A Ticket to the Circus by Norman Church Mailer

Photo: Ben Goldstein/Studio D

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A Ticket to the Circus
By Norris Church Mailer
432 pages; Random House


Just how irresistible was Norman Mailer? Gloria Steinem said that anybody who would marry him couldn't be "healthy, well-adjusted, conscious, or aware"—but she was friends with him. Ditto the feminist Germaine Greer, close to him around the time Mailer was quoted as saying, "A little bit of rape is good for a man's soul..." Read more