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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.

Biography

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 "Modern Library 100 best novels" by the Modern Library.

In the following years, Mailer worked as a screenwriter in Hollywood. Much of his work was refused by many publishers. But in the mid-1950s, he became famous as an anti-establishment essayist, and he was one of the founders of The Village Voice in 1955 *. In the book Advertisements for Myself (1959 including the essay The White Negro: Superficial Reflections on the Hipster from 1956), Mailer examined violence, hysteria, crime, and confusion in American society, in both fictional and reportage forms.

Other famous works include: The Deer Park (1955), 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), The Executioner's Song (1979, awarded a Pulitzer Prize), Ancient Evenings (1983), Harlot's Ghost (1991) and Oswald's Tale (1995).

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 he avoided researching Monroe's death because he wanted to create controversy.

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 she fully recovered, Mailer subsequently found the episode difficult to live down.

Mailer appears in the documentaries When We Were Kings, The World According to Bush, and Hijacking Catastrophe.

References to Mailer in song

He is mentioned in the songs:

  • "A Simple Desultory Philippic (Or How I Was Robert McNamara'd Into Submission)*" by Simon & Garfunkel

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".

References

  • 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.

External links

1923 births | Living people | Harvard University alumni | American anti Iraq War activists | American novelists | American essayists | American writers | American non-fiction writers | American screenwriters | Pulitzer Prize winners | Members of The American Academy of Arts and Letters | United States Army soldiers | American World War II veterans | American anti-Vietnam War activists | Jewish American writers | People from New Jersey | Légion d'honneur recipients | Tax resisters

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