Published in January by Harper Perennial, Mornings with Mailer: A Recollection of Friendship is Dwayne Raymond's portrait of the last four years of literary giant and 60-year Provincetown resident Norman Mailer. Culled from the days he spent working alongside the author of modern classics Armies of the Night and The Naked and the Dead, Raymond's book never falls into hero worship or--as might be more on par for a man of Mailer's reputation--ceaseless critique. Instead, it's an insightful, fairly comprehensive, and ultimately heartbreaking memoir of Mailer's efforts in his Commercial Street home before his death at age 84.

A former producer for MTV's Real World Boston before leaving television behind and subsisting on a waiter's wage in Provincetown restaurants, Mailer took on Raymond as an editorial aide for his final four books--the one of most substance being The Castle in the Forest--numerous essays, and Mailer's first foray into blogging, among other projects.

Raymond's memoir offers a new perspective of the author, one from which the prolific, protesting, prisoner-releasing, wife-stabbing, fist-wielding, egomaniac of legend is absent. Well...“prolific” can stay. Mailer comes across as a loving husband, a doting father, and a man of intelligence who valued writing and the people willing to pursue the craft above most everything else. And while there are glimpses of his famous temper, it remains clear that the Mailer of the mid-2000s is the not the same Mailer that hurled insults--and headbutts--at Gore Vidal.

The reader receives tremendous insight into Mailer's work process: an all-business grind of heavy reading and research erupting in furiously written drafts, carefully re-worked through countless edits. “Norman didn't revel in routine other than the small personal ones he'd created for himself. Spontaneity was a kind of lifeblood for him, not only in his thinking but in how he liked his immediate environment,” Raymond writes. In spite of the failures of his body that appeared less perceptibly at first and then overwhelmingly toward the end, Mailer kept working. He was generous with advice and compliments, and eager to stay a while longer to chat and sign books for admirers who stopped him on the street.

And then there were the meals: roasted chicken, omelets, borscht, and teriyaki sauce on almost everything. The meals, largely prepared by Raymond as part of his duties as editorial aide, are a constant in the book as much the Boston Globe crossword puzzle Mailer used to “comb his brain” before getting to the words. Some meals were solitary, silent, simple affairs. Others were multi-course events around a table stocked with family, friends, admirers, and others. “Even at dinner Norman created masterpieces out of commonplace moments,” Raymond writes.

In the self-absorbed realm of memoirs, when many authors fall face first fudging details and painting themselves as protagonists, Raymond keeps his focus on Mailer while remaining refreshingly, critically candid about his own shortcomings. The book is a quick 340 pages that could be read in a hurry or just as easily savored, digested, and considered.

Expect an interview with Dwayne Raymond in the May issue of Cape Cod Life, the first installment of a monthly book column.