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Loading... A Ticket to the Circus: A Memoir (edition 2010)by Norris Church Mailer (Author)
Work InformationA Ticket to the Circus: A Memoir by Norris Church Mailer
   None No current Talk conversations about this book.  AngelaLam | Feb 8, 2022 |    ) GaylaBassham | May 27, 2018 | ) gayla.bassham | Nov 7, 2016 | ) bakeet14 | Jan 30, 2011 | This book confirms some commonplace beliefs about Mailer and contradicts others. It's hard not to see as a flaw the fact that the figure most readers are chiefly interested in largely disappears from the final chapters of the memoir. But no reader with a passing interest in Mailer's work will regret taking the time to read it. ( ) jensenmk82 | Aug 20, 2010 |
 In one of the most telling toss-away lines, as [Norris]’s recovering from cancer surgery, she writes how “Norman tried to help by making his own breakfast and lunch…” With A Ticket To The Circus, she tells us how she managed to live with such a difficult man for so long, but a more interesting book might have told us why.  If you want to be both edified and amused, you really can't do better than "A Ticket to the Circus." The title is apt.  Norris Church Mailer’s reminiscence, “A Ticket to the Circus,” still manages to add a fat new sheaf to the public dossier on her late husband, Norman Mailer, and tells an involving coming-of-age story to boot. It’s not so much that she gives readers unexpected insights into one of the literary giants of his day — the book does little to dispel the image of Mailer as a narcissistic hothead with redeeming streaks of cuddliness and charm — but rather that, in her own indirect way, she shows exactly what type of woman could tolerate and at least partly subdue such a king-size corkscrew of a man. “A Ticket to the Circus” is not a tell-all memoir; it’s a tell-enough memoir. It’s Ms. Mailer’s own plucky and sometimes sentimental autobiography, written in the lemony sweet-tea mode of Southern novelists like Lee Smith.
The sixth (and last) wife of Norman Mailer, Norris Church Mailer, met the late writer in 1975, when she was 26 and he twice her age; they were married for 33 years. Her memoir is, among other things, the story of a series of emancipations: from the constraints of her loving but limiting parents and the claustrophobic moralism of her Arkansas hometown; from her first marriage to a man she quickly outgrew; and from her inhibitions about writing and creating art. Norris Church Mailer who has led a life as large and as colorful as her husband's, and every bit as engaging. No library descriptions found. |
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 Google Books — Loading...GenresMelvil Decimal System (DDC)813.54Literature English (North America) American fiction 20th Century 1945-1999LC ClassificationRatingAverage: (3.76)
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Wikipedia in English
5
Theirs is not the all-American love story, but it is an accurate portrayal of two people struggling to reconcile their differences, forgive betrayals, and embrace each other "for better or for worse."
The humanity in this book is worth reading. Norris has a gift of the artist's eye for the perfect image. Her style is very different than Mailer's, but it is engaging and moving all the same.
If you are looking for a great memoir about what it means to try to love the one you married for over 30 years, this is the book for you. There are no easy answers, but a lot of sharing and caring and honesty from a woman who has been there and done that. (