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Norman Mailer

Nachem Malech Mailer (January 31, 1923 – November 10, 2007), known by his pen name Norman Kingsley Mailer, was an American novelist, journalist, playwright, and filmmaker. In a career spanning more than six decades, Mailer had 11 best-selling books, at least one in each of the seven decades after World War II.

His novel The Naked and the Dead was published in 1948 and brought him early renown. His 1968 nonfiction novel The Armies of the Night won the Pulitzer Prize for non-fiction as well as the National Book Award. Among his other well-known works are An American Dream (1965), The Fight (1975) and The Executioner's Song (1979), which won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction.

Mailer is considered an innovator of "creative non-fiction" or "New Journalism", along with Truman Capote, Joan Didion, Hunter S. Thompson, and Tom Wolfe, a genre that uses the style and devices of literary fiction in factual journalism. He was a prominent cultural commentator and critic, expressing his often controversial views through his novels, journalism, frequent press appearances, and essays, the most famous and reprinted of which is "The White Negro". In 1955, he and three others founded The Village Voice, an arts and politics-oriented weekly newspaper distributed in Greenwich Village.

In 1960, Mailer was convicted of assault and served a three-year probation after he stabbed his wife Adele Morales with a penknife, nearly killing her. In 1969, he ran an unsuccessful campaign to become the mayor of New York. Mailer was married six times and had nine children.

Early life
Nachem "Norman" Malech ("King") Mailer was born to a Jewish family in Long Branch, New Jersey, on January 31, 1923. His father, Isaac Barnett Mailer, popularly known as "Barney", was an accountant born in South Africa, and his mother, Fanny (née Schneider), ran a housekeeping and nursing agency. Mailer's sister, Barbara, was born in 1927.

Mailer was raised in Brooklyn, first in Flatbush on Cortelyou Road and later in Crown Heights at the corner of Albany and Crown Streets. He graduated from Boys High School and entered Harvard College in 1939, when he was 16 years old. As an undergraduate, he was a member of the Signet Society. At Harvard, he majored in engineering but took writing courses as electives. He published his first story, "The Greatest Thing in the World", at age 18, winning Story magazine's college contest in 1941.

Mailer graduated from Harvard in 1943 with a Bachelor of Science with honors. He married his first wife Beatrice "Bea" Silverman in January 1944, just before he was drafted into the U.S. Army. Hoping to gain a deferment from service, Mailer argued that he was writing an "important literary work" that pertained to the war. The deferral was denied, and Mailer was forced to enter the Army. After training at Fort Bragg, he was stationed in the Philippines with the 112th Cavalry.

During his time in the Philippines, Mailer was first assigned to regimental headquarters as a typist, then assigned as a wire lineman. In early 1945, after volunteering for a reconnaissance platoon, he completed more than two dozen patrols in contested territory and engaged in several firefights and skirmishes. After the Japanese surrender, he was sent to Japan as part of the army of occupation, was promoted to sergeant, and became a first cook.

When asked about his war experiences, he said that the army was "the worst experience of my life, and also the most important". While in Japan and the Philippines, Mailer wrote to his wife Bea almost daily, and these approximately 400 letters became the foundation of The Naked and the Dead. He drew on his experience as a reconnaissance rifleman for the central action of the novel: a long patrol behind enemy lines.

Novelist
Mailer wrote 12 novels in 59 years. After completing courses in French language and culture at the University of Paris in 1947–48, he returned to the U.S. shortly after The Naked and the Dead was published in May 1948. A New York Times best seller for 62 weeks, it was the only one of Mailer's novels to reach the number one position. It was hailed by many as one of the best American wartime novels and included in a list of the hundred best English-language novels of the twentieth century by the Modern Library. The book that made his reputation sold more than a million copies in its first year, (three million by 1981) and has never gone out of print. It is still considered to be one of the finest depictions of Americans in combat during World War II.

Barbary Shore (1951) was not well received by the critics. It was a surreal parable of Cold War leftist politics set in a Brooklyn rooming-house, and Mailer's most autobiographical novel. His 1955 novel, The Deer Park drew on his experiences working as a screenwriter in Hollywood from 1949 to 1950. It was initially rejected by seven publishers due to its purportedly sexual content before being published by Putnam's. It was not a critical success, but it made the best-seller list, sold more than 50,000 copies its first year, and is considered by some critics to be the best Hollywood novel since Nathanael West's The Day of the Locust.

Mailer wrote his fourth novel, An American Dream, as a serial in Esquire magazine over eight months (January to August 1964), publishing the first chapter two months after he wrote it. In March 1965, Dial Press published a revised version. The novel generally received mixed reviews, but was a best seller. Joan Didion praised it in a review in National Review (April 20, 1965) and John W. Aldridge did the same in Life  (March 19, 1965), while Elizabeth Hardwick panned it in Partisan Review (spring 1965).

Mailer's fifth novel, Why Are We in Vietnam? was even more experimental in its prose than An American Dream. Published in 1967, its critical reception was mostly positive, with many critics, like John Aldridge in Harper's, calling the novel a masterpiece and comparing it to Joyce. Mailer's obscene language was criticized by Granville Hicks writing in the Saturday Review and the anonymous reviewer in Time. Eliot Fremont-Smith called the novel "the most original, courageous and provocative novel so far this year" that's likely to be "mistakenly reviled". Other critics, such as Denis Donoghue from the New York Review of Books praised Mailer for his verisimilitude "for the sensory event". Donoghue recalls Josephine Miles' study of the American Sublime, suggesting that the impact of Why Are We in Vietnam? was in its voice and style.

In 1972, Joyce Carol Oates called Vietnam "Mailer's most important work"; it is "an outrageous little masterpiece" that "contains some of Mailer's finest writing" and thematically echoes John Milton's Paradise Lost.

In 1980, The Executioner's Song, Mailer's "real-life novel" of the life and death of murderer Gary Gilmore, won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction. Joan Didion reflected the views of many readers when she called the novel "an absolutely astonishing book" at the end of her front-page review in the New York Times Book Review.

Mailer spent a longer time writing Ancient Evenings, his novel of Egypt in the Twentieth Dynasty (about 1100 BC), than any of his other books. He worked on it for periods from 1972 until 1983. It was also a bestseller, although reviews were generally negative. Harold Bloom, in his review said the book "gives every sign of truncation", and "could be half again as long, but no reader will wish so", while Richard Poirier called it Mailer's "most audacious book".

Harlot's Ghost, Mailer's longest novel (1310 pages), appeared in 1991 and received his best reviews since The Executioner's Song. It is an exploration of the untold dramas of the CIA from the end of World War II to 1965. He undertook a huge amount of research for the novel, which is still on CIA reading lists. He ended the novel with the words "To be continued" and planned to write a sequel, titled Harlot's Grave, but other projects intervened and he never wrote it. Harlot's Ghost sold well.

His final novel, The Castle in the Forest, which focused on Hitler's childhood, reached number five on the Times best-seller list after publication in January 2007. It received reviews that were more positive than any of his books since The Executioner's Song. Castle was intended to be the first volume of a trilogy, but Mailer died several months after it was completed. The Castle in the Forest received a laudatory 6,200-word front-page review by Lee Siegel in the New York Times Book Review, as well as a Bad Sex in Fiction Award by the Literary Review magazine.

Journalist
From the mid-1950s, Mailer became known for his countercultural essays. In 1955, he co-founded The Village Voice and was initially an investor and silent partner, but later he wrote a column called "Quickly: A Column for Slow Readers" from January to April 1956. His articles published in this column, 17 in total, were important in his development of a philosophy of hip, or "American existentialism," and allowed him to discover his penchant for journalism. Mailer's famous essay "The White Negro" (1957) fleshes out the hipster figure who stands in opposition to forces that seek debilitating conformity in American society. It is believed to be among the most anthologized, and controversial, essays of the postwar period. Mailer republished it in 1959 in his miscellany Advertisements for Myself, which he described as "The first work I wrote with a style I could call my own." The reviews were positive, and most commentators referred to it as his breakthrough work.

In 1960, Mailer wrote "Superman Comes to the Supermarket" for Esquire magazine, an account of the emergence of John F. Kennedy during the Democratic Party convention. The essay was an important breakthrough for the New Journalism of the 1960s, but when the magazine's editors changed the title to "Superman Comes to the Supermart", Mailer was enraged, and would not write for Esquire for years. (The magazine later apologized. Subsequent references are to the original title.)

Mailer took part in the October 1967 march on the Pentagon, but initially had no intention of writing a book about it. After conversations with his friend, Willie Morris, editor of Harper's magazine, he agreed to produce a long essay describing the march. In a concentrated effort, he produced a 90,000-word piece in two months, and it appeared in Harper's March issue. It was the longest nonfiction piece to be published by an American magazine. As one commentator states, "Mailer disarmed the literary world with Armies. The combination of detached, ironic self-presentation [he described himself in the third person], deft portraiture of literary figures (especially Robert Lowell, Dwight Macdonald, and Paul Goodman), a reported flawless account of the March itself, and a passionate argument addressed to a divided nation, resulted in a sui generis narrative praised by even some of his most inveterate revilers." Alfred Kazin, writing in the New York Times Book Review, said, "Mailer's intuition is that the times demand a new form. He has found it." He later expanded the article to a book, The Armies of the Night (1968), awarded a National Book Award and a Pulitzer Prize.

Mailer's major new journalism, or creative nonfiction, books also include Miami and the Siege of Chicago (1968), an account of the 1968 political conventions; Of a Fire on the Moon (1971), a long report on the Apollo 11 mission to the moon; The Prisoner of Sex (1971), his response to Kate Millett's critique of the patriarchal myths in the works of Mailer, Jean Genet, Henry Miller and D.H. Lawrence; and The Fight (1975), an account of Muhammad Ali's 1974 defeat in Zaire of George Foreman for the heavyweight boxing championship. Miami, Fire and Prisoner were all finalists for the National Book Award. The hallmark of his five New Journalism works is his use of illeism, or referring to oneself in the third person, rather than the first. Mailer said he got the idea from reading The Education of Henry Adams (1918) when he was a Harvard freshman. Mailer also employs many of the most common techniques of fiction in his creative nonfiction.

Filmmaker
In addition to his experimental fiction and nonfiction novels, Mailer produced a play version of The Deer Park (staged at the Theatre De Lys in Greenwich Village in 1967), which had a four-month run and generally good reviews. In 2007, months before he died, he re-wrote the script, and asked his son Michael, a film producer, to film a staged production in Provincetown, but had to cancel because of his declining health. Mailer obsessed over The Deer Park more than he did over any other work.

In the late 1960s, Mailer directed three improvisational avant-garde films: Wild 90 (1968), Beyond the Law (1968), and Maidstone (1970). The latter includes a spontaneous and brutal brawl between Norman T. Kingsley, played by Mailer, and Kingsley's half-brother Raoul, played by Rip Torn. Mailer received a head injury when Torn struck him with a hammer, and Torn's ear became infected when Mailer bit it. In 2012, the Criterion Collection released Mailer's experimental films in a box set, "Maidstone and Other Films by Norman Mailer". In 1987, he adapted and directed a film version of his novel Tough Guys Don't Dance starring Ryan O'Neal and Isabella Rossellini, which has become a minor camp classic.

Mailer took on an acting role in the 1981 Miloš Forman film version of E.L. Doctorow's novel Ragtime, playing Stanford White. In 1999, he played Harry Houdini in Matthew Barney's Cremaster 2, which was inspired by the events surrounding the life of Gary Gilmore.

In 1976, Mailer went to Italy for several weeks to collaborate with Italian Spaghetti Western filmmaker Sergio Leone on an adaptation of the Harry Grey novel The Hoods. Although Leone would pursue other writers shortly thereafter, elements of Mailer's first two drafts of the commissioned screenplay would appear in the Italian filmmaker's final film, Once Upon a Time in America (1984), starring Robert De Niro.

Mailer starred alongside writer/feminist Germaine Greer in D.A. Pennebaker's Town Bloody Hall, which was shot in 1971 but not released until 1979.

In 1982, Mailer and Lawrence Schiller would collaborate on a television adaptation of The Executioner's Song, starring Tommy Lee Jones, Roseanna Arquette, and Eli Wallach. Airing on November 28 and 29, The Executioner's Song received strong critical reviews and four Emmy nominations, including one for Mailer's screenplay. It won two: for sound production and for Jones as best actor.

In 1987, Mailer was to appear in Jean-Luc Godard's experimental film version of Shakespeare's King Lear, to be shot in Switzerland. Originally, Mailer was to play the lead character, Don Learo, in Godard's unscripted film alongside his daughter, Kate Mailer. The film also featured Woody Allen and Peter Sellars. However, tensions surfaced between Mailer and Godard early in the production when Godard insisted that Mailer play a character who had a carnal relationship with his own daughter. Mailer left Switzerland after just one day of shooting.

In 1997, Mailer was set to direct the boxing drama "Ringside," based on an original script by his son Michael and two others. The male lead role, an Irish-American streetfighter who finds redemption in the ring, was to be Brendan Fraser, and it was also to star Halle Berry, Anthony Quinn, and Paul Sorvino.

In 2001, he adapted the screenplay for the movie: Master Spy: The Robert Hanssen Story.

In 2005, Mailer served as a technical consultant on the Ron Howard boxing movie Cinderella Man, about legendary boxer Jim Braddock.

Biographer

Mailer's approach to biography came from his interest in the ego of the artist as an "exemplary type". His own biographer, J. Michael Lennon, explains that Mailer would use "himself as a species of divining rod to explore the psychic depths" of disparate personalities, like Pablo Picasso, Muhammad Ali, Gary Gilmore, Lee Harvey Oswald, and Marilyn Monroe. "Ego," states Lennon, "can be seen as the beginning of a major phase in his writing career: Mailer as biographer."

Beginning as an assignment from Lawrence Schiller to write a short preface to a collection of photographs, Mailer's 1973 biography of Monroe (usually designated Marilyn: A Biography) was not approached as a traditional biography. Mailer read the available biographies, watched Monroe's films, and looked at photographs of Monroe; for the rest of it, Mailer stated, "I speculated." Since Mailer did not have the time to thoroughly research the facts surrounding her death, his speculation led to the biography's controversy. The book's final chapter theorizes that Monroe was murdered by rogue agents of the FBI and CIA who resented her supposed affair with Robert F. Kennedy. Mailer later admitted that he embellished the book with speculations about Monroe's sex life and death that he did not himself believe to ensure its commercial success. In his own autobiography, Monroe's former husband Arthur Miller wrote that Mailer saw himself as Monroe "in drag, acting out his own Hollywood fantasies of fame and sex unlimited and power."

The book was enormously successful; it sold more copies than did any of Mailer's works except The Naked and the Dead, and it is Mailer's most widely reviewed book. It was the inspiration for the Emmy-nominated TV movie Marilyn: The Untold Story, which aired in 1980. Two later works co-written by Mailer presented imagined words and thoughts in Monroe's voice: the 1980 book Of Women and Their Elegance and the 1986 play Strawhead, which was produced off Broadway starring his daughter Kate Mailer.

In the wake of the Marilyn controversy, Mailer attempted to explain his unique approach to biography. He suggests that his biography must be seen as a "species of novel ready to play by the rules of biography." Exemplary egos, he explains, are best explained by other exemplary egos, and personalities like Monroe's are best left in the hands of a novelist.

Activist
A number of Mailer's nonfiction works, such as The Armies of the Night and The Presidential Papers, are political. He covered the Republican and Democratic National Conventions in 1960, 1964, 1968, 1972, 1992, and 1996, although his account of the 1996 Democratic convention has never been published. In the early 1960s he was fixated on the figure of President John F. Kennedy, whom he regarded as an "existential hero". In the late 1950s and throughout the 1960s and 1970s, his work mingled autobiography, social commentary, history, fiction, and poetry in a formally original way that influenced the development of New Journalism.

Mailer held the position that the Cold War was not a positive ideal for America. It allowed the state to become strong and invested in the daily lives of the people. He critiqued conservative politics as they, specifically those of Barry Goldwater, supported the Cold War and an increase in government spending and oversight. This, Mailer argued, stood in opposition with conservative principles such as lower taxes and smaller government. He believed that conservatives were pro-Cold War because that was politically relevant to them and would therefore help them win.

Indeed, Mailer was outspoken about his mistrust of politics in general as a way of meaningful change in America. In Miami and the Siege of Chicago (1968), he explained his view of "politics-as-property", likening a politician to a property holder who is "never ambivalent about his land, he does not mock it or see other adjacent estates as more deserving than his own." Thus politics is just people trading their influence as capital in an attempt to serve their own interests. This cynical view of politicians serving only themselves perhaps explains his views on Watergate. Mailer saw politics as a sporting event: "If you played for a team, you did your best to play very well, but there was something obscene ... in starting to think there was more moral worth to Michigan than Ohio State." Mailer thought that Nixon lost and was demonized only because he played for the wrong team. President Johnson, Mailer thought, was just as bad as Nixon had been, but he had good charisma so all was forgiven.

In September 1961, Mailer was one of 29 original prominent American sponsors of the Fair Play for Cuba Committee organization with which John F. Kennedy assassin Lee Harvey Oswald was associated in 1963. In December 1963, Mailer and several of the other sponsors left the organization.

In October 1967, Mailer was arrested for his involvement in an anti–Vietnam War demonstration at the Pentagon sponsored by the National Mobilization Committee to End the War in Vietnam. In 1968, he signed the Writers and Editors War Tax Protest pledge, vowing to refuse tax payments in protest against the war.

In 1980, Mailer spearheaded convicted killer Jack Abbott's successful bid for parole. In 1977, Abbott had read about Mailer's work on The Executioner's Song and wrote to Mailer, offering to enlighten the author about Abbott's time behind bars and the conditions he was experiencing. Mailer, impressed, helped to publish In the Belly of the Beast, a book on life in the prison system consisting of Abbott's letters to Mailer. Once paroled, Abbott committed a murder in New York City six weeks after his release, stabbing 22-year-old Richard Adan to death. Consequently, Mailer was subject to criticism for his role. In a 1992 interview with the Buffalo News, he conceded that his involvement was "another episode in my life in which I can find nothing to cheer about or nothing to take pride in."

The 1986 meeting of P.E.N. in New York City featured key speeches by Secretary of State George P. Shultz and Mailer. The appearance of a government official was derided by many, and as Shultz ended his speech, the crowd seethed, with some calling to "read the protest" that had been circulated to criticize Shultz's appearance. Mailer, who was next to speak, responded by shouting to the crowd: "Up yours!"

In 1989, Mailer joined with a number of other prominent authors in publicly expressing support for colleague Salman Rushdie, whose The Satanic Verses led to a fatwa issued by Iran's Islamic government calling for Rushdie's assassination.

In 2003, in a speech to the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco, just before the Iraq War, Mailer said: "Fascism is more of a natural state than democracy. To assume blithely that we can export democracy into any country we choose can serve paradoxically to encourage more fascism at home and abroad. Democracy is a state of grace that is attained only by those countries who have a host of individuals not only ready to enjoy freedom but to undergo the heavy labor of maintaining it."

From 1980 until his death in 2007, Mailer contributed to Democratic Party candidates for political office.

Politician
In 1969, at the suggestion of feminist Gloria Steinem, his friend the political essayist Noel Parmentel, and others, Mailer ran unsuccessfully in the Democratic Party primary for mayor of New York City, allied with columnist Jimmy Breslin (who ran for city council president), proposing the creation of a 51st state through New York City secession. Although Mailer took stands on a wide range of issues, from opposing "compulsory fluoridation of the water supply" to advocating the release of Black Panther Party leader Huey Newton, decentralization was the overriding issue of the campaign. Mailer "foresaw the city, its independence secured, splintering into townships and neighborhoods, with their own school systems, police departments, housing programs, and governing philosophies." Their slogan was "throw the rascals in." Mailer was endorsed by libertarian economist Murray Rothbard, who "believed that 'smashing the urban government apparatus and fragmenting it into a myriad of constituent fragments' offered the only answer to the ills plaguing American cities," and called Mailer's campaign "the most refreshing libertarian political campaign in decades." Mailer finished fourth in a field of five. Looking back on the campaign, journalist and historian Theodore H. White called it "one of the most serious campaigns run in the United States in the last five years. . . . [H]is campaign was considered and thoughtful, the beginning of an attempt to apply ideas to a political situation." Characterizing his campaign, Mailer said: "The difference between me and the other candidates is that I'm no good and I can prove it."

Artist
Mailer enjoyed drawing and drew prolifically, particularly toward the end of his life. While his work is not widely known, his drawings, which were inspired by Picasso's style, were exhibited at the Berta Walker Gallery in Provincetown in 2007, and are now displayed on the online arts community POBA - Where the Arts Live.

Style and views on the body and sex
Power over bodies, societies, political entities, etc. is a constant presence in Mailer's work. In addition - and notable for such a prominent mainstream American writer of his generation - Mailer, throughout his work and personal communications, repeatedly expresses interest in, includes episodes of or makes references to bisexuality or homosexuality. He even directly addresses the subject publicly in his essay The Homosexual Villain, for One magazine. Kate Millett, in her Sexual Politics, critiques Mailer: "His considerable insights into the practice of sexuality as a power game never seem to affect his vivid personal enthusiasm for the fight nor his sturdy conviction that it's kill or be killed."

Views on race
Mailer focused on jazz as the ultimate expression of African-American bravado, and figures like Miles Davis would become represented in works like An American Dream. For Mailer, African-American men reflected a challenge to his own notions of masculinity.

While in Paris in 1956, Mailer met the African-American author James Baldwin. Mailer became even more fascinated with African-Americans after meeting Baldwin, and this friendship inspired Mailer to write "The White Negro". To Mailer, Baldwin was a natural point of intrigue as Baldwin was both gay and an African-American author, similar to Mailer's stature.

Marriages and children
Mailer was married six times and had nine children. He fathered eight children by his various wives and informally adopted his sixth wife's son from another marriage.

Mailer's first marriage was to Beatrice Silverman. They eloped in January 1944 because neither family would likely have approved. They had one child, Susan, and divorced in 1952 because of Mailer's infidelities with Adele Morales.

Morales moved in with Mailer during 1951 into an apartment on First Avenue near Second Street in the East Village, and they married in 1954. They had two daughters, Danielle and Elizabeth. After hosting a party on Saturday, November 19, 1960, Mailer stabbed Adele twice with a two-and-a-half inch blade that he used to clean his nails, nearly killing her by puncturing her pericardium. He stabbed her once in the chest and once in the back. Adele required emergency surgery but made a quick recovery. Mailer claimed he had stabbed Adele "to relieve her of cancer". He was involuntarily committed to Bellevue Hospital for 17 days. While Adele did not press charges, saying she wanted to protect their daughters, Mailer later pleaded guilty to a reduced charge of assault saying, "I feel I did a lousy, dirty, cowardly thing", and received a suspended sentence of three years' probation. In 1962, the two divorced. In 1997, Adele published a memoir of their marriage entitled The Last Party, which recounted her husband stabbing her at a party and the aftermath. This incident has been a focal point for feminist critics of Mailer, who point to themes of sexual violence in his work.

His third wife, whom he married in 1962 and divorced in 1963, was the British heiress and journalist Lady Jeanne Campbell (1929–2007). She was the only daughter of Ian Campbell, 11th Duke of Argyll, a Scottish aristocrat and clan chief with a notorious private life, and his first wife Janet Gladys Aitken, who was a daughter of the press baron Max Aitken, 1st Baron Beaverbrook. The couple had a daughter, actress Kate Mailer.

His fourth marriage, in 1963, was to Beverly Bentley, a former model turned actress. She was the mother of two of his sons, producer Michael Mailer and actor Stephen Mailer. They divorced in 1980.

His fifth wife was Carol Stevens, a jazz singer whom he married on November 7, 1980, and divorced in Haiti on November 8, 1980, thereby legitimating their daughter Maggie, born in 1971.

His sixth and last wife, whom he married in 1980, was Norris Church Mailer (born Barbara Jean Davis, 1949–2010), an art teacher. They had one son together, John Buffalo Mailer, a writer and actor. Mailer raised and informally adopted Matthew Norris, Church's son by her first husband, Larry Norris. Living in Brooklyn, New York and Provincetown, Massachusetts with Mailer, Church worked as a model, wrote and painted.

Works with his children
In 2005, Mailer co-wrote a book with his youngest child, John Buffalo Mailer, titled The Big Empty. Mailer appeared in a 2004 episode of Gilmore Girls titled "Norman Mailer, I'm Pregnant!" with his son Stephen Mailer.

Other relationships
Over the course of his life, Mailer was connected with several women other than his wives, including Carole Mallory, who wrote a "tell all" biography, Loving Mailer, after his death.

In a chance meeting in an Upper East Side New York restaurant in 1982, Gloria Leonard first met Mailer. He struck up a conversation with Leonard after recognizing her. The meeting was rumored to have led to a brief affair between the two. Later, Leonard was approached by a group of movie distributors from the Midwest to finance what was described as "the world's first million-dollar pornographic movie". She invited Mailer to lunch and made her pitch for his services as a writer. In an interview Leonard said that the author "sat straight up in his chair and said, 'I always knew I'd one day make a porny. Leonard then asked what his fee would be and Mailer responded with "Two-hundred fifty thousand". Leonard then asked if he'd be interested in adapting his novel-biography of Marilyn Monroe, but Mailer replied that he wanted to do something original. The project later ended due to scheduling conflicts between the two.

Personality
At the December 15, 1971 taping of The Dick Cavett Show with Janet Flanner and Gore Vidal, Mailer, annoyed with a less-than-stellar review by Vidal of Prisoner of Sex, allegedly insulted and head-butted Vidal backstage. As the show began taping a visibly belligerent Mailer, who admitted he had been drinking, goaded Vidal and Cavett into trading insults with him on-air and referred to his own "greater intellect". He openly taunted and mocked Vidal, who responded in kind, and earned the ire of Flanner who announced during the discussion that she was "...becoming very, very bored..." Flanner told Mailer and Vidal "...you act as if you're the only people here." As Cavett made jokes comparing Mailer's intellect to his ego, Mailer stated "Why don't you look at your question sheet and ask your question?", to which Cavett responded "Why don't you fold it five ways and put it where the moon don't shine?" A long laugh ensued after which Mailer asked Cavett if he had come up with that line. Cavett replied "I have to tell you a quote from Tolstoy?" The head-butting and later on-air altercation was described by Mailer himself in his essay "Of a Small and Modest Malignancy, Wicked and Bristling with Dots".

According to his obituary in The Independent, his "relentless machismo seemed out of place in a man who was actually quite small – though perhaps that was where the aggression originated."

Alan Dershowitz, in his book, Taking the Stand, recounts when Claus von Bülow had a dinner party after he was found not guilty at his trial. Dershowitz countered that he would not attend if it was a "victory party", and von Bülow assured him that it was only a dinner for "several interesting friends". Norman Mailer attended the dinner where, among other things, Dershowitz explained why the evidence pointed to von Bülow's innocence. As Dershowitz recounted, Mailer grabbed his wife's arm, and said: "Let's get out of here. I think this guy is innocent. I thought we were going to be having dinner with a man who actually tried to kill his wife. This is boring."

Death and legacy
Mailer died of acute renal failure on November 10, 2007, a month after undergoing lung surgery at Mount Sinai Hospital in Manhattan. He is buried in Provincetown Cemetery, Provincetown, Massachusetts.

Mailer was referenced in the song "Vlad the Impaler," by American heavy metal band GWAR on their 1990 album Scumdogs of the Universe.

More than a thousand boxes of Mailer's papers are housed at the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas, Austin.

In 2008, Carole Mallory, a former mistress, sold seven boxes of documents and photographs to Harvard University, Mailer's alma mater. They contain extracts of her letters, books and journals.

In 2003, the Norman Mailer Society was founded to help ensure the legacy of Mailer's work. In 2008, The Norman Mailer Center and The Norman Mailer Writers Colony, a non-profit organization for educational purposes, was established to honor Mailer. Among its programs is the Norman Mailer Prize established in 2009.

Throughout his lifetime, Mailer wrote more than 45,000 letters. In 2014, Mailer's biographer J. Michael Lennon chose 712 of those letters and published them in Selected Letters of Norman Mailer, which covers the period between the 1940s and the early 2000s.

In March 2018, the Library of America published a two-volume collection of Mailer's works from the sixties: Four Books of the 1960s and Collected Essays of the 1960s. Critic David Denby suggests that based on Mailer's observations about the fractured political atmosphere in America that led to the 1967 march on the Pentagon, Mailer's work seems to be as relevant today as it was fifty years ago and that "Mailer may be due for reappraisal and revival."

In May 2018, the Norman Mailer Society and the city of Long Branch, New Jersey co-sponsored the installation of a bronze plaque where the Mailer family's Queen-Anne style hotel, the Scarboro, used to stand on the city's beachfront.

In October 2019, Wilkes University's Farley Library opened a replica of Mailer's last study in Provincetown, Massachusetts, replete with "some of his private library, manuscripts and revisions dating from 1984 as well as his studio furniture". The archive also houses Mailer's entire 4,000-volume library from his home in Brooklyn and an original portrait of Mailer by painter Nancy Ellen Craig donated by Mailer's daughter Danielle. The room opened with an event on October 10, 2019, to coincide with the annual conference of the Norman Mailer Society and was attended by several members of Mailer's family.

In 2019, Susan Mailer, Norman's eldest daughter, published a memoir about her relationship with her father. In Another Place: With and Without My Father Norman Mailer explores her "intense and complex" relationship with her father and the extended Mailer family. Reviewer Nicole DePolo writes that Susan Mailer, a psychoanalyst, provides sharp insights about her father in "crisp, vibrant prose that captures the essence of moments that are both remarkable and universally resonant".

In 2023, How to Come Alive with Norman Mailer, a documentary by Jeff Zimbalist, was released.

Works
 Novels
 * The Naked and the Dead. New York: Rinehart, 1948.
 * Barbary Shore. New York: Rinehart, 1951.
 * The Deer Park. New York: Putnam's, 1955.
 * An American Dream. New York: Dial, 1965.
 * Why Are We in Vietnam? New York: Putnam, 1967.
 * A Transit to Narcissus. New York: Howard Fertig, 1978.
 * The Executioner's Song Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1979.
 * Of Women and Their Elegance. New York, Simon and Schuster, 1980.
 * Ancient Evenings. Boston: Little, Brown, 1983.
 * Tough Guys Don't Dance. New York: Random House, 1984.
 * Harlot's Ghost. New York: Random House, 1991.
 * The Gospel According to the Son. New York: Random House, 1997.
 * The Castle in the Forest. New York: Random House, 2007.

 Plays and screenplays
 * The Deer Park: A Play. New York: Dial, 1967.
 * Maidstone: A Mystery. New York: New American Library, 1971.

 Short Stories
 * The Short Fiction of Norman Mailer. New York: Dell, 1967.

 Poetry
 * Deaths for the Ladies (And Other Disasters). New York: Putman, 1962.
 * Modest Gifts: Poems and Drawings. New York: Random House, 2003.

 Essays
 * "The White Negro." San Francisco: City Lights, 1957.
 * The Bullfight: A Photographic Narrative with Text by Norman Mailer. New York: Macmillan, 1967.
 * The Prisoner of Sex. Boston: Little, Brown, 1971.
 * The Faith of Graffiti. New York: Praeger, 1974.
 * Genius and Lust: A Journey through the Major Writings of Henry Miller. New York: Grove, 1976.
 * Why Are We At War? New York: Random House, 2003.

 Letters
 * Norman Mailer's Letters on An American Dream, 1963-1969. Shavertown, PA: Sligo Press, 2004.
 * The Selected Letters of Norman Mailer. New York: Random House, 2014.

 Non-fiction narratives
 * The Armies of the Night. New York: New American Library, 1968.
 * The Idol and the Octopus: Political Writings on the Kennedy and Johnson Administrations. New York: Dell, 1968.
 * Miami and the Siege of Chicago: An Informal History of the Republican and Democratic Conventions of 1968. New York: New American Library, 1968.
 * Of a Fire on the Moon. Boston: Little, Brown, 1971.
 * King of the Hill: Norman Mailer on the Fight of the Century. New York: New American Library, 1971.
 * St. George and The Godfather. New York: Signet Classics, 1972.
 * The Fight. Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1975.
 * Of a Small and Modest Malignancy, Wicked and Bristling with Dots. Northridge, CA: Lord John Press, 1980.
 * Oswald's Tale: An American Mystery. New York: Random House, 1995.

 Miscellanies, anthologies, and collections
 * Advertisements for Myself. New York: Putnam, 1959.
 * The Presidential Papers. New York: Putnam, 1963.
 * Cannibals and Christians. New York: Dial, 1966.
 * The Long Patrol: 25 Years of Writing from the Work of Norman Mailer. New York: World, 1971.
 * Existential Errands. Boston: Little, Brown, 1972.
 * Some Honorable Men: Political Conventions, 1960-1972. Boston: Little, Brown, 1976.
 * Pieces and Pontifications. Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1982.
 * Conversations with Norman Mailer. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1988.
 * The Time of Our Time. New York: Random House, 1998.
 * The Spooky Art: Some Thoughts on Writing. New York: Random House, 2003.
 * The Big Empty. New York: Nation Books, 2006.
 * On God: An Uncommon Conversation. With J. Michael Lennon. New York: Random House, 2007.
 * Lipton's: A Marijuana Journal. New York: Arcade, 2024.

 Biographies
 * Marilyn: A Biography. New York: Grosset & Dunlap, 1973.
 * Portrait of Picasso as a Young Man: An Interpretive Biography. Atlantic Monthly Press, 1995.
 * Oswald's Tale: An American Mystery. New York: Random House, 1996.

Decorations and awards

 * 1969: Pulitzer Prize, George Polk Award, and National Book Award for The Armies of the Night; Honorary Doctor of Letters from Rutgers University
 * 1970: Harvard University's Signet Society Medal for Achievement in the Arts
 * 1973: Edward MacDowell Medal
 * 1975: Playboy's Best Nonfiction Award for The Fight
 * 1976: Gold Medal for Literature by the National Arts Club; Playboy's Best Major Work in Fiction Award
 * 1979: Best Major Work in Fiction Award from Playboy for The Executioner's Song
 * 1980: Pulitzer Prize for Executioner's Song
 * 1984: Honorary Doctor of Letters from Mercy College in White Plains, NY; Inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Letters
 * 1985: Lord and Taylor's Rose Award
 * 1987: Independent Spirit Award for best film and Golden Raspberry Award for Worst Director (both for Tough Guys Don't Dance)
 * 1989: PEN Oakland / Josephine Miles Award; Emerson-Thoreau Medal
 * 1991: New York State Edith Wharton Citation of Merit
 * 1994: Harvard University's Signet Society Medal for Achievement in the Arts
 * 1995: Honorary Doctor of Letters from Wilkes University, in Wilkes-Barre, PA
 * 2000: F. Scott Fitzgerald Award for Achievement in American Literature
 * 2002: Lifetime Achievement Award from the James Jones Literary Society, June 22; Austrian Cross of Honour for Science and Art, 1st class
 * 2004: Golden Plate Award of the American Academy of Achievement
 * 2005: National Book Award for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters

Selected bibliography
Contains important books and articles about Mailer and his works, many of which are cited in this article. See Works above for a list of Mailer's first editions and Mailer's individual works for reviews.

Bibliographies

 * Comprehensive, annotated primary and secondary bibliography with life chronology.
 * Comprehensive, annotated primary and secondary bibliography with life chronology.
 * Comprehensive, annotated primary and secondary bibliography with life chronology.

Biographical studies

 * Highly readable, but controversial "oral" biography of Mailer created by cross-cutting interviews with friends, enemies, acquaintances, relatives, wives of Mailer, and Mailer himself.
 * Highly readable, but controversial "oral" biography of Mailer created by cross-cutting interviews with friends, enemies, acquaintances, relatives, wives of Mailer, and Mailer himself.
 * Highly readable, but controversial "oral" biography of Mailer created by cross-cutting interviews with friends, enemies, acquaintances, relatives, wives of Mailer, and Mailer himself.
 * Highly readable, but controversial "oral" biography of Mailer created by cross-cutting interviews with friends, enemies, acquaintances, relatives, wives of Mailer, and Mailer himself.

Critical studies

 * Strong discussion of early narrators.
 * Contains Aldridge's important essay on An American Dream.

 * Fine discussion of Mailer's "heroic consciousness".
 * Perhaps the most readable and reliable study of Mailer's early work.
 * Perhaps the most readable and reliable study of Mailer's early work.
 * Perhaps the most readable and reliable study of Mailer's early work.

 * One of the best studies of Mailer's writing, tracking his career through the early seventies.
 * One of the best studies of Mailer's writing, tracking his career through the early seventies.

 * Subtle examination of Mailer's dual aptitude of representing and resisting American mythologies.
 * Subtle examination of Mailer's dual aptitude of representing and resisting American mythologies.
 * Subtle examination of Mailer's dual aptitude of representing and resisting American mythologies.
 * Subtle examination of Mailer's dual aptitude of representing and resisting American mythologies.
 * Subtle examination of Mailer's dual aptitude of representing and resisting American mythologies.

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: Norman Mailer


text:
Sphex

Wasps of the genus Sphex (commonly known as digger wasps) are cosmopolitan predators that sting and paralyze prey insects. Sphex is one of many genera in the old digger wasp family Sphecidae (sensu lato), though most apart from the Sphecinae have now been moved to the family Crabronidae. There are over 130 known Sphex species.

Behaviour
In preparation for egg laying, they construct a protected "nest" (some species dig nests in the ground, while others use pre-existing holes) and then stock it with captured insects. Typically, the prey are left alive, but paralyzed by wasp toxins. The wasps lay their eggs in the provisioned nest and the wasp larvae feed on the paralyzed insects as they develop.

The great golden digger wasp (Sphex ichneumoneus) is found in North America. The developing wasps spend the winter in their nest. When the new generation of adults emerge, they contain the genetically programmed behaviors required to carry out another season of nest building. During the summer, a female might build as many as six nests, each with several compartments for her eggs. The building and provisioning of the nests takes place in a stereotypical, step-by-step fashion.

Sphex has been shown, as in some Jean-Henri Fabre studies, not to count how many crickets it collects for its nest. Although the wasp instinctively searches for four crickets, it cannot take into account a lost cricket, whether the cricket has been lost to ants or flies or simply been misplaced. Sphex drags its cricket prey towards its burrow by the antennae; if the antennae of the cricket are cut off, the wasp would not think to continue to pull its prey by a leg.

The navigation abilities of Sphex were studied by the ethologist Niko Tinbergen. Richard Dawkins and Jane Brockmann later studied female rivalry over nesting holes in Sphex ichneumoneus.

Use in philosophy
Some writers in the philosophy of mind, most notably Daniel Dennett, have cited Sphex's behavior for their arguments about human and animal free will.

Some Sphex wasps drop a paralyzed insect near the opening of the nest. Before taking provisions into the nest, the Sphex first inspects the nest, leaving the prey outside. During the inspection, an experimenter can move the prey a few inches away from the opening. When the Sphex emerges from the nest ready to drag in the prey, it finds the prey missing. The Sphex quickly locates the moved prey, but now its behavioral "program" has been reset. After dragging the prey back to the opening of the nest, once again the Sphex is compelled to inspect the nest, so the prey is again dropped and left outside during another stereotypical inspection of the nest. This iteration can be repeated several times without the Sphex changing its sequence; by some accounts, endlessly. Dennett's argument quotes an account of Sphex behavior from Dean Wooldridge's Machinery of the Brain (1963). Douglas Hofstadter and Daniel Dennett have used this mechanistic behavior as an example of how seemingly thoughtful behavior can actually be quite mindless, the opposite of free will (or, as Dennett described it, sphexishness).

Philosopher Fred Keijzer challenges this use of Sphex, citing experiments in which behavioral adaptations are observed after many iterations. Keijzer sees the persistence of the Sphex example in cognitive theory as an indication of its rhetorical usefulness, not its factual accuracy. Of course, the repeated inspection of a disturbed nest may very well be an adaptive behavior, thus diminishing the aptness of Hofstadter's metaphor.

Species
The genus Sphex contains 132 extant species:

 * Sphex abyssinicus (Arnold, 1928)
 * Sphex afer Lepeletier de Saint Fargeau, 1845
 * Sphex ahasverus Kohl, 1890
 * Sphex alacer Kohl, 1895
 * Sphex antennatus F. Smith, 1856
 * Sphex argentatissimus Dörfel and Ohl, 2015
 * Sphex argentatus Fabricius, 1787
 * Sphex argentinus Taschenberg, 1869
 * Sphex ashmeadi (Fernald, 1906)
 * Sphex atropilosus Kohl, 1885
 * Sphex basilicus (R. Turner, 1915)
 * Sphex bilobatus Kohl, 1895
 * Sphex bohemanni Dahlbom, 1845
 * Sphex brachystomus Kohl, 1890
 * Sphex brasilianus Saussure, 1867
 * Sphex brevipetiolatus Dörfel and Ohl, 2015
 * Sphex caelebs Dörfel and Ohl, 2015
 * Sphex caeruleanus Drury, 1773
 * Sphex caliginosus Erichson, 1849
 * Sphex camposi Campos, 1922
 * Sphex carbonicolor Van der Vecht, 1973
 * Sphex castaneipes Dahlbom, 1843
 * Sphex cognatus F. Smith, 1856
 * Sphex confrater Kohl, 1890
 * Sphex corporosus Dörfel and Ohl, 2015
 * Sphex cristi Genaro in Genaro & Juarrero, 2000
 * Sphex cubensis (Fernald, 1906)
 * Sphex darwinensis R. Turner, 1912
 * Sphex decipiens Kohl, 1895
 * Sphex decoratus F. Smith, 1873
 * Sphex deplanatus Kohl, 1895
 * Sphex diabolicus F. Smith, 1858
 * Sphex dorsalis Lepeletier de Saint Fargeau, 1845
 * Sphex dorycus Guérin-Méneville, 1838
 * Sphex ephippium F. Smith, 1856
 * Sphex ermineus Kohl, 1890
 * Sphex erythrinus (Guiglia, 1939)
 * Sphex ferrugineipes W. Fox, 1897
 * Sphex finschii Kohl, 1890
 * Sphex flammeus Dörfel and Ohl, 2015
 * Sphex flavipennis Fabricius, 1793
 * Sphex flavovestitus F. Smith, 1856
 * Sphex formosellus Van der Vecht, 1957
 * Sphex fortunatus Dörfel and Ohl, 2015
 * Sphex fumicatus Christ, 1791
 * Sphex fumipennis F. Smith, 1856
 * Sphex funerarius Gussakovskij, 1934 – golden digger wasp
 * Sphex gaullei Berland, 1927
 * Sphex gilberti R. Turner, 1908
 * Sphex gracilis Dörfel and Ohl, 2015
 * Sphex gisteli Strand, 1916
 * Sphex guatemalensis Cameron, 1888
 * Sphex habenus Say, 1832
 * Sphex haemorrhoidalis Fabricius, 1781
 * Sphex ichneumoneus (Linnaeus, 1758) – great golden digger wasp
 * Sphex imporcatus Dörfel and Ohl, 2015
 * Sphex incomptus Gerstaecker, 1871
 * Sphex ingens F. Smith, 1856
 * Sphex inusitatus Yasumatsu, 1935
 * Sphex jamaicensis (Drury, 1773)
 * Sphex jansei Cameron, 1910
 * Sphex jucundus Dörfel and Ohl, 2015
 * Sphex kolthoffi Gussakovskij, 1938
 * Sphex lanatus Mocsáry, 1883
 * Sphex latilobus Dörfel and Ohl, 2015
 * Sphex latreillei Lepeletier de Saint Fargeau, 1831
 * Sphex latro Erichson, 1849
 * Sphex leuconotus Brullé, 1833
 * Sphex libycus Beaumont, 1956
 * Sphex lucae Saussure, 1867
 * Sphex luctuosus F. Smith, 1856
 * Sphex madasummae Van der Vecht, 1973
 * Sphex malagassus Saussure, 1890
 * Sphex mandibularis Cresson, 1869
 * Sphex maroccanus Schmid-Egger, 2019
 * Sphex maximiliani Kohl, 1890
 * Sphex melanocnemis Kohl, 1885
 * Sphex melanopus Dahlbom, 1843
 * Sphex melas Gussakovskij, 1930
 * Sphex mendozanus Brèthes, 1909
 * Sphex mimulus R. Turner, 1910
 * Sphex mochii Giordani Soika, 1942
 * Sphex modestus F. Smith, 1856
 * Sphex muticus Kohl, 1885
 * Sphex neavei (Arnold, 1928)
 * Sphex neoumbrosus Jha & Farooqui, 1996
 * Sphex nigrohirtus Kohl, 1895
 * Sphex nitidiventris Spinola, 1851
 * Sphex nudus Fernald, 1903 – katydid wasp
 * Sphex observabilis (R. Turner, 1918)
 * Sphex opacus Dahlbom, 1845
 * Sphex optimus F. Smith, 1856
 * Sphex oxianus Gussakovskij, 1928
 * Sphex paulinierii Guérin-Méneville, 1843
 * Sphex pensylvanicus Linnaeus, 1763 – great black wasp
 * Sphex permagnus (Willink, 1951)
 * Sphex peruanus Kohl, 1890
 * Sphex praedator F. Smith, 1858
 * Sphex pretiosus Dörfel and Ohl, 2015
 * Sphex prosper Kohl, 1890
 * Sphex pruinosus Germar, 1817
 * Sphex resinipes (Fernald, 1906)
 * Sphex resplendens Kohl, 1885
 * Sphex rex Hensen, 1991
 * Sphex rhodosoma (R. Turner, 1915)
 * Sphex rufinervis Pérez, 1985
 * Sphex rufiscutis (R. Turner, 1918)
 * Sphex rugifer Kohl, 1890
 * Sphex satanas Kohl, 1898
 * Sphex schlaeflei Schmid-Egger, 2019
 * Sphex schoutedeni Kohl, 1913
 * Sphex schrottkyi (Bertoni, 1918)
 * Sphex semifossulatus Van der Vecht, 1973
 * Sphex sericeus (Fabricius, 1804)
 * Sphex servillei Lepeletier de Saint Fargeau, 1845
 * Sphex solomon Hensen, 1991
 * Sphex stadelmanni Kohl, 1895
 * Sphex staudingeri Gribodo, 1894
 * Sphex subhyalinus W. Fox, 1899
 * Sphex subtruncatus Dahlbom, 1843
 * Sphex tanoi Tsuneki, 1974
 * Sphex taschenbergi Magretti, 1884
 * Sphex tepanecus Saussure, 1867
 * Sphex texanus Cresson, 1873
 * Sphex tinctipennis Cameron, 1888
 * Sphex tomentosus Fabricius, 1787
 * Sphex torridus F. Smith, 1873
 * Sphex vestitus F. Smith, 1856
 * Sphex walshae Hensen, 1991
 * Sphex wilsoni Hensen, 1991
 * Sphex zubaidiyacus Augul, 2013

Fossil Species

 * †Sphex bischoffi Zeuner, 1931
 * †Sphex giganteus Heer, 1867
 * †Sphex obscurus Statz, 1936

title: Sphex


text:
Underground (1995 film)

Underground (Подземље / Podzemlje), is a 1995 comedy-drama film directed by Emir Kusturica, with a screenplay co-written with Dušan Kovačević. It is also known by the subtitle Once Upon a Time There Was One Country (Била једном једна земља / Bila jednom jedna zemlja), the title of the five-hour miniseries (the long cut) shown on Serbian RTS television.

The film uses the epic story of two friends to portray a Yugoslav history from the beginning of World War II until the beginning of the Yugoslav Wars. It is an international co-production with companies from Yugoslavia (Serbia), France, Germany, Czech Republic and Hungary. The theatrical version is 163 minutes. Kusturica stated in interviews that his original version ran for over five hours, and that co-producers forced edits.

Underground received critical acclaim, and won the Palme d'Or at the 1995 Cannes Film Festival. It was Kusturica's second win following When Father Was Away on Business (1985). It went on to win other honours.

Plot
In the morning of 6 April 1941 in Belgrade, the capital of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia, two bon vivants, Petar Popara, nicknamed Crni (Blacky) and Marko Dren, head home. They pass through Kalemegdan and shout salutes to Marko's brother Ivan, an animal keeper in the Belgrade Zoo. Marko lets Blacky's pregnant wife Vera know that they enrolled Blacky in the Communist Party (KPJ).

Part One: War
The hungover Blacky eats breakfast while Vera complains about his supposed affair with a theatre actress. After the roar of the planes is heard, German bombs begin falling on Belgrade. After the air raid is over, Blacky goes out against Vera's wishes and inspects the devastated city. Encountering ruins and escaped animals from the zoo, he also runs into disconsolate Ivan carrying Soni, a baby chimp. The Royal Yugoslav Army's resistance is broken, and German troops occupy and dismember the Kingdom. Blacky starts operating clandestinely as a communist activist along with Marko and others. Blacky occasionally visits his mistress Natalija Zovkov who has been assigned to a special actors' labour brigade that is helping the city's rebuilding effort under German occupational control. A celebrated actress in the National Theatre, Natalija has caught the eye of Franz, a high-ranking German officer.

Marko has set up a weapons stash in the cellar of his grandfather's house. Following their interception of a trainload of weapons, Marko and Blacky are identified as dangerous bandits in German radio bulletins. While Blacky hides in the woods as Germans are intensifying door-to-door raids, Marko takes Vera, Ivan and others into the cellar to hide. Vera is due and gives birth to a baby boy, who she names Jovan before dying.

In 1944, Blacky is in town to celebrate Jovan's birthday at a communist hangout. The two best friends head for the theatre and see Natalija performing on stage in front of Franz and other German officers. Blacky shoots Franz in the chest and, along with Natalija and Marko, reaches the river boat anchored outside Belgrade. There, they all get ready for a forced wedding despite Natalija's protestations.

The party is interrupted by German soldiers surrounding the boat. Franz yells, demanding Blacky and Marko release Natalija, who runs to him. Blacky is captured by Germans and tortured in a hospital with electric shocks while Franz and Natalija visit her brother Bata there. Meanwhile, Marko finds a way to enter the building through an underground sewer passage. Sneaking up on Franz, Marko strangles him to death with a cord in front of Natalija who switches sides once again. Marko then proceeds to free Blacky. They leave with fatigued Blacky hidden in a suitcase, but he is injured by a grenade.

Days later on Easter 1944, Marko and Natalija, now a couple, watch a comatose Blacky. In late October, the Red Army accompanied by Yugoslav Partisans enters Belgrade. Marko gives speeches from the National Theater balcony during the Trieste crisis, socializes with Josip Broz Tito, Ranković and Edvard Kardelj, and stands next to Tito during military parades through downtown Belgrade.

Part Two: Cold War
In 1961, Marko is one of Tito's closest associates and advisors. The physically recovered Blacky and company are still in the cellar under the impression that the War is still going on above. Marko and Natalija attend a ceremony to open a cultural center and unveil a statue of Petar Popara Blacky, who everyone thinks died, becoming a People's Hero. With the help of his grandfather who is in on the con, Marko oversees the weapons manufacturing and even controls time by removing hours to a day so the people in the cellar think that only 15 years passed since the beginning of World War II instead of 20.

The filming of a state-sponsored motion picture based on Marko's memoirs titled Proleće stiže na belom konju (Spring Comes On A White Horse) begins above ground. Soon, Blacky's 20-year-old son Jovan will marry Jelena, a girl he grew up with in the cellar. Soni wanders into a tank and fires it, blowing a hole in the wall. Soni wanders off, and Ivan follows.

Blacky, with his son Jovan, emerges from underground for the first time in decades. They encounter the movie set of and believing the war is still on, kill two extras and the actor playing Franz. In the manhunt, Jovan drowns but Blacky escapes.

Part Three: War
In 1992 at the height of the Yugoslav Wars, Ivan re-emerges with Soni, whom he was recently reunited with. He stumbles upon Marko, who attempts to broker an arms deal in the middle of a conflict zone. The deal falls through and Ivan catches up with Marko and beats him to unconsciousness, then commits suicide. Natalija arrives and rushes to Marko's side. They are captured by militants and they are ordered to be executed as arms dealers by militants' commander, Blacky.

Blacky moves his people out to the cellar that he lived years ago, taking Soni with him. He sees an image of Jovan in a well, and falls in while reaching for him.

In a dreamlike sequence, Blacky, Marko, and others are reunited at an outside dinner party, celebrating Jovan's wedding. Ivan gives a few parting words, ending with "Once upon a time, there was a country."

Cast

 * Miki Manojlović as Marko Dren, a career-climbing Communist Party activist who becomes its high-ranking official and organizer of the communist resistance weapons manufacturing during World War II as well as the lucrative arms trade after the war ends. In parallel, he becomes an influential and wealthy arms dealer as well as a post-war Communist Yugoslavia state dignitary.
 * Lazar Ristovski as Petar "Blacky" Popara, an electrician who idealistically joins the Communist Party right before World War II and goes on to mark himself out as a skilled and determined Partisan guerilla resistance fighter during the war's early stages only to end up in a weapons manufacturing cellar for the remainder of it. Once he finally emerges from the cellar, many decades after World War II ended, he becomes a Yugoslavian patriot during the Yugoslav Wars.
 * Mirjana Joković as Natalija Zovkov, an opportunistic theatre actress constantly switching loyalties
 * Slavko Štimac as Ivan Dren, Marko's stutterer brother who cares for zoo animals
 * Ernst Stötzner as Franz, a Wehrmacht officer in charge of occupied Belgrade during World War II. Stötzner also portrays the actor playing Franz in Proleće stiže na belom konju.
 * Srđan Todorović as Jovan Popara, Blacky's son, who lives almost his entire life underground
 * Mirjana Karanović as Vera, Blacky's wife
 * Danilo Stojković as Grandfather, Marko's grandfather who owns the cellar and helps perpetuate his ruse
 * Bora Todorović as Golub, the leader of the brass orchestra that frequently accompanies Blacky and Marko
 * Davor Dujmović as Bata, Natalija's crippled brother
 * Mirsad Tuka as Investigator
 * Predrag Zagorac as Tomislav

Production
The shooting of the film began in fall 1993 and lasted off-and-on until early spring 1995. The state-owned Radio Television of Serbia had a small role in financing the film, and the film used rented Yugoslav Army (VJ) equipment as props.

Soundtrack
The film's soundtrack includes music by Goran Bregović and the participation of Cesária Évora.

Critical reception
Underground has not been widely reviewed by English-language critics, though it has gained generally favorable reviews. Rotten Tomatoes reports an 86% approval rating based on 37 reviews, with an average rating of 7.5/10. The website's critics consensus reads: "Offering an insightful look at Communist Eastern Europe through the microcosm of a long friendship, Underground is an exhausting, exhilarating epic." Metacritic assigned the film a weighted average score of 79 out of 100, based on 17 critics, indicating "generaly favorable reviews".

In the New York Daily News, Dave Kehr lauded the film as "ferociously intelligent and operatically emotional," and Kevin Thomas of the Los Angeles Times called it a "sprawling, rowdy, vital film laced with both outrageous absurdist dark humor and unspeakable pain, suffering and injustice". Variety's Deborah Young reviewed the film after seeing it at the 1995 Cannes Film Festival, praising it as "a steamroller circus that leaves the viewer dazed and exhausted, but mightily impressed", and adding that "if Fellini had shot a war movie, it might resemble Underground".

Writing in Sight & Sound in November 1996, British author Misha Glenny delivered a stinging attack on critics who view Underground or Srđan Dragojević's Lepa sela lepo gore through a simplistic, reductionist pro- or anti-Serb critical lens.

Janet Maslin of the New York Times wrote that the film's "real heart is its devastating idea of a morning after: the moment when, after being in the grip of a political delusion lasting several decades, a man can emerge from a subterranean hiding place in his native Yugoslavia and be told that there is no Yugoslavia any more". While acknowledging that "the politics of Underground have been assailed and dissected by international audiences", she feels that "this debate is largely specious as there's no hidden agenda to this robust and not terribly subtle tale of duplicity with Mr. Kusturica's central idea being a daringly blunt representation of political chicanery that fools an entire society, and of the corruption that lets one man thrive at the expense of his dearest friend". In her article "Europe (Un)Divided: How Peace Was Won and the War Never Lost in Wim Wender's Lisbon Story (1995) and Emir Kusturica's Bila Jednom Jedna Zemlja/Underground (1995)" for the Journal for Contemporary European Studies, Evelyn Preuss points out how the film critiques dominant Western ideologies by showing East and West as well as past and present in a continuity rather than divided or marked by caesuras. This critique explains the fervent political response to the film.

Political response
Critics saw the characters Marko and Blacky as "Kusturica's idealization of Serbs trapped into desperate acts by history and others' evil while the cowardly characters in the film were Croats and Bosnians, who chose betrayal and collaboration."

Stanko Cerović, director of the Serbo-Croatian editorial department of Radio France Internationale, strongly denounced the film in June 1995, accusing Kusturica of spreading Serbian propaganda, using historical footage in cases except "the bombardment of Vukovar, or the three-year-long destruction of his native city by the Serbian army". However, in 2012 Cerović said that it was not propaganda and "It's quite possible that Underground will age well".

Throughout the 1990s, Kusturica was frequently attacked by French public intellectuals Bernard-Henri Lévy and Alain Finkielkraut in the French media over his life and career choices. Generally, the two viewed Kusturica as a "traitor who crossed over to the enemy side thus turning his back on his city, his ethnic roots, and his nation". Finkielkraut had not seen the film, but wrote in Libération "that offensive and stupid falsification of the traitor taking the palm of martyrdom had to be denounced immediately". Meanwhile, Lévy called Kusturica a "fascist author" while reserving his further judgment upon seeing the film. After watching Underground, Lévy called Kusturica a "racist genius in the mold of Louis-Ferdinand Céline". Other intellectuals such as André Glucksmann and Peter Handke joined the debate.

During the September 2008 discussion between the Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Žižek and Bernard-Henri Lévy on the issues surrounding the historical and social significance of May 1968 in France, Žižek brought up Underground and Kusturica to Lévy by saying: "Underground I think is one of the most horrible films that I've seen ... What kind of Yugoslav society you see in Kusturica's Underground? A society where people all the time fornicate, drink, fight - a kind of eternal orgy." Lévy answered that he considers himself an "enemy of Kusturica, the man", but that Underground is "not a bad movie" before going on to commend the film's narrative structure and conclude that "Kusturica is one of the cases, we have some writers like this, where the man is so, so, so more stupid than his work". Bosnian-American novelist Aleksandar Hemon criticized Underground in 2005, saying that it downplayed Serbian atrocities by "presenting the Balkan war as a product of collective, innate, savage madness."

Accolades
Underground won the Palme d'Or (Golden Palm) award at the 1995 Cannes Film Festival, considered the festival's highest honor. It was director Emir Kusturica's second such award after When Father Was Away on Business. Underground was selected as the Serbian entry for the Best Foreign Language Film at the 68th Academy Awards, but was not accepted as a nominee. Underground also nominated for Best Foreign Film at the 13th Independent Spirit Awards nearly 3 years after the film won Palme d'Or, but lost to The Sweet Hereafter.

Libel lawsuit
On 8 March 2001, Serbian newsmagazine Vreme published an op-ed piece by Serbian playwright Biljana Srbljanović under the headline "Hvala lepo" in which she refers to Underground in passing as "being financed by Milošević" and accuses Kusturica of being "an immoral profiteer". She goes on to accuse the director of "directly collaborating with the regime via his friend Milorad Vučelić". On 20 March 2001, Kusturica decided to sue Srbljanović for libel.

Before the first court date in September 2001, Vreme magazine organized a mediation attempt between the two parties, with Kusturica and Srbljanović meeting face to face in the magazine's offices. At the meeting Kusturica expressed willingness to drop the charges if Srbljanović issued a public apology, which Srbljanović refused. The next day at the first court date Srbljanović once again rejected the offer of a public apology. The court case thus continued with Kusturica's lawyer Branislav Tapušković presenting details of the film's financing sources, most of which were French production companies. On 11 December 2003, the municipal court ruled in Kusturica's favour, ordering Srbljanović to pay damages as well as to cover the court costs.

title: Underground (1995 film)


text:
Thematic vowel

In Indo-European studies, a thematic vowel or theme vowel is the vowel or  from ablaut placed before the ending of a Proto-Indo-European (PIE) word. Nouns, adjectives, and verbs in the Indo-European languages with this vowel are thematic, and those without it are athematic. Used more generally, a thematic vowel is any vowel found at the end of the stem of a word.

Outside Indo-European, the term "thematic vowel" is also used in the grammar of Kartvelian languages (see Georgian verb paradigm for more information on thematic vowels).

Proto-Indo-European
PIE verbs and nominals (nouns and adjectives) consist of three parts:
 * $$\underbrace{\underbrace{\mathrm{root+suffix}}_{\mathrm{stem}} + \mathrm{ending}}_{\mathrm{word}}$$

The thematic vowel, if present, occurs at the end of the suffix (which may include other vowels or consonants) and before the ending:
 * 'heat' > Ancient Greek θέρμος (thérmos)
 * '(he) bears' > Sanskrit bhárati, Gothic baíriþ

Athematic forms, by contrast, have a suffix ending in a consonant, or no suffix at all (or arguably a null suffix):
 * 'father' > English father
 * '(I) am' > English am

For several reasons, athematic forms are thought to be older, and the thematic vowel was likely an innovation of late PIE: Athematic paradigms (inflection patterns) are more "irregular", exhibiting ablaut and mobile accent, while the thematic paradigms can be seen as a simplification or regularisation of verbal and nominal grammar. In the Anatolian languages, which were the earliest to split from PIE, thematic verbs are rare or absent. Furthermore, during late PIE and in the older daughter languages, a number of athematic forms were replaced by thematic ones, as in prehistoric Greek *thes- 'god' versus *thes-o- > Classical Greek θεός (theós).

The thematic vowel technically belongs to the suffix and not the ending, as each suffix is inherently either thematic or athematic. It is also used in some cases to derive stems from roots directly, acting as a suffix in itself (as in the second example above). However, when considering endings which are different for thematic and athematic inflections, it is generally included in the endings as well; see the section on fusion below.

Verbs
In verbs, the thematic vowel is word-finally or when the following ending begins with a coronal obstruent (,,  or ) and  otherwise. Here is the present active indicative paradigm of 'carry':

For comparison, here is an example of an athematic verb, 'to draw'. The plural forms ablaut to zero-grade on the root and shift the accent to the ending:

(The first person singular ending is sometimes and sometimes, depending on tense, voice and thematicity.)

Origin
The PIE verb is characterized by two distinct sets of endings: one found in the thematic present and the perfect, and another found in the aorist and the athematic present. The middle endings seem like a mixture of these two. The thematic conjugation was widespread in what Donald Ringe terms "Western Indo-European" (Western IE), i.e. IE excluding Tocharian and especially Anatolian. The biggest problem on the origin of PIE thematic inflection is that the thematic endings have more in common with the PIE perfect (which formally, though not functionally and lexically, corresponds to the ḫi-conjugation in Hittite and other Anatolian languages), and that the actual etymological cognates reconstructed of thematic presents are few among the verbs belonging to the Anatolian ḫi-conjugation. In fact, most of the verbs belonging to the ḫi-conjugation in Anatolian actually have lexical cognates that inflect as athematic verbs in Western IE. All types of verbs belonging to the ḫi-conjugation in Hittite can be shown to have, or to originally have had the ablaut pattern with in the singular and the zero-grade in the plural, which is exactly the pattern of the Western PIE perfect.

The thematic presents in Western PIE also do not have quantitative ablaut, which indicates their relatively recent origin. This all has caused some linguists to speculate that perfect and thematic present endings go back to a single Early PIE prototype. According to Matasović, the Early PIE stative (becoming the perfect) is responsible for the original form of the thematic suffix, while the e-grade form is secondary. Verbs forming the underived thematic presents are overwhelmingly bivalent/transitive, and there are no statives in the Late PIE thematic inflection since all the original Early PIE statives either remained athematic presents, or they became Western PIE perfects. It is also probable that some Early PIE middle verbs also became thematic in the Western PIE period, since they lack middle correspondences in Anatolian.

Nouns
In nouns, the thematic vowel is almost always, and only becomes when there is no ending or when followed by  in the neuter nominative/accusative plural. Here is an example paradigm for 'bear', a thematic animate noun, supplemented by the neuter  'plough' for the nominative/accusative:

Again, athematic nouns show ablaut and accent shifts, mainly between the "strong" cases (nominative and vocative in all numbers, and accusative singular/dual) and the "weak" cases (all others). A few endings are also different from the thematic paradigm; for example, the nominative/accusative neuter has instead of. See Athematic accent/ablaut classes of PIE nouns for examples.

Origin
There are several theories about the rise of o-stems in PIE nominal inflection. Two are the most prominent:
 * o-stems reflect an ergative system that existed in the prehistory of PIE, and
 * o-stems arise from pronouns.

Ergative theory
Pedersen was the first to notice that the subject of the transitive verb looked as if it had the form of the genitive (a sigmatic case) if it were active, and as if it had the form of the instrumental case if it were inactive. Furthermore, the subject and object of intransitive verbs seemed to have the form of the absolutive (i.e. an asigmatic case). This caused an asymmetry between the valencies of transitive and intransitive verbs, summarized in the table below:

This theory was further developed by Beekes and Kortlandt, who assumed that the nominative syntax of old Indo-European languages was formed later and that the case system of the PIE language was primarily based on the ergative syntax. The same ending shared by the nominative and accusative neuter, originally designating inactive nouns, originated from the originally absolutive case, while the ergative was used with the active subject. Beekes claims the sigmatic genitive-ablative developed from the ergative. After the transformation of the ergative system into the nominative system, the form reconstructed as became the nominative, a new case of subject. Later what was to become the thematic vowel spread to other cases as well, giving rise to o-stem inflection.

Similar theories that assume the ergative past of the PIE syntax have been formulated by Gamkrelidze and Ivanov and Schmalstieg.

A related theory that also derives the thematic conjugation from an oblique case form was proposed by Ranko Matasović, who, however, identified the source form as the genitive. Matasović argued that the thematic o-stem nouns were the result of the nominalisation of adjectives, which in turn arose through the reinterpretation as nominative forms of original (attributively used) genitives of athematic (mostly deverbal) root-nouns. For example, the stem *(h)yug-o (cf. Latin 'iugum) was abstracted from *(H)yug-os, which was originally a genitive of a root noun *(H)yewg-s (cf. Latin coniūx).Thus, a phrase like *ukwsōn yug-os 'ox of yoking' was reinterpreted as 'yoked ox'. This theory, like the previous one, would explain why there is much evidence in favour of original syncretism of the nominative and genitive singular in the o-stems.

Pronominal theory
According to Jean Haudry o-stems originated from pronouns with a determining function that were suffixed to a nominal base, playing the role of a postpositional article. There exists a number of typological parallels for such a development:
 * in Balto-Slavic, where definite adjectives are formed by suffixing the PIE relative pronoun.
 * modern Balkan and Scandinavian languages, which developed postpositional determination using demonstratives
 * mimation and nunation in Semitic languages.

Developments from thematic and athematic paradigms
Thematic and athematic forms were passed on to the daughter languages of Proto-Indo-European. In the most ancient languages, such as Sanskrit and Ancient Greek, the distinction between athematic and thematic nouns and verbs is preserved. In later languages, the thematic versus athematic distinction in nouns was replaced by distinctions between various thematic ("vowel") and athematic ("consonant") declensions, and athematic verbs are typically regarded as irregular.

As a consequence of such language changes, the distribution of thematic and athematic words differs widely in Indo-European languages. Latin, for example, has only very few athematic verbs, while Sanskrit preserves a large number of these. Greek resembles both Sanskrit and Latin in different respects.

Fusion
Even in ancient languages, the thematic vowel is often indistinguishable from the case ending, because the two have fused together:

 * Old Latin sax-o-is > Classical Latin sax-īs, dative plural of sax-u-m (Old Latin sax-o-m) 'stone'
 * Homeric θε-ᾱ́-ων (the-ā́-ōn) > Attic θε-ῶν (the-ôn), genitive plural of θε-ᾱ́ (the-ā́) 'goddess'

In Latin, athematic verbs were lost, except for a few, which were considered irregular or adopted into one of the four thematic conjugations:

 * s-um, es, es-t, s-umus, es-tis, s-unt (irregular) 'be'
 * (ferō,) fer-s, fer-t, (ferimus,) fer-tis, fer-unt (irregular) 'carry'
 * (dō,) dā-s, da-t, da-mus, da-tis, da-nt (first conjugation) 'give'

Thematic a
Although the a of the Greek and Latin first declension was not originally a thematic vowel, it is considered one in Greek and Latin grammar. In both languages, first-declension nouns take some endings belonging to the thematic second declension. An a-stem noun was originally a collective noun suffixed with, the ending of the neuter plural.

 * (no case ending) > Proto-Italic *farβā > Latin barba 'beard'

Athematic vowels
Sometimes vowels near the end of a noun or verb, where one would expect a thematic vowel, are not actually thematic vowels. Either these vowels are placed after an e or o, or they are on their own.

In both Latin and Greek, there are athematic nouns whose stems end in i or u (with the allophones y or w before vowels). These include Latin nāvis 'ship' and Greek thesis 'placement'; Latin senātus 'council of elders' or 'senate' and Greek basileus 'king'. Because these vowels are not e or o, they are not thematic, and the nouns take the same endings as consonant-stem nouns.

 * Latin nāvi-s, senātu-s · rēg-s 'king'
 * Greek thesi-s, basileu-s · Arab-s (Araps) 'Arab'

In Latin, there are four conjugations depending on the vowel before the endings (which include the thematic vowel): a, e, none, i. Although all the verbs belonging to these conjugations are thematic, these four vowels are not the thematic vowel of the different declensions: the thematic vowel is an e/o that has either fused with the endings and conjugation vowel or changed to i/u.

In Greek, some of the Latin conjugations are represented by contracted verbs instead, in which the stem vowel contracts with the ending (which includes the thematic vowel). This results in different vowels in the ending from the non-contracted verbs.

 * tīmaeis > tīmāis 'you honor'

Latin
In Latin, nouns of the first, second, fourth, and fifth declensions are considered thematic; the first declension has the theme vowel a, the second o, the fourth u, and the fifth e. Stems with i are treated together with athematic stems in the third declension, as they came to closely resemble one another. Latin verbs are subject to a similar classification: the first conjugation contains vowel stems with a, the second with e, and the fourth with i. There are no Latin verbs with o or u, and very few are athematic, but they are considered irregular verbs.

For example, consider the noun endings of the Latin "first declension" singular of the word rosa 'rose': The vowel a is prominent in these case endings, so nouns like rosa came to be known as "a-stem" nouns, with a being the "theme vowel," and such a word was later analysed as having a stem containing a root plus a suffix. In fact, philologists now believe that the suffix in PIE was, with a laryngeal that usually became a in the daughter languages.

Sanskrit
Sanskrit grammar ordains a vikaraṇapratyaya (modificatory affix) between a verbal root and the tense-ending. Thematic verbal roots are those with an -a in the vikaraṇapratyaya, to wit, roots belonging to the 1st, 4th, 6th and 10th conjugation classes.

Among nominals, those with the prātipadika (stem) ending in -a would the thematic nominals by this definition.

Verbs
The distinction between thematic and athematic stems is especially apparent in the Greek verb; they fall into two classes that are marked by quite different personal endings. Thematic verbs are also called -ω (-ō) verbs in Greek; athematic verbs are -μι (-mi) verbs, after the first person singular present tense ending that each of them uses. The entire conjugation seems to differ quite markedly between the two sets of verbs, but the differences are really the result of the thematic vowel reacting (fusing) with the verb endings, apart from the first person singular which already had different endings for thematic and athematic verbs in PIE. In classical Greek, the present tense active endings for athematic verbs are:

 * -μι, -ς, σι, -μεν, -τε, -ασι(ν)
 * (-mi, -s, -si, -men, -te, -asi(n))

while the thematic verbs took the endings:

 * -ω, -εις, -ει, -ομεν, -ετε, -ουσι(ν)
 * (-ō, -eis, -ei, -omen, -ete, -ousi(n))

In Greek, athematic verbs, except for those that end in -νῡμι -nūmi, are a closed class of inherited forms from PIE.

Nouns
Greek preserves thematic nouns in the first (or alpha) declension and second (or omicron) declension, and athematic nouns in the third declension.

Declension of the athematic noun πούς (poús) 'foot':

Declension of the thematic noun ἄνθρωπος (ánthropos) 'human':

Other languages
Most other Indo-European languages have similar distinctions, or had them in their past. Marked contrasts between thematic and athematic verbs appear in Lithuanian, and Old Church Slavonic. In the Germanic and Insular Celtic languages, the theme vowels are often hard to perceive because of the loss of final vowels. However, their presence is still felt, in a manner that defines different ways of declining nouns or conjugating verbs, so philologists still occasionally speak of vowel stems and consonant stems in these languages as well.

While Old English still contrasted "vowel stems" (thematic) and "consonant stems" (athematic), this distinction is no longer a meaningful one in Modern English, as in other languages whose morphology has been drastically simplified by analogy.

Etymology
In the term thematic vowel, theme refers to the stem of a word. For example, in the Ancient Greek verb τέμνω (témnō) 'cut', tem- is the root, and temn- is the stem or theme for the present tense. Hence, thematic vowel loosely means "stem vowel".

title: Thematic vowel


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Columbus Clippers

The Columbus Clippers are a Minor League Baseball team of the International League (IL) and the Triple-A affiliate of the Cleveland Guardians. They are located in Columbus, Ohio, and are named for speedy merchant sailing vessels known as clippers. The team has played their home games at Huntington Park since 2009. They previously played at Cooper Stadium from 1977 to 2008.

The Clippers were established in 1977 as members of the Triple-A International League. In conjunction with Major League Baseball's reorganization of Minor League Baseball in 2021, the Clippers were shifted to the Triple-A East, but this was renamed the IL in 2022. They won seven IL championships during a 28-year affiliation with the New York Yankees (1979–2006). Columbus has won two more IL titles and two Triple-A championships since affiliating with Cleveland in 2009.

Before the Clippers
Professional baseball was first played in Columbus, Ohio, in 1877 by the Columbus Buckeyes of the International Association. It has been represented at the highest levels of Minor League Baseball nearly continuously since 1902, at first in the American Association by the Columbus Senators (1902–1930) and Columbus Red Birds (1931–1954) and then in the International League (IL) by the Columbus Jets (1955–1970). In 1971, the Jets moved to Charleston, West Virginia, as the Charleston Charlies, touching off a six-year drought of minor-league baseball in Columbus.

Pittsburgh Pirates (1977–1978)

The Columbus Clippers began play in 1977 as the Triple-A affiliate of the Pittsburgh Pirates in the International League. They played their home games at Franklin County Stadium, which opened in 1932 and was renamed Cooper Stadium in 1985. The Clippers were named for speedy merchant sailing vessels known as clippers. Consecutive seventh-place finishes in their first two seasons kept the team out of the playoffs. Off the field, the franchise was recognized with the 1977 Larry MacPhail Award for outstanding minor league promotions.

New York Yankees (1979–2006)
Columbus changed its affiliation to the New York Yankees in 1979 in what would become a 28-year relationship and the most successful period in Clippers history. From 1979 to 1982, the Clippers finished atop the league standings and won three consecutive Governors' Cups, the International League championship. The 1979 team, managed by Gene Michael, won the league title by defeating the Syracuse Chiefs in the finals. Outfielder Bobby Brown was selected as the 1979 IL Most Valuable Player (MVP) and Rick Anderson as the Most Valuable Pitcher. Additionally, the franchise won its second Larry MacPhail Award. Joe Altobelli's 1980 Clippers won the next Governors' Cup over the Toledo Mud Hens. First baseman Marshall Brant won the league MVP Award, Bob Kammeyer won the top pitcher award, and Altobelli was chosen as the Manager of the Year. In 1981, Frank Verdi led Columbus to its third title over the Richmond Braves in a championship series that was shortened due to inclement weather.

Columbus qualified for the playoffs in each of the next three seasons but was eliminated in the semifinals each time. Several Clippers were recognized with league awards during this period. Third baseman Tucker Ashford won the 1982 IL MVP Award. In 1984, catcher Scott Bradley was the MVP and Rookie of the Year, and the Clippers won a third Larry MacPhail Award. Outfielder Dan Pasqua was a dual MVP and Rookie of the Year in 1985. The 1985 club reached the finals, but they lost the Governors' Cup to the Tidewater Tides. Though missing the postseason in 1986, first baseman Orestes Destrade won the Rookie of the Year Award. The 1987 Clippers, managed by Bucky Dent, swept the Rochester Red Wings in the semifinals and Tidewater in the finals to win their fourth IL championship. Brad Arnsberg won the 1987 Most Valuable Pitcher Award. Columbus next returned to the playoffs in 1990 via a Western Division title, but they lost the single round of playoffs and the championship to Rochester. Outfielder Hensley Meulens was the MVP of the 1990 season, and Dave Eiland was the top pitcher.

Manager Rick Down led the Clippers to back-to-back Governors' Cup championships in 1991 and 1992. The 1991 team defeated the Pawtucket Red Sox in the finals. They then advanced to the Triple-A Classic, a postseason championship series against the Denver Zephyrs, champions of the American Association, where they were defeated, 4–1. The 1992 squad won their championship over the Scranton/Wilkes-Barre Red Barons. First baseman J. T. Snow was selected as the MVP and Rookie of the Year, while Sam Militello was chosen as the Most Valuable Pitcher. In a 2001 ranking by baseball historians, the 1992 Clippers were recognized as the seventy-second greatest minor league team of all time.

The franchise was awarded the 1995 John H. Johnson President's Award, recognizing them as the "complete baseball franchise—based on franchise stability, contributions to league stability, contributions to baseball in the community, and promotion of the baseball industry." Columbus won its final IL championship as a Yankees affiliate in 1996 under Stump Merrill after winning the Western Division title, sweeping the Norfolk Tides in the semifinals, and sweeping Rochester in the championship round. They reached the finals in 1997 but lost in the final round to Rochester and were eliminated in the semifinals in 1999 and 2004. A pair of Clippers won awards in 1999: Ed Yarnall as the Most Valuable Pitcher and first baseman Kurt Bierek as Rookie of the Year. In 2003, first baseman Fernando Seguignol was selected as the league MVP.

Washington Nationals (2007–2008)
The Clippers became the Triple-A affiliate of the Washington Nationals in 2007. The partnership lasted two seasons, with Columbus finishing with losing records each season and failing to qualify for the Governors' Cup playoffs. On September 1, 2008, the Clippers played their final game at Cooper Stadium before moving into a new facility the following season. Over 16,000 people attended the game, a 3–0 loss to Toledo.

Cleveland Indians / Guardians (2009–present)

In 2009, Columbus began their affiliation with the Cleveland Indians. The Clippers also began playing at Huntington Park, a $56-million dollar, 10,000-seat stadium located at the corner of Neil Ave. and Nationwide Blvd. in the Columbus's Arena District. The inaugural home opener was played on April 18, 2009, when 11,950 people in attendance saw the Clippers lose to Toledo, 3–1.

Managed by Mike Sarbaugh, Columbus won consecutive IL championships in 2010 and 2011. After clinching a 2010 wild card berth, they defeated the Scranton/Wilkes-Barre Yankees in the semifinals then won the Governors' Cup against the Durham Bulls. The league title sent them to the Triple-A National Championship Game, a single game against the Tacoma Rainiers, champions of the Pacific Coast League (PCL), which was won by Columbus, 12–6. As the 2011 Western Division winners, Columbus advanced to the finals with a win over Scranton/Wilkes-Barre and won the Governors' Cup over Durham. In the Triple-A National Championship Game, they defeated the PCL's Omaha Storm Chasers, 8–3. Sarbaugh was recognized as the 2011 IL Manager of the Year.

The 2014 Clippers won the Western Division title but were ousted from the Governors' Cup playoffs by Durham in the semifinals. In 2015, Columbus was declared co-champion of the Western Division after finishing the season tied for first place with the Indianapolis Indians. They were seeded as the division champion for the playoffs by tie-breaking procedures. Defeating Norfolk in the semifinals, the Clippers met the Indians in the Governors' Cup finals and won the IL championship under manager Chris Tremie. They then lost the Triple-A Championship to the PCL's Fresno Grizzlies, 7–0. Columbus returned to the postseason in 2016 via a Western Division title, but they fell to the Gwinnett Braves in the semifinals. Outfielder Yandy Díaz was the 2016 IL Rookie of the Year. In 2019, under manager Tony Mansolino, the team captured its last International League championship. With another Western Division title and a semifinal win over the Gwinnett Stripers, they won the Governors' Cup against Durham. At the Triple-A National Championship Game they lost to the Sacramento River Cats, 4–0. The start of the 2020 season was initially postponed due to the COVID-19 pandemic before being cancelled altogether.

Following the 2020 season, Major League Baseball assumed control of Minor League Baseball in a move to increase player salaries, modernize facility standards, and reduce travel. The Clippers were organized into the Triple-A East and maintained their affiliation with the Cleveland Indians. Columbus ended the season in fifth place in the Midwestern Division with a 56–62 record. No playoffs were held to determine a league champion; instead, the team with the best regular-season record was declared the winner. However, 10 games that had been postponed from the start of the season were reinserted into the schedule as a postseason tournament called the Triple-A Final Stretch in which all 30 Triple-A clubs competed for the highest winning percentage. Columbus finished the tournament tied for 23rd place with a 3–6 record.

In 2022, the Triple-A East became known as the International League, the name historically used by the regional circuit prior to the 2021 reorganization, after Major League Baseball acquired the rights to the name.

Awards

The franchise has been awarded these honors by Minor League Baseball.

Seventeen players, two managers, and two executives have won league awards in recognition for their performance with Columbus.

Radio and television
All Clippers home and road games are broadcast on WMNI AM 920 Live audio broadcasts are also available online through the station's website as well as on the team's website and the MiLB First Pitch app. Games can be viewed through the MiLB.TV subscription feature of the official website of Minor League Baseball.

As of 2021, Ryan Mitchell and Scott Leo serve as play-by-play announcers. Several former Clippers broadcasters have gone to work in Major League Baseball, including: John Gordon (1977–1981), Rick Rizzs (1981–1982), Pat Hughes (1982), Terry Smith (1983–2001), and Tom Hamilton (1987–1989).

title: Columbus Clippers


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WorldWideWeb

WorldWideWeb (later renamed Nexus to avoid confusion between the software and the World Wide Web) is the first web browser and web page editor. It was discontinued in 1994. It was the first WYSIWYG HTML editor.

The source code was released into the public domain on 30 April 1993. Some of the code still resides on Tim Berners-Lee's NeXT Computer in the CERN museum and has not been recovered due to the computer's status as a historical artifact. To coincide with the 20th anniversary of the research center giving the web to the world, a project began in 2013 at CERN to preserve this original hardware and software associated with the birth of the Web.

History
Tim Berners-Lee wrote what would become known as WorldWideWeb on a NeXT Computer during the second half of 1990, while working for CERN, a European nuclear research agency. The first edition was completed "some time before" 25 December 1990, according to Berners-Lee, after two months of development. The browser was announced on the newsgroups and became available to the general public in August 1991. By this time, several others, including Bernd Pollermann, Robert Cailliau, Jean-François Groff, and visiting undergraduate student Nicola Pellow – who later wrote the Line Mode Browser – were involved in the project.

Berners-Lee considered different names for his new application, including The Mine of Information and The Information Mesh, before publicly launching the WorldWideWeb browser in 1991. When a new version was released in 1994, it was renamed Nexus Browser, in order to differentiate between the software (WorldWideWeb) and the World Wide Web.

The team created so called "passive browsers" which do not have the ability to edit because it was hard to port this feature from the NeXT system to other operating systems. Porting to the X Window System was not possible as nobody on the team had experience with the X Window System.

Berners-Lee and Groff later adapted many of WorldWideWeb's components into a C programming language version, creating the libwww API.

A number of early browsers appeared, notably ViolaWWW. They were all eclipsed by Mosaic in terms of popularity, which by 1993 had replaced the WorldWideWeb program. Those involved in its creation had moved on to other tasks, such as defining standards and guidelines for the further development of the World Wide Web (e.g. HTML, and various communication protocols).

On 30 April 1993, the CERN directorate released the source code of WorldWideWeb into the public domain. Several versions of the software are still available on the web in various states. Berners-Lee initially considered releasing it under the GNU General Public License, but after hearing rumors that companies might balk at the concept if any licensing issues were involved, he eventually opted to release it into the public domain. In 2021, Sotheby's held an auction for an NFT of the WorldWideWeb source code.

Features
Since WorldWideWeb was developed on and for the NeXTSTEP platform, the program uses many of NeXTSTEP's components – WorldWideWeb's layout engine was built around NeXTSTEP's Text class.

WorldWideWeb is capable of displaying basic style sheets, downloading and opening any file type with a MIME type that is also supported by the NeXT system (PostScript, movies, and sounds ), browsing newsgroups, and spellchecking. In earlier versions, images are displayed in separate windows, until NeXTSTEP's Text class gained support for Image objects. WorldWideWeb is able to use different protocols: FTP, HTTP, NNTP, and local files. Later versions are able to display inline images.

The browser is also a WYSIWYG editor. It allows the simultaneous editing and linking of many pages in different windows. The functions "Mark Selection", which creates an anchor, and "Link to Marked", which makes the selected text an anchor linking to the last marked anchor, allow the creation of links. Editing pages remotely is not possible, as the HTTP PUT method had not yet been implemented during the period of the application's active development. Files can be edited in a local file system which is in turn served onto the Web by an HTTP server.

WorldWideWeb's navigation panel contains Next and Previous buttons that automatically navigate to the next or previous link on the last page visited, similar to Opera's Rewind and Fast Forward buttons, or HyperCard; i.e., if one navigated to a page from a table of links, the Previous button would cause the browser to load the previous page linked in the table. This is useful for web pages which contain lists of links. Many still do, but the user interface link-chaining was not adopted by other contemporary browser writers, and it only gained popularity later. An equivalent functionality is nowadays provided by connecting web pages with explicit navigation buttons repeated on each webpage among those links, or with typed links in the headers of the page. This places more of a burden on web site designers and developers, but allows them to control the presentation of the navigation links.

WorldWideWeb does not have bookmarks as they exist in later browsers, but a similar feature was provided: to save a link for later use, users could link to it from their own home page (start page). Users could create multiple home pages, similar to folders in modern web browsers' bookmarks.

title: WorldWideWeb


text:
South Dakota-class battleship

South Dakota-class battleship may refer to either of two battleship classes of the United States Navy:

 * South Dakota-class battleship (1920), a class of six ships authorized but never completed
 * South Dakota-class battleship (1939), a class of four ships which saw service in World War II

title: South Dakota-class battleship