Historical records matching Norris Church Mailer
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About Norris Church Mailer
Norris Church Mailer was born as Barbara Jean Davis on January 31, 1949 in Washington State. She was raised in rural Atkins, Arkansas and died November 21, 2010 at home in Brooklyn Heights, New York, of cancer. She was buried in the Provincetown Cemetery. Norris was the widow of American novelist and cultural icon Norman Mailer, and worked as a writer, model and art teacher. She was also a painter with over nine one woman shows.
The 33 year marriage to Norman Mailer of Barbara Jean, a former pickle-factory worker and the only child of Free Will Baptists, "with legs so long an old beau called her High Pockets," was the subject of her 2010 memoir, A Ticket to the Circus. In it she wrote:
Norman Mailer loved to hear the stories of my family — he said he felt like he had married the great American novel. I guess you could look at it like that, since I have a Cherokee great-great-grandma and I can trace both sides back to the early and mid-1700s, when the first big wave of immigrants started arriving from the British Isles, looking for a better life — or maybe running from the sheriff.
From The New York Times
November 21, 2010
Norris Church Mailer, Artist and Ally, Dies at 61
By JOSEPH BERGER
Norris Church Mailer, a woman bred in the rural poverty of Arkansas who married Norman Mailer and managed his career and family life over three decades while carving out her own niche as a writer, died on Sunday at her home in Brooklyn Heights. She was 61.
The cause was the gastrointestinal cancer that she had battled for 11 years, said her son John Buffalo Mailer.
Ms. Mailer, who had grown up as Barbara Jean Davis, was a high school art teacher, former pickle-factory worker and divorced mother when Mr. Mailer came to Russellville, Ark., in 1975 to plug his book-length reflection on Marilyn Monroe. Brooklyn-bred, Harvard-educated, with the first of two Pulitzer Prizes to his credit, he was almost as celebrated for his brawling egocentrism and intellectual provocations as he was for his novels. ... as a Book-of-the-Month Club member, she was eager that he sign her copy of “Marilyn.” After a few moments of conversation, he was enchanted. She found him “easily the most interesting man I had ever met.” ... (1)
Notes
- She dated Bill Clinton before he was married. While Clinton was President a woman approached her and said, "I guess Bill slept with every woman in Arkansas except you". Norris replied: "Sorry. He got us all."
- Although her parents were from Arkansas, she was born on Jan. 31, 1949, in the state of Washington. They returned when she was two.
- Author of additional books: Windchill Summer (2001, novel); Cheap Diamonds (2007, novel)
Sources
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Norris Church Mailer's Timeline
| 1949 |
January 31, 1949
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Washington, United States
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| 2010 |
November 21, 2010
Age 61
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Brooklyn Heights, Brooklyn, Kings, New York, United States
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2010
Age 60
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Provincetown Cemetery, Provincetown, Barnstable, Massachusetts, United States
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