Cover art for a UK Corgi paperback edition of Norman Mailer’s 1955 The Deer Park, the writer’s infamous expose of Hollywood decadence set in mythical Desert D’Or (Palm Springs). A good novel or a dreadful one, I couldn’t say, but it was notorious in its day, the manuscript rejected by the publisher for obscenity even though it was already typeset and ready to go to press. Unprecedented at that time, Mailer kept his advance and took the book to another publisher.
Word to the wise: Cash the check, then talk.
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