Remember, You Can’t Spell “Missionary Position” Without “Mission”
The folks who work at Harvard University, you’d think, are pretty smart cookies, so they had to have seen this one coming: The seven-boxes of material sold to the university by Norman Mailer’s former mistress, Carole Mallory, "includes photos, transcripts of interviews with Mailer, handwritten edits of Mallory’s work and scraps from writing lessons he gave," but what’s getting all the attention is the inclusion of some, ah, intimate details of the pair’s affair:
The collection also contains Mallory’s unpublished memoir, including a 20-page sex scene with Mailer, and a 50-page sex scene she said was based on her relationship with Mailer that she wrote for one of her books. She said Mailer had challenged her to write one that long.
Mallory, a former actress and model who considers herself something of a writer, said she sold the papers to Harvard, Mailer’s alma mater, because the wanted them to be part of the historical record, but if she’s such a patron of the arts, one wonders why she didn’t simply donate them. Likewise, if I were a Harvard alum or even, perish the thought, a paying student or parent, I’d be put off by the thought of my tuition dollars or annual fund gift funding the purchase of what is undoubtedly bad writing about Norman Mailer’s sex life. It’s difficult to see what kind of academic mission such a transaction advances. | 501(c)
Tags: Harvard University, Norman Mailer, Carole Mallory
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