Mailer, Norman

Mailer, Norman, 1923–, American writer, b. Long Branch, N.J., grad. Harvard, 1943. He grew up in Brooklyn, N.Y., served in the army during World War II, and at the age of 25 published The Naked and the Dead (1948), one of the most significant novels to emerge from the war. His next two novels, Barbary Shore (1951) and The Deer Park (1955), were generally considered failures. More successful was An American Dream (1966), an exploration of sex, violence, and death in America through the experiences of his semiautobiographical protagonist.

The Armies of the Night (1968; Pulitzer Prize), is an account of the 1967 peace march on Washington, D.C., in the personalized style of the "new journalism." Among his other journalistic works are Miami and the Siege of Chicago (1969), A Fire on the Moon (1971), an account of the Apollo 11 moon flight, and The Executioner's Song (1979, Pulitzer Prize), on the life and execution of killer Gary Gilmore. The Prisoner of Sex (1971) is Mailer's response to the women's liberation movement. He also has written "interpretive biographies," Oswald's Tale (1995), a study of the life of President Kennedy's assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald, and Portrait of Picasso as a Young Man (1995), on the youth of Pablo Picasso.

Several recent novels have been long and intricate, and have met with decidedly mixed reviews: Ancient Evenings (1983) is set in pharaonic Egypt; Harlot's Ghost (1991) is a complex cold-war spy novel; and The Castle in the Forest (2007) is a fictional exploration of the boyhood of Adolf Hitler. A shorter detective novel, Tough Guys Don't Dance (1984), was made into a film in 1985. Among his other works are the nonfiction The White Negro (1958), Advertisements for Myself (1959), and Marilyn (1973).

Bibliography

See large retrospective anthology of his work, The Time of Our Time (1998), and anthology of his writings on writing, The Spooky Art (2003); biographies by H. Mills (1982), P. Manso (1986), C. Rollyson (1991), and M. V. Dearborn (1999); studies by B. H. Leeds (1969, 2002), L. Braudy, ed. (1972), R. Poirier (1972), J. Radford (1975), R. Merrill (1978, 1992), S. Cohen (1979), J. M. Lennon, ed. (1986), H. Bloom, ed. (1986, repr. 2003), J. Wenke (1987), N. Leigh (1990), M. K. Glenday (1995); bibliography by B. Sokoloff (1985).

---

Mailer, Norman

Mailer, 1968

(credit: Newsweek photo by Bernard Gotfryd, Copyright Newsweek, 1968)

(born Jan. 31, 1923, Long Branch, N.J., U.S.—died Nov. 10, 2007, New York, N.Y.) U.S. novelist. He studied at Harvard University. He drew on his wartime service in the Pacific for his novel The Naked and the Dead (1948), which established him as one of the major American writers of the post-World War II decades. A flamboyant and controversial figure who enjoyed antagonizing critics and readers, he became best known for journalistic works that convey actual events with the richness of novels, an approach known as New Journalism; these works include The Armies of the Night (1968, Pulitzer Prize), Miami and the Siege of Chicago (1968), Of a Fire on the Moon (1970), and The Executioner's Song (1979, Pulitzer Prize). His novels include An American Dream (1965); Harlot's Ghost (1991), about the Central Intelligence Agency; and The Castle in the Forest (2007), about Adolf Hitler.

---

Mailer, Norman (1923–  ) writer; born in Long Branch, N.J. He grew up in Brooklyn, excelled in the sciences in school, and majored in engineering at Harvard (B.S. 1943); but having written short stories and a novel before graduation, he was already committed to writing. He was drafted into the U.S. Army (1944–46) and volunteered for combat in the Pacific. After the war, he enrolled at the Sorbonne in Paris (1947–49) to take advantage of the G.I. Bill while writing. He became an overnight sensation with his first novel, The Naked and the Dead (1948), which at the time seemed rather shocking in its portrayal of men at war. His next two novels—Barbary Shore (1951) and Deer Park (1955)—pleased neither critics nor readers and he turned to expressing his increasingly more extremist social and political philosophy in magazine essays that were eventually collected in volumes such Advertisements for Myself (1959) and Cannibals and Christians (1966). After his novel The American Dream (1965) was generally dismissed as too outré for realistic Americans, he tended to concentrate on nonfiction works in which he impressed his own self onto public events or into others' lives—from the journey to the moon (Of a Fire on the Moon, 1970) to Marilyn Monroe's life (Marilyn, 1973). Meanwhile, his real-world doings and persona would often threaten to overwhelm his literary career; he seemed to be constantly engaged in verbal quarrels with such as Gore Vidal, in divorce proceedings with his various wives (one of whom he stabbed), or in contests to prove that he was the world's heavyweight champion of everything (actually engaging in boxing matches, running for mayor of New York City in 1960, and generally promoting himself as the heir of Ernest Hemingway). He also got distracted by becoming a producer, director, and actor in several bad movies. When he was at his best, however, as in the march on the Pentagon to protest the Vietnam War, an event that led to his Pulitzer Prize-winning Armies of the Night (1968), he was still an inimitably potent voice. Although his later novels, such as Ancient Evenings (1984) and Harlot's Ghost (1991), seemed like bids for the Nobel Prize, many would agree that he deserved it anyway, for his total work represents a truly resonant and creative attempt to probe the mysteries of contemporary individuals and society.

---

Mailer, Norman 

Born Jan. 31, 1923, in Long Branch, N. J. American author and essayist.

Mailer was educated as an engineer. During World War II he served in the navy in the Pacific. In The Naked and the Dead (1948; Russian translation, 1972), Mailer’s condemnation of militarism and fascistic elements in the US Army is combined with a naturalistic depiction of everyday life. In his later novels, Barbary Shore (1951), The Deer Park (1955), An American Dream (1965), and Why Are We in Vietnam? (1967), Freudian motifs become more apparent; satire on the American way of life is found next to existentialist views. In the 1960’s, Mailer was an active supporter of the movement against the war in Vietnam. His documentary reports The Armies of the Night (1968) and Miami and the Siege of Chicago (1968; Russian translation, 1971) brought him wide popularity.

WORKS

Advertisements for Myself. New York, 1959.
Of a Fire on the Moon. London, 1970.

REFERENCES

Istoriia amerikanskoi literatury, vol. 2. Moscow, 1971.
Geismar, M. American Moderns. New York, 1958.
Kaufmann, D. L. Norman Mailer. London-Amsterdam, 1969.
Poirier, R. Norman Mailer. New York, 1972.