The presidential papers

the long version

Norman Mailer’s Presidential Papers is a collection of much of his occasional writing of years 1960-1963. There are the epic essays on the 1960 Democratic convention and the first Patterson-Liston fight; some poems; a couple of interviews, one real, one imaginary; a chapter from a novel in progress; some columns done for Esquire and COMMENTARY; a speech delivered in debate with William Buckley; and a few assorted sundries. The pieces are of varying lengths, intensities, and postures, held together by the kind of introductory comments Mailer originally fashioned for Advertisements for Myself.