The second of Norman Mailer's six wives, who was stabbed by the pugnacious Pulitzer Prize-winning writer after a party 40 years ago, says she is living in poverty because he will not provide enough money.

Adele Mailer, 75, who lives in a rundown Manhattan apartment, said: "I have a life of deprivation. I have enormous debt. I'm using my credit cards for food."

Mailer pays his ex-wife £800 a month on top of her £200 payment from social security. But she claims in a lawsuit that the author, who has homes in fashionable Brooklyn Heights and Cape Cod, Massachusetts, should pay £5,100 a month.

Six years after the couple married in 1954, Mailer threw a party for guests who included the Beat poet Allen Ginsberg, journalists, boxers, actors and people he called in from the street.

"It was a party that was like a 20-headed, scaled monster sluggishly moving through those rooms, tracking filth, stinking of destruction," she wrote in her memoir, The Last Party. Mailer got into many fights and, by 4am, only he and his wife were left.

He stabbed her twice with a penknife, but she refused to file a complaint. Finally, he admitted assault and received a suspended sentence. The couple, who have two daughters, divorced two years later.

"I have no one to turn to, no means to obtain funds elsewhere, and I am reduced to begging for financial help," said the lawsuit filed on behalf of Mrs Mailer, who claims debts of more than £20,000.

"I do not seek a windfall, merely sufficient funds to live with some dignity and not have to beg for credit, knowing that I am going further and further into a black hole of debt."

Mailer, 78, declined to comment.