Norman Mailer
Norman Kingsley Mailer (born
January 31,
1923) is an
American novelist,
journalist,
playwright,
screenwriter and
film director who, along with
Truman Capote and
Tom Wolfe, is considered an innovator of
creative nonfiction,a genre sometimes called
New Journalism. He has been nominated on several occasions for the Nobel Prize for Literature.
Mailer was born to a
Jewish family in
Long Branch,
New Jersey. He was brought up in
Brooklyn, New York, and began attending
Harvard University in 1939, where he studied
aeronautical engineering. At the university, he became interested in writing and published his first story when he was 18, and is a former member of the
Harvard Advocate.
Mailer was
drafted into the
Army in
World War II and served in the
South Pacific. In 1948, just before enrolling in the
Sorbonne in
Paris, he wrote a book that made him world-famous:
The Naked and the Dead, based on his personal experiences during World War II. It was hailed by many as one of the best American novels to come out of the war years and named one of the "
100 best novels" by the
Modern Library.
In the following years, Mailer continued to work in the field of the novel.
Barbary Shore (1951) was a surreal parable of Cold War left politics, set in a Brooklyn rooming-house. His 1955 novel
The Deer Park drew on his exeriences working as a screenwriter in Hollywood in the early fifties. It was initially rejected by numerous publishers owing to its sexual content. But in the mid-1950s, he became increasingly known for his counter-cultural essays, and he was one of the founders of
The Village Voice in 1955 [
1]. In the book
Advertisements for Myself (1959 including the essay
The White Negro: Superficial Reflections on the Hipster from 1957), Mailer examined violence, hysteria, crime, and confusion in American society, in both fictional and reportage forms.
Other famous works include:
The Presidential Papers (1963),
An American Dream (1965),
Why Are We in Vietnam? (1967),
Armies of the Night (1968, awarded a
Pulitzer Prize and
National Book Award),
Miami and the Siege of Chicago (1968),
Of a Fire on the Moon (1970),
The Prisoner of Sex (1971),
Marilyn (1973)
The Executioner's Song (1979, awarded a
Pulitzer Prize),
Ancient Evenings (1983),
Harlot's Ghost (1991) and
Oswald's Tale (1995). As well as his avant-garde fiction and non-fiction novels, Mailer has produced a play version of
The Deer Park, and in the late sixties directed a number of improvisational avant-garde films in a Warhol style, including
Maidstone (1970). In 1987, he directed a film version of his novel
Tough Guys Don't Dance, starring Ryan O'Neal, which has become a minor camp classic.
A number of Mailer's works, such as The
Armies of the Night, are political. He covered the
Republican and
Democratic National Conventions in 1960, 1964, 1968, 1972, 1992, and 1996. In 1967, he was arrested for his involvement in
anti-Vietnam demonstrations. Two years later, he ran unsuccessfully as an independent for
Mayor of New York City, allied with columnist
Jimmy Breslin (who ran for City Council President), proposing
New York City secession and creating a
51st state.
In 1980, Mailer spearheaded convicted killer
Jack Abbott's successful bid for
parole. He helped Abbott publish a collection of letters to Mailer about his experiences in prison. Abbott committed a murder not long after his release. Mailer was subject to criticism for his role; in a 1992 interview in the
Buffalo News, he conceded that his involvement was "another episode in my life in which I can find nothing to cheer about or nothing to take pride in."
His biographical subjects have included
Pablo Picasso and
Lee Harvey Oswald. His 1986
off-Broadway play
Strawhead starring his daughter, Kate, was about
Marilyn Monroe. His 1973 biography of her was paticularly controversial; in its final chapter he stated that she was murdered by agents of the
FBI and
CIA who resented her supposed affair with
Robert Kennedy. He later admitted that these speculations were "not good journalism".
Mailer has been married six times, and has nine children by his wives. In 1960, Mailer stabbed his second wife Adele Morales with a penknife at a party. While Morales made a full physical recovery, in 1997 she published a memoir of their marriage entitled
The Last Party which outlined her perception of the incident. This incident has been a focus points for feminist critics of Mailer, who point to themes of sexual violence in his work.
Mailer appears in the documentaries
When We Were Kings,
The World According to Bush, and
Hijacking Catastrophe. He also appears as Harry Houdini in
Cremaster 2, one episode in Matthew Barney's five-part Cremaster cycle which also draws on the portrait of Gary Gilmore in
The Executioner's Song.
He is mentioned in the songs:
* "
Give Peace a Chance" by
John Lennon.
*"A Simple Desultory Philippic (Or How I Was Robert McNamara'd Into Submission)[
2]" by
Simon & Garfunkel*"Are You Ready To Be Heartbroken" by
Lloyd Cole.
*
Santa Monica" by
Savage Garden.
*"
Get By" by
Talib Kweli.
*"Animal Bar" by the
Red Hot Chili Peppers.
*In an episode of the cartoon
Bullwinkle, the students at Wassamatta U. turn down Bullwinkle's offer for old-fashioned college fun because "We're going to the student union to protest Norman Mailer"
*The
Welsh punk band The Manic Street Preachers mention him alongside
Sylvia Plath,
Henry Miller, and
Harold Pinter in their song "Faster" on their 1994 album
The Holy Bible*Australian
art-pop band
TISM mention him alongside
Dylan Thomas and
Jackson Pollock in an unlisted track, "
Genius is different," off their album
De Reigueurmortis (2002). He is also mentioned in Give Up For Australia off
Machiavelli and the Four Seasons (1995).
Quagmire references him in an episode of
Family Guy (PTV):
Hello and welcome to another edition of Midnight Q. Tonight we're gonna enjoy some jazz from Charles Mingus. Norman Mailer's here to read an excerpt from his latest work. And we also have a girl from Omaha hiding a banana. We're gonna find out where. Giggity giggity, giggity goo. Stick around.He is also mentioned in
Woody Allen's satirical futuristic film
Sleeper (1973) in which Allen says to a scientist, "This is a picture of Norman Mailer. He left his
ego to the Harvard Medical School!" In 1999 Mailer was featured in the role of Harry Houdini in the second installment of
Matthew Barney's
Cremaster Cycle.
In 2005, Mailer made a special guest star appearance, playing himself on the
WB television show
Gilmore Girls. The episode, titled "
Norman Mailer, I'm Pregnant", has the author being interviewed at the
Dragonfly Inn, an establishment owned by the main character,
Lorelai Gilmore. Also guest starring was Mailer's son, actor
Stephen Mailer, who played the interviewer.
Since May 2005, he has been a contributing
blogger at
The Huffington Post.
He currently lives in
Provincetown, MA.
He has recently co-authored a book with his youngest child,
John Buffalo Mailer, titled "The Big Empty".
Mailer was referenced in The Simpson's Episode "Simpsoncalifragilisticexpiala-D'oh-cious"
Bart: Pop quiz, hotshot. I'm supposed to be doing my homework, but youfind me upstairs reading a Playdude. What do you do? What DO you do?''Shary: I make you read every article in that magazine, including NormanMailer's latest clap-trap about his waning libido.
Homer: Ooh. She is tough.''
*
Mailer: His Life and Times edited by Peter Manso, New York: Simon and Schuster, 1985. Highly readable "oral" biography of Mailer created by cross-cutting interviews with friends, enemies, acquaintances, relatives, wives of Mailer and Mailer himself.
* "I take it for granted that there's a side of me that loves public action, and there's another side of me that really wants to be alone and work and write. And I've learned to alternate the two as matters develop."
* "I knew that there was one thing I wanted to be and that was a writer."
*
Norman and John Buffalo Mailer - "The Big Empty" recorded on 03/02/06 at
The New York Society for Ethical Culture, 84 min., mp3 format
* Academy of Achievement Profile http://www.achievement.org/autodoc/page/mai0pro-1
* Academy of Achievement Biography http://www.achievement.org/autodoc/page/mai0bio-1
* Academy of Achievement Interview http://www.achievement.org/autodoc/page/mai0int-1
* Academy of Achievement Photo Gallery http://www.achievement.org/autodoc/page/mai0gal-1
*
John Buffalo Mailer and Norman Mailer live on
WNYC's
Leonard Lopate show on 03/02/06, in mp3 format
*
Full biography, photo gallery and online video available at Achievement.org*
Mailer's interview with The Paris Review*
1991 audio interview of Norman Mailer by Don Swaim of CBS Radio, 56 min., RealAudio*
Norman Mailer's writing on the Huffington Post
