Mornings with Mailer: A Recollection of Friendship

In the spring of 2003 when the great literary lion Normal Mailer was 80 years old, he allowed an unlikely companion into his life: Dwayne Raymond, 40 years his junior, originally from a 600-person town in Oregon, and an employee at a local restaurant in Provincetown, Cape Cod, where Mailer spent most of his time in his later years. At first, he hired Raymond simply to perform research and transcribe his handwritten pages. But as the years passed, Raymond became Mailer's attendant in all matters professional and private: Raymond helped him with the four books he wrote during this time, including his final novel, The Castle in the Forest, and the two spent hours together every day cooking, taking walks on the beach, and shopping for presents for Norris, Mailer's beloved wife. As Raymond's responsibilities grew, so too did his admiration for Mailer, and their friendship. He was the only non-family member in the room when Mailer passed away in November 2007.

In this moving memoir, Dwayne Raymond presents an alternative portrait of a writer who is frequently depicted as difficult, stubborn, and wild; the Norman Mailer he describes is a comparatively temperate, comprehensive man whose quirky, human qualities -- his loathing of all things electronic, his zeal for poker, his daily habits that included a "dappled omelet" at breakfast and a glass of merlot-fortified orange juice at night, his occasionally peculiar expressions of love toward his children -- far outweighed the disquieting legend. Beautifully written and honestly portrayed, MORNINGS WITH MAILER is an intimate and revealing story of a great writer and an unlikely, but unbreakable, friendship.