Last Party Scenes From My Life With Norm Mailer, Adele

This biography is a record of 50's America, with a cast charaters and a variety of scenes, filled with writers, painters, actors. It is the intimate story of Norman Mailer in search of himself and the woman who was with him every step of the way.

Norman Mailer has often been a focal point of controversy for his novels--from his account of killer Gary Gilmore's troubled life in The Executioner's Song to his more recent The Gospel According to the Son, told in Jesus' own words. But in 1960 it was Mailer's personal life that earned him notoriety. After an evening of heavy drinking, Mailer assaulted his then-wife, Adele, with a knife, putting her in intensive care and abruptly ending their marriage. More than 30 years later, Adele Mailer serves up her revenge cold in The Last Party, a memoir of her life before, during, and after Norman Mailer.

Alcohol figures prominently in Mailer's book; in her prologue she mentions her membership in Alcoholics Anonymous. Starting with her first marriage to Village Voice cofounder Ed Fancher, Mailer drank her way through the high-rolling, hard-partying New York avante-garde. Her book is a veritable grab bag of celebrity name-dropping and gossip about some of the glitterati's brightest stars. There's plenty of sex and violence and maybe more than you'd ever want to know about Adele Mailer herself. The stories Mailer dishes are 30 years old, but there's a certain voyeuristic appeal in reading about the rather sordid lives of the rich and infamous, and The Last Party certainly fits the bill.