J. Michael Lennon

J. Michael Lennon was appointed to write the authorized biography of two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Norman Mailer by the Mailer estate in December of 2006, following the death of Robert F. Lucid. He is a former professor of English at Sangamon State University, now the University of Illinois at Springfield, Illinois, and Wilkes University in Pennsylvania. While at Wilkes he held various offices, including Vice President of the university and chairman of the Humanities Division, as well as co-director of the Wilkes University low-residency MA/MFA in Creative Writing, a program which he founded in 2004, along with current Program Director Bonnie Culver. He is also the current President and one of the founders of The Norman Mailer Society, a literary society dedicated to promoting interest and scholarship on the works of Norman Mailer. He has published and edited many books and articles, and is currently based in Massachusetts.

There is only one official biography of Norman Mailer in print, authored by Peter Manso. Mr. Lennon has not published a biography of Norman Mailer. For further commentary on this matter, see NY Times.

Re above: although the Lennon biography has not yet been published, it is correct that Lennon has been appointed to write the authorized biography, as of December 2006, by the Mailer Estate. Although other biographies have been authored, no other authorized or official biography has been published.

The above is a lie, pure and simple, as shall shortly be demonstrated by the re-issue of Mr. Manso's "Mailer, His Life and Times" by Simon and Schuster, Publishers, in September, 2008. Prof. Lennon has not only not published a Mailer biographer but never published any full-length, "written" book.

However, Mr. Lennon has edited "Norman Mailer's Letters on an American Dream" (2004) and "Conversations with Norman Mailer" (1988), and is listed as author of "Critical Essays on Norman Mailer" (1986) and co-author along with Mailer of "On God: An Uncommon Conversation" (2008). Also, the New York Times refers to him as an executor of Mailer's estate and one of the architects of his archive.