Norman Mailer Meets Marion Pettie and a Fight Breaks Out

What happened when an esteemed novelist and some beatniks came to the holler

Welcome to Failed State Update, where we get to the bottom of true conspiracies and misinformation, and how these things kill our collective brain cells (as does late-stage capitalism, by the way).

A quick update before we get to today’s story: I have just started writing a book about The Finders (the infamous 1980s so-called cult) for Feral House, which will be taking up the majority of my keyboard time. I’ll continue to update you all here in the newsletter, and paid subscribers will get to read excerpts from the book-in-progress as it comes into shape over the following year. It’s about a so-called “cult,” but it’s also about philosophy, social movements, living communally, and preparing for the collapse of the economy. I think you’ll enjoy it, so sign up for a paid subscription, won’t you?

I also have another podcast in the works, so watch this space to hear more about that in the coming weeks.

To give you a hint of what paying Failed State Update subscribers get to look forward to, here’s the story of what happened when The Finders’ founder Marion Pettie met Norman Mailer.

Norman Mailer at his home in Brooklyn in 1963 (photographed by Diane Arbus)

In 1960, Norman Mailer had a psychotic break. It seems that fame wasn’t doing all that much for his emotional well-being. Born into a Jewish family in Long Branch, New Jersey, his mother Fran doted on him. His father, Barney Mailer, was known for his carousing and gambling. At one point, he was in debt to loan sharks so deeply that the family almost lost everything. Exactly how they got out of this hole isn’t quite clear; it’s believed that Barney’s sister bailed him out. Mailer, it seems, learned the wrong lessons from this—he came to view his father as “an elegant, impoverished figure out of Chekhov.” 

By the time of his psychosis, Norman had written one major novel, The Naked and the Dead, published in 1948 when he was 25. Afterward, there were a couple of smaller, poorly received novels, and a scattershot collection of essays, fiction, and verse called Advertisements for Myself. If he had stopped writing in 1960, Mailer would have been remembered as a man who had peaked well before his fortieth birthday. 

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