AFTER EIGHTY YEARS, NORMAN MAILER GETS HIS DAY. Friday, January 31, 2003 proclaimed as "Norman Mailer Day" by the Provincetown Board of Selectmen Norman Mailer is presented with the proclamation of "Norman Mailer Day in the Town of Provincetown" by Provincetown Town Manager Keith A. Bergman.

PROCLAMATION

Be it hereby proclaimed that

WHEREAS, Provincetown’s most renowned Washashore, Norman Mailer, celebrates his eightieth birthday on Friday, January 31, 2003; and

WHEREAS, novelist Norman Mailer’s long and prolific literary career has included over 30 books, 7 of which in whole, and 18 in part, were written in Provincetown—and one, Tough Guys Don’t Dance; was actually set on this “spit of shrub and dune;” and

WHEREAS, in the nearly sixty years since his first landfall in Provincetown, Norman Mailer proved he was made of stronger stuff than the Pilgrims (the First Washashores) by ultimately becoming-- as they did not-- a Year-Rounder; and

WHEREAS, the citizens of Provincetown take pride in their adopted son’s achievements, which include two Pulitzer Prizes, a National Book Award, and an unrecorded number of arm wrestling championships; and

WHEREAS, Norman Mailer had the perspicacity to marry and bring to Provincetown Norris Church Mailer, painter/writer/theater artistic director, with whom he shares this birthday—albeit at some years’ head start;

NOW, THEREFORE, the Provincetown Board of Selectmen does hereby congratulate Norman Mailer upon the occasion of his Eightieth Birthday, and proclaim

Friday, January 31, 2003

as

Norman Mailer Day

in the Town of Provincetown.

In witness whereof, we hereunto set our hands and cause the seal of the Town Provincetown to be affixed, by vote of the Board of Selectmen on the twenty-seventh day of January, in the year 2003.

SELECTMEN OF PROVINCETOWN Mary-Jo Avellar, Chairman Dr. Cheryl Andrews, Clerk Michele Couture Sarah Peake Richard Olson ATTEST: Keith A. Bergman, Town Manager

Mailer on Provincetown. “There could be no other town like it. If you were sensitive to crowds, you might expire in summer from human propinquity. On the other hand, if you were unable to endure loneliness, the vessel of your person could fill with dread during the long winter. . . . “Conceived at night (for one would swear it was created in the course of one dark storm) its sand flats still glistened in the dawn with the most primeval innocence of land exposing itself to the sun for the first time.” – Tough Guys Don’t Dance, 1984

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