Today, David Mikics writes his own centenary paean to Mailer on Tablet. He writes: Norman Mailer was born on Jan. 31, 1923, in Long Branch, New Jersey. His mother gave him the Hebrew name Melech: king. She was prophetic. For decades, Norman Kingsley Mailer ruled the literary world. No writer
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Norman Mailer, one of the most iconic and influential American writers of the 20th century, would have turned 100 years old today, January 31, 2023. Born in Long Branch, New Jersey in 1923, Mailer was a novelist, journalist, columnist, poet, short story writer, biographer, playwright, literary critic, public intellectual, politician,
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Edited by John Buffalo Mailer and J. Michael Lennon, A Mysterious Country collects Mailer’s commentary on the grace and fragility of democracy, 80 excerpts, 1945-2007, from his books, essays, interviews and letters, many of them uncollected or unpublished. The book is out tomorrow in hardback from Arcade Books; order
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Taki, writing for the Spectator in Australia simultaneously disses the latest “hatchet job” biography of Mailer and gives reasons why we should still be reading writers like him and Hemingway. He begins with my current favorite sentence: “Norman Mailer was born on 31 January 1923, and as his 100th birthday
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An anonymous writer for The Economist asks “What should readers make of Norman Mailer’s life and work?” and attempts to supply an answer. The books resemble their author: flawed, unpredictable, grandiose and often overblown, sometimes noxious. Yet their range is remarkable. He published more than 40 and tried a
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With Mailer’s 100 birthday approaching, Philip Martin writes an overview of Mailer’s life and highlights recent publications, arguing: He was a technician of language whose sentences would wend like long, slow-burning fuses, exploding at the end. You could find beauty in his most boorish arguments, if you were
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In this morning’s San Antonio Express-News, Rafael Castillo pays homage to Mailer for his up-coming centenary. Castillo writes: A rabble-rouser to the end, Mailer was founder of the Village Voice and a pioneer in New Journalism who embodied all the excesses and extremes of American society. Married and divorced
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Today's The Ohio Star recommends The Naked and the Dead for its “timeless themes and insight into reality, in addition to being enjoyable tales in [its] own right.” They continue: Hailed as one of the finest novels to come out of the Second World War, The Naked and
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Another not-so-favorable review of Bradford’s new biography of Mailer appears today in The Guardian. Peter Conrad’s subtitle says it all: The Naked and the Dead author was a brash and infuriating personality, but he deserves better than this dismissive biography, published to mark the centenary of his birth.
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Showbiz Cheat Sheet’s Elise Nelson reminisces about the time Norman Mailer guest starred on Gilmore Girls and explains why Mailer was able to improvise lines when others were forbidden from doing so. In the episode (Season 5 Episode 6, “Norman Mailer, I’m Pregnant!”), Mailer was being interviewed by
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In today's Wall Street Journal, Sam Sacks reviews the new Library of America volume Norman Mailer: The Naked and the Dead & Selected Letters 1945-1946. Sacks writes: That debut was sometimes criticized for its pessimism, but rereading it in this anniversary edition left me with a different impression.
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Today’s National Review has a dual review featuring J. Michael Lennon’s new memoir Mailer’s Last Days: New and Selected Remembrances of a Life in Literature and Richard Bradford’s new biography Tough Guy: The Life of Norman Mailer. Of the former, reviewer Robert Dean Lurie writes: Mailer’