1923-, American novelist, nonfiction writer, essayist, screenwriter, literary critic, movie director, ex political candidate
Born in New Jersey, he went to school at Harvard. There he got his first interest in writing.
In 1944, he was inducted into the Army which gave him the inspiration to write his first novel.
He won early renown with his World War II novel The Naked and the Dead (1948). It spent 11 weeks on the New York Times Bestseller List. It is here that his career in Literary Journalism began.
In 1954 he helped found The Village Voice and contributed a column to it for a time. But after some time, he was asked to leave.
His sharp views of American society are reflected not only in such semiautobiographical novels as An American Dream 1966 but also in The Armies of the Night 1968; Pulitzer, a journalistic account of the 1967 peace march on Washington, and The Executioner's Song - 1979 (Pulitzer Prize), a novelistic treatment of the convicted killer Gary Gilmore.
It was while he was working on the Gilmore novel that he received a letter from a certain inmate named Jack Henry Abbott. He was impressed with Abbott's prose and began to use his influence to get the novel In the Belly of the Beast published; and ultimately to get Jack released from prison. The parolee ended up killing a waitor in a restaurant and eventually landed back in jail.
Mailer won a spot on the Modern Library's 100 Best Books: Fiction for The Naked and the Dead. It remained on top of the New York Times bestseller list for 11 weeks.
Books he wrote:
Falls under the category of Books that will induce a mindfuck.
Related nodes:
book jacket, Mailer, Norman, "Ancient Evenings", Random House, NY, 1991
book jacket, Mailer, Norman, "Harlot's Ghost", Random House, NY, 1991
http://www.pbs.org/wnet/americanmasters/database/mailer_n.html
Last Updated 04.15.04 | 
