even if it was painful, was an important stepping-stone in his relationship with his children. But I doubt he was thinking about my feelings. That speech was more about indulging in a personal theory of honesty; his senses were heightened with marijuana and booze, his judgment probably clouded.

And I was a good subject, because I loved him, and was pliable and even-tempered, though sometimes moody. But most of all, I desired his approval. I knew that appearing to understand and empathize was one sure way to get it.

A few days later something else happened. I’d gone to bed up in the attic room and was having trouble falling asleep. Dad's heavy footsteps came up the stairs. I saw him approaching through half-closed eyes. He sat on the edge of my bed and leaned over as if checking to see if I was asleep. I didn't move. First, he kissed me on the forehead. He hugged me tight, and then even tighter, with a kind of desperate urgency. I was surprised and curious, but I didn't say anything. Soon he was crying. Not sobbing, just quietly weeping.

My father always hated sentimentality and usually banished it from his emotional repertoire. He could be gloomy, morose, irritated, angry, or tender and funny. But he was not sentimental, and certainly not weepy. That's what made that night so acutely uncomfortable. I could tell he was in pain, and it obviously had to do with me.

Even though he’d resented infant Susan for curtailing his freedom, in later years he felt pain every time we had to separate, and our communication shrank to occasional letters, and even fewer phone calls. During the 50s my father and mother had corresponded quite often. Sometimes there was a hand-written page with a drawing for me included in Norman’s letter to Bea. But most of the time he wrote to me directly and asked me to answer his letters. He said we had to build a bridge to keep in touch, and letters were the best medium to accomplish this. Sometimes he called, but our conversations were monosyllabic on my part. I felt uneasy when I heard his voice on the phone. So, he resorted to letters again.

Still, every time I saw an envelope with his return address on my bed, my stomach tightened. I wanted to brush away that by-now familiar sense of discomfort. When I was in Mexico, I stopped speaking English, and always answered my mother in Spanish. Though I understood it, the language was banned from my life down there. I put my father and the Mailer family in another compartment that didn’t touch my life in Mexico. His letters were an impingement on the continuity of my everyday life. I’d put off replying for days, until my mother would finally sit me down with pencil and paper and force me to write back.

“But I don’t know what to say, Mom. Do I have to write?”

“Yes, you do. Just tell him what you did today. That will be enough.”

Then, not very happy, I would comply. All my letters had the same tone. They usually started like this:

Dear Daddy,

Today I went to school and had a good time.

When I got home, I played with my friends

and then went to bed.

These short missives generally ended with:

Miss you Daddy. Give my love to Grandma

and Grandpa and Adele.

During my visits to the States I stopped speaking Spanish. And found it just as hard to answer my mother’s letters. Those months living with Dad were intense, but they never developed a natural rhythm. While we were together, the shadow of my departure was always just around the corner. And when I left there was an empty space between us. In 1954, in a letter to his close friend Robert Lindner, he wrote:

Mexico was rough on me…one day I literally

had to fight off weeping twice while I was

with Susy because of the pain of leaving

her. And the weight she carries in her heart

and the wisdom. She fell asleep the night before

I left, the last time I would see her, and I think

she knew that it was far better to be unconscious

when I left than to go through the pain of the

scene. I really think she loves me, and I want no

one to love me more than I want Susy to.

I can see myself falling asleep, not wanting Dad to be around when I wake up the next day. This turning away, looking in another direction to isolate myself and be cut off from that ache of separation, was to be my modus operandi for many years. The stamp of our relationship. Not until I was an adult and going through psychoanalysis was I able to sift slowly through all that pain. Until at last I could see little Susie not as the great, fearless kid my parents always told me I was, but as a child who did her best to withdraw from pain by creating a great division between her two lives.

The night in question, did my father cry because he was in anguish over my departure? Or was he feeling guilt, now that he had another daughter, Danielle, an infant he could actually enjoy and live with? Was I jealous of Danielle, who had been born only a few months before? Was I more silent and detached than usual, now that I was leaving his home, the first beautiful place we had lived in since I could remember. Was I resentful he would be staying there with Danielle and Adele?

I’m sure I never said a word of this. I doubt I was even conscious of these feelings. I probably just wanted to go back to Mexico and forget about this tight-knit-family from which I would soon be exiled.

There were other things going on, too.

During Norman and Adele’s country idyll, his drinking and pot smoking, his intake of uppers and downers, all grew worse. He was irritable and took it out on Adele, who was anything but meek. Their arguments got out of hand. I wasn’t aware of any of this. If they fought when I was around, I didn’t hear them, or more probably I blocked out the loud angry voices. I don’t remember ever seeing them drunk. My only recollection of bad times is occasionally having the thought, Dad is in one of his moods.

Added to all the drinking, during this period my father lost two good friends. Apparently, the novelist William Styron made a disparaging remark about Adele, and my father called him on it in an angry letter. The writer James Jones, whom Dad deeply loved, sided with Styron; they both felt Norman had changed for the worse. He was drinking too much and had become contentious, even violent. This break with two old friends, which lasted twenty years, weighed on my father’s psyche. It clearly hurt. He sorely missed his buddies, especially Jim Jones.

In 1959, not long after I returned to Mexico, Dad and Adele decided to leave Bridgewater. My father had thought it would be good to be away from the frenzy of the city, and they’d tried to make a life in the country, but finally decided to move back to New York. They sold the beautiful big house and rented a dark apartment on Perry Street in the West Village. As with the house in Vermont young Norman and Bea had bought almost ten years before, this second experiment in country living did not work out, either. And now, serious trouble was brewing in his relationship with Adele. view abbreviated excerpt only...

Discussion Questions

1. In what ways does growing up in Mexico and New York affect the author? Do you think the author’s experience is helpful to readers who are bicultural and bilingual?

2. How is the author’s sense of self impacted by her father’s fame?

3. The author is a psychoanalyst. How does her knowledge inform the way she presents her relationship to her parents, in particular to her father?

4. How did the Mailer siblings manage to be close considering they are the offspring of 6 different mothers?

5. Writing the memoir, do you think the author was inspired by her father? In what ways?

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