Norman Mailer
Norman Mailer, in full Norman Kingsley
Mailer (b. Jan. 31, 1923, Long Branch,
N.J., U.S.—d. Nov. 10, 2007, New York,
N.Y.), American novelist and journalist,
best known for using a form of
journalism—called New Journalism—that
combines the imaginative subjectivity of
literature with the more objective
qualities of journalism. Both Mailer’s
fiction and his nonfiction made a
radical critique of the totalitarianism
he believed inherent in the centralized
power structure of 20th- and
21st-century America.
Mailer grew up in Brooklyn and graduated
from Harvard University in 1943 with a
degree in aeronautical engineering.
Drafted into the army in 1944, he served
in the Pacific until 1946. While he was
enrolled at the Sorbonne, in Paris, he
wrote The Naked and the Dead (1948),
hailed immediately as one of the finest
American novels to come out of World War
II.
Mailer’s success at age 25 aroused the
expectation that he would develop from a
war novelist into the leading literary
figure of the postwar generation. But
Mailer’s search for themes and forms to
give meaningful expression to what he
saw as the problems of his time
committed him to exploratory works that
had little general appeal. His second
novel, Barbary Shore (1951), and The
Deer Park (1955) were greeted with
critical hostility and mixed reviews,
respectively. His next important work
was a long essay, The White Negro
(1957), a sympathetic study of a
marginal social type—the “hipster.”
In 1959, when Mailer was generally
dismissed as a one-book author, he made
a bid for attention with the book
Advertisements for Myself, a collection
of unfinished stories, parts of novels,
essays, reviews, notebook entries, or
ideas for fiction. The miscellany’s
naked self-revelation won the admiration
of a younger generation seeking
alternative styles of life and art.
Mailer’s subsequent novels, though not
critical successes, were widely read as
guides to life. An American Dream (1965)
is about a man who murders his wife, and
Why Are We in Vietnam? (1967) is about a
young man on an Alaskan hunting trip.
A controversial figure whose egotism and
belligerence often antagonized both
critics and readers, Mailer did not
command the same respect for his fiction
that he received for his journalism,
which conveyed actual events with the
subjective richness and imaginative
complexity of a novel. The Armies of the
Night (1968), for example, was based on
the Washington peace demonstrations of
October 1967, during which Mailer was
jailed and fined for an act of civil
disobedience; it won a Pulitzer Prize
and a National Book Award. A similar
treatment was given the Republican and
Democratic presidential conventions in
Miami and the Siege of Chicago (1968)
and the Moon exploration in Of a Fire on
the Moon (1970).
In 1969 Mailer ran unsuccessfully for
mayor of New York City. Among his other
works are his essay collections The
Presidential Papers (1963) and Cannibals
and Christians (1966); The Executioner’s
Song (1979), a Pulitzer Prize-winning
novel based on the life of convicted
murderer Gary Gilmore; Ancient Evenings
(1983), a novel set in ancient Egypt,
the first volume of an uncompleted
trilogy; Tough Guys Don’t Dance (1984),
a contemporary mystery thriller; and the
enormous Harlot’s Ghost (1991), a novel
focusing on the Central Intelligence
Agency. In 1995 Mailer published
Oswald’s Tale, an exhaustive
nonfictional portrayal of U.S. Pres.
John F. Kennedy’s assassin. Mailer’s
final two novels intertwined religion
and historical figures: The Gospel
According to the Son (1997) is a
first-person “memoir” purportedly
written by Jesus Christ, and The Castle
in the Forest (2007), narrated by a
devil, tells the story of Adolf Hitler’s
boyhood.
In 2003 Mailer published two works of
nonfiction: The Spooky Art, his
reflections on writing, and Why Are We
at War?, an essay questioning the Iraq
War. On God (2007) records conversations
about religion between Mailer and the
scholar Michael Lennon.
