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Norman Mailer’s Eclectic Life, as Seen Through His Last Home  Trevor Tondro for The New York Times

Norman Mailer expanded his fourth-floor apartment in Brooklyn Heights into a nautical adventureland and filled it with mementos of his life. Now that he and his wife are deceased, his nine children have listed the co-op for sale for $2.5 million.

by   JOSEPH BERGER

Among the furnishings, photographs and knickknacks that fill Norman Mailer’s curious apartment in Brooklyn Heights, a visitor can get a sense of the writer’s voracious appetite for the patchwork of experiences life has to offer.

MultimediaSlide ShowGalleys of All Kinds Found HereEnlarge This ImageSara Krulwich/The New York Times

Norman Mailer in June 2007, five months before his death. 

Enlarge This ImageTrevor Tondro for The New York Times

Some objects of Mailer's life, including a picture of Marilyn Monroe and a 1969 political campaign button.

Enlarge This ImageTrevor Tondro for The New York Times

Mailer's children may consider selling some things from his apartment.

There is a button for Mailer’s quixotic 1969 campaign for New York City mayor that says “I would sleep better if Norman Mailer were mayor.” There is a framed original print of Milton H. Greene’s leggy photograph of Marilyn Monroe, a Mailer obsession and the subject of two affectionate books. And there is a photograph of Mailer boxing with José Torres, a light heavyweight champion. Mr. Torres taught Mailer how to box on the condition that Mailer teach him how to write.

The protean Mailer died in 2007 at age 84; Norris Church, his wife of 27 years, died last November at 61. His son Michael, one of nine children Mailer had or adopted with the six women he married, took over the apartment, a quirky cross between a Victorian parlor and the cabin of a sailing yacht.

Now Michael and his eight siblings have put the apartment, a fourth-floor co-op overlooking the Promenade, the Statue of Liberty and the harbor framing the skyline of Lower Manhattan, on the market for $2.5 million and hope to share the proceeds. They have not quite decided what to do with the furniture, books and tchotchkes, but will probably divide them up. Yet, Michael Mailer said, they may be open to offers for some belongings from, say, someone planning a Norman Mailer Museum.

“It’s a tough thing to sell a family apartment because there are so many memories,” Mr. Mailer said. “A lot of us are not eager to sell it at all. It’s an unusual place and only someone with a particular sensitivity and style would buy it. If you’re a family it’s probably not very practical. It’s a dangerous place.”

Mr. Mailer, 47, a film producer, has been showing visitors around the apartment, which requires one to climb nautical ladders, brave narrow parapets high above the living room and walk a gangplank to view Mailer’s writing “crow’s nest.”

“Dad liked a view when he was writing,” Mr. Mailer said.

His father broke through the brownstone’s roof to create this multilevel nautical adventureland not only so his children could frolic but because Mailer, a son of Brooklyn’s pavements, had turned himself into a passionate sailor as well.

As he gives visitors the tour, Mr. Mailer hauls out stories that go with the objects. He recalls how his father — who wrote a book about the 1974 fight in Congo (then known as Zaire) between Muhammad Ali and George Foreman — gave him a pair of boxing gloves when he was 6 and later had Mr. Torres teach him how to box.

(more) 

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/03/nyregion/norman-mailers-last-home-still-reflects-his-life.html