The Columbia Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition. 2001-07.
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).
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).
