Books by Norman Mailer
The Big Empty: Dialogues on Politics, Sex, God, Boxing, Morality, Myth, Poker and Bad Conscience in America
by Norman Mailer, John Buffalo Mailer
Questions are posed, writes Norman Mailer, "in the hope they will open into richer insights, which in turn will bring forth sharper questions." In this series of conversations, John Buffalo Mailer, 27, poses a series of questions to his father, challenging the reflections and insights of the man who has dominated and defined much of American letters for the past sixty years. Their wide-ranging discussions take place over the course of a year, beginning in July 2004. Set against the backdrop of George W. Bush's re-election campaign and the war in Iraq, each considers what it means to live in America today. John asks his father to look back to World War II, and explore the parallels that canand cannotbe drawn between that time and our current post-9/11 consciousness. As their conversations develop, the topics shift from the political to the personal to the political again, as they duck and weave around one another. They explore their shared admiration of boxing and poker, the nature of marriage and love, television, movies, writing, and what it means to be a part of this extraordinary family.
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The Faith of Graffiti
The Faith of Graffiti is the classic, definitive look at the birth of graffiti as an art form, pairing the fascinating 1974 essay by Norman Mailer—National Book Award and two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Naked and the Dead and The Executioner’s Song—with the stunning, iconic photography of internationally acclaimed photographer Jon Naar. Back in print for the first time in three decades and expanded with 32 pages of additional photos, The Faith of Graffiti is a landmark in the history of street art: an essential, contemporary, and still-relevant meditation, in words and pictures, on the meaning of identity, property, and city life.
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The Naked and the Dead: 50th Anniversary Edition
Hailed as one of the finest novels to come out of the Second World War, The Naked and the Dead received unprecedented critical acclaim upon its publication and has since become part of the American canon. This fiftieth anniversary edition features a new introduction created especially for the occasion by Norman Mailer.
Written in gritty, journalistic detail, the story follows an army platoon of foot soldiers who are fighting for the possession of the Japanese-held island of Anopopei. Composed in 1948, The Naked and the Dead is representative of the best in twentieth-century American writing.
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Harlot's Ghost: A Novel
With unprecedented scope and consummate skill, Norman Mailer unfolds a rich and riveting epic of an American spy. Harry Hubbard is the son and godson of CIA legends. His journey to learn the secrets of his society—and his own past—takes him through the Bay of Pigs, the Cuban Missile Crisis, and the “momentous catastrophe” of the Kennedy assassination. All the while, Hubbard is haunted by women who were loved by both his godfather and President Kennedy. Featuring a tapestry of unforgettable characters both real and imagined, Harlot’s Ghost is a panoramic achievement in the tradition of Tolstoy, Melville, and Balzac, a triumph of Mailer’s literary prowess.
Praise for Harlot’s Ghost
“[Norman Mailer is] the right man to exalt the history of the CIA into something better than history.”—Anthony Burgess, The Washington Post Book World
“Elegantly written and filled with almost electric tension . . . When I returned from the world of Harlot’s Ghost to the present I wished to be enveloped again by Mailer’s imagination.”—Robert Wilson, USA Today
“Immense, fascinating, and in large part brilliant.”—Salman Rushdie, The Independent on Sunday
“A towering creation . . . a fiction as real and as possible as actual history.”—The New York Times
Praise for Norman Mailer
“[Norman Mailer] loomed over American letters longer and larger than any other writer of his generation.”—The New York Times
“A writer of the greatest and most reckless talent.”—The New Yorker
“Mailer is indispensable, an American treasure.”—The Washington Post
“A devastatingly alive and original creative mind.”—Life
“Mailer is fierce, courageous, and reckless and nearly everything he writes has sections of headlong brilliance.”—The New York Review of Books
“The largest mind and imagination [in modern] American literature . . . Unlike just about every American writer since Henry James, Mailer has managed to grow and become richer in wisdom with each new book.”—Chicago Tribune
“Mailer is a master of his craft. His language carries you through the story like a leaf on a stream.”—The Cincinnati Post
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Oswald's Tale: An American Mystery
In perhaps his most important literary feat, Norman Mailer fashions an unprecedented portrait of one of the great villains—and enigmas—in United States history. Here is Lee Harvey Oswald—his family background, troubled marriage, controversial journey to Russia, and return to an “America [waiting] for him like an angry relative whose eyes glare in the heat.” Based on KGB and FBI transcripts, government reports, letters and diaries, and Mailer’s own international research, this is an epic account of a man whose cunning, duplicity, and self-invention were both at home in and at odds with the country he forever altered.
Praise for Oswald’s Tale
“America’s largest mystery has found its greatest interpreter.”—The Washington Post Book World
“Mailer is fierce, courageous, and reckless and nearly everything he writes has sections of headlong brilliance. . . . From the American master conjurer of dark and swirling purpose, a moving reflection.”—Robert Stone, The New York Review of Books
“A narrative of tremendous energy and panache; the author at the top of his form.”—Christopher Hitchens, Financial Times
“The performance of an author relishing the force and reach of his own acuity.”—Martin Amis, The Sunday Times (London)
Praise for Norman Mailer
“[Norman Mailer] loomed over American letters longer and larger than any other writer of his generation.”—The New York Times
“A writer of the greatest and most reckless talent.”—The New Yorker
“Mailer is indispensable, an American treasure.”—The Washington Post
“A devastatingly alive and original creative mind.”—Life
“Mailer is fierce, courageous, and reckless and nearly everything he writes has sections of headlong brilliance.”—The New York Review of Books
“The largest mind and imagination [in modern] American literature . . . Unlike just about every American writer since Henry James, Mailer has managed to grow and become richer in wisdom with each new book.”—Chicago Tribune
“Mailer is a master of his craft. His language carries you through the story like a leaf on a stream.”—The Cincinnati Post
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The Executioner's Song
Winner of the 1980 Pulitzer Prize
In what is arguably his greatest book, America's most heroically ambitious writer follows
the short, blighted career of Gary Gilmore, an intractably violent product of America's
prisons who became notorious for two reasons: first, for robbing two men in 1976, then
killing them in cold blood; and, second, after being tried and convicted, for insisting on
dying for his crime. To do so, he had to fight a system that seemed paradoxically intent on
keeping him alive long after it had sentenced him to death.
Norman Mailer tells Gilmore's story--and those of the men and women caught up in his
procession toward the firing squad--with implacable authority, steely compassion, and a
restraint that evokes the parched landscapes and stern theology of Gilmore's Utah. The
Executioner's Song is a trip down the wrong side of the tracks to the deepest sources of
American loneliness and violence. It is a towering achievement--impossible to put down, impossible to forget.
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The Executioner's Song
Norman Mailer's Pulitzer Prize-winning and unforgettable classic about convicted killer Gary Gilmore now in a brand-new edition.
Arguably the greatest book from America's most heroically ambitious writer, The Executioner's Song follows the short, blighted life of Gary Gilmore who became famous after he robbed two men in 1976 and killed them in cold blood. After being tried and convicted, he immediately insisted on being executed for his crime. To do so, he fought a system that seemed intent on keeping him alive long after it had sentenced him to death. And that fight for the right to die is what made him famous.
Mailer tells not only Gilmore's story, but those of the men and women caught in the web of his life and drawn into his procession toward the firing squad. All with implacable authority, steely compassion, and a restraint that evokes the parched landscape and stern theology of Gilmore's Utah. The Executioner's Song is a trip down the wrong side of the tracks to the deepest source of American loneliness and violence. It is a towering achievement-impossible to put down, impossible to forget.
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The Fight
In 1974 in Kinshasa, Zaïre, two African American boxers were paid five million dollars apiece to fight each other. One was Muhammad Ali, the aging but irrepressible “professor of boxing.” The other was George Foreman, who was as taciturn as Ali was voluble. Observing them was Norman Mailer, a commentator of unparalleled energy, acumen, and audacity. Whether he is analyzing the fighters’ moves, interpreting their characters, or weighing their competing claims on the African and American souls, Mailer’s grasp of the titanic battle’s feints and stratagems—and his sensitivity to their deeper symbolism—makes this book a masterpiece of the literature of sport.
Praise for The Fight
“Exquisitely refined and attenuated . . . [a] sensitive portrait of an extraordinary athlete and man, and a pugilistic drama fully as exciting as the reality on which it is based.”—The New York Times
“One of the defining texts of sports journalism. Not only does Mailer recall the violent combat with a scholar’s eye . . . he also makes the whole act of reporting seem as exciting as what’s occurring in the ring.”—GQ
“Stylistically, Mailer was the greatest boxing writer of all time.”—Chuck Klosterman, Esquire
“One of Mailer’s finest books.”—Louis Menand, The New Yorker
Praise for Norman Mailer
“[Norman Mailer] loomed over American letters longer and larger than any other writer of his generation.”—The New York Times
“A writer of the greatest and most reckless talent.”—The New Yorker
“Mailer is indispensable, an American treasure.”—The Washington Post
“A devastatingly alive and original creative mind.”—Life
“Mailer is fierce, courageous, and reckless and nearly everything he writes has sections of headlong brilliance.”—The New York Review of Books
“The largest mind and imagination [in modern] American literature . . . Unlike just about every American writer since Henry James, Mailer has managed to grow and become richer in wisdom with each new book.”—Chicago Tribune
“Mailer is a master of his craft. His language carries you through the story like a leaf on a stream.”—The Cincinnati Post
Copies
No copies available.
The Fight
In 1974 in Kinshasa, Zaïre, two African American boxers were paid five million dollars apiece to fight each other. One was Muhammad Ali, the aging but irrepressible “professor of boxing.” The other was George Foreman, who was as taciturn as Ali was voluble. Observing them was Norman Mailer, a commentator of unparalleled energy, acumen, and audacity. Whether he is analyzing the fighters’ moves, interpreting their characters, or weighing their competing claims on the African and American souls, Mailer’s grasp of the titanic battle’s feints and stratagems—and his sensitivity to their deeper symbolism—makes this book a masterpiece of the literature of sport.
Praise for The Fight
“Exquisitely refined and attenuated . . . [a] sensitive portrait of an extraordinary athlete and man, and a pugilistic drama fully as exciting as the reality on which it is based.”—The New York Times
“One of the defining texts of sports journalism. Not only does Mailer recall the violent combat with a scholar’s eye . . . he also makes the whole act of reporting seem as exciting as what’s occurring in the ring.”—GQ
“Stylistically, Mailer was the greatest boxing writer of all time.”—Chuck Klosterman, Esquire
“One of Mailer’s finest books.”—Louis Menand, The New Yorker
Praise for Norman Mailer
“[Norman Mailer] loomed over American letters longer and larger than any other writer of his generation.”—The New York Times
“A writer of the greatest and most reckless talent.”—The New Yorker
“Mailer is indispensable, an American treasure.”—The Washington Post
“A devastatingly alive and original creative mind.”—Life
“Mailer is fierce, courageous, and reckless and nearly everything he writes has sections of headlong brilliance.”—The New York Review of Books
“The largest mind and imagination [in modern] American literature . . . Unlike just about every American writer since Henry James, Mailer has managed to grow and become richer in wisdom with each new book.”—Chicago Tribune
“Mailer is a master of his craft. His language carries you through the story like a leaf on a stream.”—The Cincinnati Post
Copies
No copies available.
![The Armies of the Night::History as a Novel::the Novel as History[Paperback,1994]](https://images.isbndb.com/covers/7273482349.jpg)
The Armies of the Night::History as a Novel::the Novel as History[Paperback,1994]
Winner of the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award
With a Introduction by Adam Gopnik
Fifty years after the March on the Pentagon, Norman Mailer’s seminal tour de force remains as urgent and incisive as ever. Winner of America’s two highest literary awards, The Armies of the Night uniquely and unforgettably captures the Sixties’ tidal wave of love and rage at its crest and a towering genius at his peak.
The time is October 21, 1967. The place is Washington, D.C. Depending on the paper you read, 20,000 to 200,000 protestors are marching to end the war in Vietnam, while helicopters hover overhead and federal marshals and soldiers with fixed bayonets await them on the Pentagon steps. Among the marchers is a writer named Norman Mailer. From his own singular participation in the day’s events and his even more extraordinary perceptions comes a classic work that shatters the mold of traditional reportage. Intellectuals and hippies, clergymen and cops, poets and army MPs crowd the pages of a book in which facts are fused with techniques of fiction to create the nerve-end reality of experiential truth.
“[Mailer’s] genuine wit and bellicose charm, and his fervent and intense sense of legitimately caring, render The Armies of the Night an artful document, worthy to be judged as literature.”—Time
“Only a born novelist could have written a piece of history so intelligent, mischievous, penetrating and alive.”—Alfred Kazin, The New York Times Book Review
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The Castle in the Forest
No career in modern American letters is at once so brilliant, varied, and controversial as that of Norman Mailer. In a span of more than six decades, Mailer has searched into subjects ranging from World War II to Ancient Egypt, from the march on the Pentagon to Marilyn Monroe, from Henry Miller and Mohammad Ali to Jesus Christ. Now, in The Castle in the Forest, his first major work of fiction in more than a decade, Mailer offers what may be his consummate literary endeavor: He has set out to explore the evil of Adolf Hitler.
The narrator, a mysterious SS man who is later revealed to be an exceptional presence, gives us young Adolf from birth, as well as Hitler’s father and mother, his sisters and brothers, and the intimate details of his childhood and adolescence.
A tapestry of unforgettable characters, The Castle in the Forest delivers its playful twists and surprises with astonishing insight into the nature of the struggle between good and evil that exists in us all. At its core is a hypothesis that propels this novel and makes it a work of stunning originality. Now, on the eve of his eighty-fourth birthday, Norman Mailer may well be saying more than he ever has before.
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Miami and the Siege of Chicago: An Informal History of the Republican and Democratic Conventions of 1968
In this landmark work of journalism, Norman Mailer reports on the presidential conventions of 1968, the turbulent year from which today’s bitterly divided country arose. The Vietnam War was raging; Martin Luther King, Jr., and Robert F. Kennedy had just been assassinated. In August, the Republican Party met in Miami and picked Richard Nixon as its candidate, to little fanfare. But when the Democrats backed Lyndon Johnson’s ineffectual vice president, Hubert Humphrey, the city of Chicago erupted. Antiwar protesters filled the streets and the police ran amok, beating and arresting demonstrators and delegates alike, all broadcast on live television—and captured in these pages by one of America’s fiercest intellects.
Praise for Miami and the Siege of Chicago
“For historians who wish for the presence of a world-class literary witness at crucial moments in history, Mailer in Miami and Chicago was heaven-sent.”—Michael Beschloss, The Washington Post
“Extraordinary . . . Mailer [predicted that] ‘we will be fighting for forty years.’ He got that right, among many other things.”—Christopher Hitchens, The Atlantic
“Often reads like a good, old-fashioned novel in which suspense, character, plot revelations, and pungently describable action abound.”—The New York Review of Books
“[A] masterful account . . . To understand 1968, you must read Mailer.”—Chicago Tribune
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Why Are We in Vietnam?: A Novel
“It is impossible to walk away from this novel without being sharply reminded of the fact that Norman Mailer is a writer of extraordinary ability.”—Chicago Tribune
Featuring a new foreword by Mailer scholar Maggie McKinley
Published nearly twenty years after Norman Mailer’s fiction debut, The Naked and the Dead, this acclaimed novel further solidified the author’s stature as one of the most important figures in contemporary American literature. Ranald “D. J.” Jethroe, Texas’s most precocious teenager, recounts a brutal hunting trip he took to Alaska—in a story of fathers and sons, myth and masculinity, character and corruption. Both entertaining and profound, Why Are We in Vietnam? is an exceptional, timeless work awaiting discovery by a new generation of readers.
Praise for Why Are We in Vietnam?
“A book of great integrity. All the old qualities are here: Mailer’s remarkable feeling for the sensory event, the detail, ‘the way it was,’ his power and energy.”—The New York Review of Books
“A tour de force, a treatise on human nature.”—The Dallas Morning News
“A brilliant piece of writing.”—Newsweek
“Original, courageous, and provocative.”—The New York Times
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Modest Gifts: Poems and Drawings
An unexpected collection from Norman Mailer—a book of his selected poems and more than one hundred of his drawings, most of them never before published. Modest Gifts is full of what the author calls “casual pleasures”—witty, naughty, and surprisingly tender verse and art. Lust, seduction, betrayal, jealousy, and even the banality of cocktail party chatter are depicted with humor, affection, and, above all, honesty. Here is an aspect of Norman Mailer unknown to many: lighthearted, prankish, whimsical, and often gentle, playfully sketching the intimate urban world that surrounds us. Modest, funny, and true, each poem and drawing shows a new side of one of the greatest writers of our time.
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The Deer Park: A Novel
Amid the cactus wilds some two hundred miles from Hollywood lies a privileged oasis called Desert D’Or. It is a place for starlets, directors, studio execs, and the well-groomed lowlifes who cater to them. And, as imagined by Norman Mailer in this blistering classic, Desert D’Or is a moral proving ground, where men and women discover what they really want—and how far they are willing to go to get it. As Mailer traces their couplings and uncouplings, their uneasy flirtation with success and self-extinction, he creates a legendary portrait of America’s machinery of desire.
Praise for The Deer Park
“A scathing portrayal of Hollywood . . . studded with brilliant and illuminating passages.”—The New York Times Book Review
“A writer of the greatest and most reckless talent . . . [Mailer] drives us up and down The Deer Park at breakneck speed. It is a trip through unfamiliar country, for a time funny and then unnerving.”—The New Yorker
“Savage . . . brilliant . . . exhilarating.”—The Atlantic Monthly
“Entertaining and wise . . . In addition to his furious energy and true ear, Mailer is simpatico with humanity . . . on a level rare in American fiction.”—The New Republic
Praise for Norman Mailer
“[Norman Mailer] loomed over American letters longer and larger than any other writer of his generation.”—The New York Times
“A writer of the greatest and most reckless talent.”—The New Yorker
“Mailer is indispensable, an American treasure.”—The Washington Post
“A devastatingly alive and original creative mind.”—Life
“Mailer is fierce, courageous, and reckless and nearly everything he writes has sections of headlong brilliance.”—The New York Review of Books
“The largest mind and imagination [in modern] American literature . . . Unlike just about every American writer since Henry James, Mailer has managed to grow and become richer in wisdom with each new book.”—Chicago Tribune
“Mailer is a master of his craft. His language carries you through the story like a leaf on a stream.”—The Cincinnati Post
Copies
No copies available.
Mind of an Outlaw: Selected Essays
NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY THE GLOBE AND MAIL
Norman Mailer was one of the towering figures of twentieth-century American letters and an acknowledged master of the essay. Mind of an Outlaw, the first posthumous publication from this outsize literary icon, collects Mailer’s most important and representative work in the form that many rank as his most electrifying.
As America’s foremost public intellectual, Norman Mailer was a ubiquitous presence in our national life—on the airwaves and in print—for more than sixty years. With his supple mind and pugnacious persona, he engaged society more than any other writer of his generation. The trademark Mailer swagger is much in evidence in these pages as he holds forth on culture, ideology, politics, sex, gender, and celebrity, among other topics. Here is Mailer on boxing, Mailer on Hemingway, Mailer on Marilyn Monroe, and, of course, Mailer on Mailer—the one subject that served as the beating heart of all of his nonfiction.
From his early essay “A Credo for the Living,” published in 1948, when the author was twenty-five, to his final writings in the year before his death, Mailer wrestled with the big themes of his times. He was one of the most astute cultural commentators of the postwar era, a swashbuckling intellectual provocateur who never pulled a punch and was rarely anything less than interesting. Mind of an Outlaw spans the full arc of Mailer’s evolution as a writer, including such essential pieces as his acclaimed 1957 meditation on hipsters, “The White Negro”; multiple selections from his seminal collection Advertisements for Myself; and a never-before-published essay on Sigmund Freud.
Incendiary, erudite, and unrepentantly outrageous, Norman Mailer was a dominating force on the battlefield of ideas. Featuring an incisive Introduction by Jonathan Lethem, Mind of an Outlaw forms a fascinating portrait of Mailer’s intellectual development across the span of his career as well as the preoccupations of a nation in the last half of the American century.
Praise for Mind of an Outlaw
“[Mailer’s] best and brightest.”—Esquire
“The fifty essays collected in this retrospective volume span sixty-four years and show [Norman] Mailer (1923–2007) at his brawny, pugnacious, and egotistical best. . . . This provocative collection brims with insights and reflections that show why Mailer is regarded as a great literary mind of his generation.”—Publishers Weekly
“The selections open a window onto the capacious mind and process of one of the most volatile intellects of the twentieth century.”—Library Journal
“Vintage Mailer: brilliant, infuriating, witty and never, ever boring.”—Tampa Bay Times
“As good an introduction to Mailer’s habits of mind as there’s ever been.”—Kirkus Reviews
“There’s no arguing about Mailer the essayist—he was outstanding. . . . These insightful essays educate, argue and persuade on everything from politics and literature to film, philosophy and the human condition.”—Shelf Awareness
Copies
No copies available.
Mind of an Outlaw: Selected Essays
NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY THE GLOBE AND MAIL
Norman Mailer was one of the towering figures of twentieth-century American letters and an acknowledged master of the essay. Mind of an Outlaw, the first posthumous publication from this outsize literary icon, collects Mailer’s most important and representative work in the form that many rank as his most electrifying.
As America’s foremost public intellectual, Norman Mailer was a ubiquitous presence in our national life—on the airwaves and in print—for more than sixty years. With his supple mind and pugnacious persona, he engaged society more than any other writer of his generation. The trademark Mailer swagger is much in evidence in these pages as he holds forth on culture, ideology, politics, sex, gender, and celebrity, among other topics. Here is Mailer on boxing, Mailer on Hemingway, Mailer on Marilyn Monroe, and, of course, Mailer on Mailer—the one subject that served as the beating heart of all of his nonfiction.
From his early essay “A Credo for the Living,” published in 1948, when the author was twenty-five, to his final writings in the year before his death, Mailer wrestled with the big themes of his times. He was one of the most astute cultural commentators of the postwar era, a swashbuckling intellectual provocateur who never pulled a punch and was rarely anything less than interesting. Mind of an Outlaw spans the full arc of Mailer’s evolution as a writer, including such essential pieces as his acclaimed 1957 meditation on hipsters, “The White Negro”; multiple selections from his seminal collection Advertisements for Myself; and a never-before-published essay on Sigmund Freud.
Incendiary, erudite, and unrepentantly outrageous, Norman Mailer was a dominating force on the battlefield of ideas. Featuring an incisive Introduction by Jonathan Lethem, Mind of an Outlaw forms a fascinating portrait of Mailer’s intellectual development across the span of his career as well as the preoccupations of a nation in the last half of the American century.
Praise for Mind of an Outlaw
“[Mailer’s] best and brightest.”—Esquire
“The fifty essays collected in this retrospective volume span sixty-four years and show [Norman] Mailer (1923–2007) at his brawny, pugnacious, and egotistical best. . . . This provocative collection brims with insights and reflections that show why Mailer is regarded as a great literary mind of his generation.”—Publishers Weekly
“The selections open a window onto the capacious mind and process of one of the most volatile intellects of the twentieth century.”—Library Journal
“Vintage Mailer: brilliant, infuriating, witty and never, ever boring.”—Tampa Bay Times
“As good an introduction to Mailer’s habits of mind as there’s ever been.”—Kirkus Reviews
“There’s no arguing about Mailer the essayist—he was outstanding. . . . These insightful essays educate, argue and persuade on everything from politics and literature to film, philosophy and the human condition.”—Shelf Awareness
Copies
No copies available.
The Spooky Art: Thoughts on Writing
“Writing is spooky,” according to Norman Mailer. “There is no routine of an office to keep you going, only the blank page each morning, and you never know where your words are coming from, those divine words.” In The Spooky Art, Mailer discusses with signature candor the rewards and trials of the writing life, and recommends the tools to navigate it. Addressing the reader in a conversational tone, he draws on the best of more than fifty years of his own criticism, advice, and detailed observations about the writer’s craft.
Praise for The Spooky Art
“The Spooky Art shows Mailer’s brave willingness to take on demanding forms and daunting issues. . . . He has been a thoughtful and stylish witness to the best and worst of the American century.”—The Boston Globe
“At his best—as artists should be judged—Mailer is indispensable, an American treasure. There is enough of his best in this book for it to be welcomed with gratitude.”—The Washington Post
“[The Spooky Art] should nourish and inform—as well as entertain—almost any serious reader of the novel.”—Baltimore Sun
“The richest book ever written about the writer’s subconscious.”—The Philadelphia Inquirer
“Striking . . . entrancingly frank.”—Entertainment Weekly
Praise for Norman Mailer
“[Norman Mailer] loomed over American letters longer and larger than any other writer of his generation.”—The New York Times
“A writer of the greatest and most reckless talent.”—The New Yorker
“A devastatingly alive and original creative mind.”—Life
“Mailer is fierce, courageous, and reckless and nearly everything he writes has sections of headlong brilliance.”—The New York Review of Books
“The largest mind and imagination [in modern] American literature . . . Unlike just about every American writer since Henry James, Mailer has managed to grow and become richer in wisdom with each new book.”—Chicago Tribune
“Mailer is a master of his craft. His language carries you through the story like a leaf on a stream.”—The Cincinnati Post
Copies
No copies available.
Why Are We at War?
Beginning with his debut masterpiece, The Naked and the Dead, Norman Mailer has repeatedly told the truth about war. Why Are We at War? returns Mailer to the gravity of the battlefield and the grand hubris of the politicians who send soldiers there to die. First published in the early days of the Iraq War, Why Are We at War? is an explosive argument about the American quest for empire that still carries weight today. Scrutinizing the Bush administration’s words and actions, Mailer unleashes his trademark moral rigor: “Because democracy is noble, it is always endangered. . . . To assume blithely that we can export democracy into any country we choose can serve paradoxically to encourage more fascism at home and abroad.”
Praise for Why Are We at War?
“We’re overloaded with information these days, some of it possibly true. Mailer offers a provocative—and persuasive—cultural and intellectual frame.”—Newsweek
“[Mailer] still has the stamina to churn out hard-hitting criticism.”—Los Angeles Times
“Penetrating . . . There’s plenty of irreverent wit and fresh thinking on display.”—San Francisco Chronicle
“Eloquent . . . thoughtful . . . Why Are We at War? pulls no punches.”—Fort Worth Star-Telegram
Praise for Norman Mailer
“[Norman Mailer] loomed over American letters longer and larger than any other writer of his generation.”—The New York Times
“A writer of the greatest and most reckless talent.”—The New Yorker
“Mailer is indispensable, an American treasure.”—The Washington Post
“A devastatingly alive and original creative mind.”—Life
“Mailer is fierce, courageous, and reckless and nearly everything he writes has sections of headlong brilliance.”—The New York Review of Books
“The largest mind and imagination [in modern] American literature . . . Unlike just about every American writer since Henry James, Mailer has managed to grow and become richer in wisdom with each new book.”—Chicago Tribune
“Mailer is a master of his craft. His language carries you through the story like a leaf on a stream.”—The Cincinnati Post
Copies
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$7.99
Selected Letters of Norman Mailer
Novelist, biographer and chronicler of American life', Norman Mailer (1923-2007) was also a prolific letter-writer. Selected from some 45,000 pieces of correspondence, and edited with introductions to each decade by J Michael Lennon, this volume includes letters to family, friends, fellow writers, political figures and cultural icons such as John Lennon and Marlon Brando. It is, in effect, an autobiographical portrait of one of America's greatest writers and one of the 20th century's most provocative intellectuals. American-cut pages.
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Selected Letters of Norman Mailer
A genuine literary event—an illuminating collection of correspondence from one of the most acclaimed American writers of all time
Over the course of a nearly sixty-year career, Norman Mailer wrote more than 30 novels, essay collections, and nonfiction books. Yet nowhere was he more prolific—or more exposed—than in his letters. All told, Mailer crafted more than 45,000 pieces of correspondence (approximately 20 million words), many of them deeply personal, keeping a copy of almost every one. Now the best of these are published—most for the first time—in one remarkable volume that spans seven decades and, it seems, several lifetimes. Together they form a stunning autobiographical portrait of one of the most original, provocative, and outspoken public intellectuals of the twentieth century.
Compiled by Mailer’s authorized biographer, J. Michael Lennon, and organized by decade, Selected Letters of Norman Mailer features the most fascinating of Mailer’s missives from 1940 to 2007—letters to his family and friends, to fans and fellow writers (including Truman Capote, James Baldwin, and Philip Roth), to political figures from Henry Kissinger to Bill and Hillary Clinton, and to such cultural icons as John Lennon, Marlon Brando, and even Monica Lewinsky.
Here is Mailer the precocious Harvard undergraduate, writing home to his parents for the first time and worrying that his acceptances by literary magazines were “all happening too easy.” Here, too, is Mailer the soldier, confronting the violence of war in the Pacific, which would become the subject of his masterly debut novel, The Naked and the Dead: “[I’m] amazed how casually it fits into . . . daily life, how very unhorrible it all is.” Mailer the international celebrity pledges to William Styron, “I’m going to write every day, and like Lot’s Wife I’m consigning myself to a pillar of salt if I dare to look back,” while the 1980s Mailer agonizes over the fallout from his ill-fated friendship with Jack Henry Abbott, the murderer who became his literary protégé. (“The continuation of our relationship was depressing for both of us,” he confesses to Joyce Carol Oates.) At last, he finds domestic—and erotic—bliss in the arms of his sixth wife, Norris Church (“We bounce into each other like sunlight”).
Whether he is reflecting on the Kennedy assassination, assessing the merits of authors from Fitzgerald to Proust, or threatening to pummel William Styron, the brilliant, pugnacious Norman Mailer comes alive again in these letters. The myriad faces of this artist and activist, lover and fighter, public figure and private man, are laid bare in this collection as never before.
Praise for Selected Letters of Norman Mailer
“Extraordinary.”—Vanity Fair
“As massive as the life they document . . . the autobiography [Mailer] never wrote . . . a kind of map, from the hills and rice paddies of the Philippines through every victory and defeat for the rest of the century and beyond.”—Esquire
“The shards and winks at Mailer’s own past that are scattered throughout the letters . . . are so tantalizing. They glitter throughout like unrefined jewels that Mailer took to the grave.”—The New Yorker
“Indispensable . . . a subtle document of an unsubtle man’s wit and erudition, even (or especially) when it’s wielded as a weapon.”—New York
“Umpteen pleasures to pluck out and roll between your teeth, like seeds from a pomegranate.”—The New York Times
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Marilyn Monroe
“This book is really two books. It is a biography, and it is also a pictorial retrospective of an actress whose greatest love affair was conceivably with the camera,” wrote Norman Mailer in his 1973 biography, Marilyn.
TASCHEN has paired Mailer’s original text with Bert Stern’s photographs from the legendary Last Sitting—widely considered the most intimate photographs of Monroe ever taken—to create a fitting tribute to the woman who, at the time of her death in 1962, was the world’s most famous, a symbol of glamour and eroticism for an entire generation. But though she was feted and adored by her public, her private life was that of a little girl lost, desperate to find love and security. Mailer’s Marilyn is beautiful, tragic, and complex. As Mailer reflects upon her life—from her bleak childhood through to the mysterious circumstances of her death—she emerges as a symbol of the bizarre decade during which she reigned as Hollywood’s greatest female star.
This book, conceived by Lawrence Schiller, Mailer’s collaborator on five works, combines the author’s masterful text with Stern’s penetrating images of the 36-year-old Marilyn. Photographed forVoguemagazine over three days at the Bel-Air Hotel, Marilyn had never allowed such unfettered access, nor had she looked so breathtakingly beautiful. Six weeks later, mysteriously, she was dead. In this bold synthesis of literary classic and legendary portrait-sitting, Mailer and Stern lift the veils of confusion surrounding Monroe—the woman, the star, the sex symbol—and offer profound insight into an iconic figure whose true personality remains an enigma even today.
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Moon Fire: The Epic Journey of Apollo 11
It has been called the single most historic event of the 20th century: On July 20, 1969, after a decade of tests and training, supported by a staff of 400,000 engineers and scientists, and with a budget of billions, the most powerful rocket ever launched brought Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin, and Michael Collins to the moon.
Nobody captured the men, the mood, and the machinery like Norman Mailer, hired by LIFE magazine to cover the mission in a dazzling reportage he later enhanced into the brilliantly crafted book, Of a Fire on the Moon.
Rediscover this epoch-making event with TASCHEN’s adaptation of Mailer’s account, now in our popular Reader's Edition so you can really curl up and travel not just back in time, but into outer space. The text is accompanied by hundreds of photographs from the NASA vaults, the archives of LIFE, and other leading magazines of the day, documenting the development of the agency and the mission, life inside the command module and on the moon’s surface, as well as the world’s jubilant reaction to the landing.
Captions by leading Apollo 11 experts explain the history and science behind the images, citing the mission log, publications of the day, and postflight astronaut interviews, while an evocative introduction by Colum McCann celebrates Mailer’s incomparable skill at transforming “the science of space...the weight of history...the breadth of mythology” into prose.
About the series
Bibliotheca Universalis — Compact cultural companions celebrating the eclectic TASCHEN universe!
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Lipton's, A Marijuana Journal: 1954-1955
The final previously unpublished work from two-time winner of the Pulitzer Prize and winner of the National Book Award, Norman Mailer.
Norman Mailer is one of America's most consequential public intellectuals of the postwar period. He cofounded the Village Voice, and he was the author of twelve novels, among them The Naked and the Dead and Harlot’s Ghost, as well as numerous works of nonfiction. He is truly one of the giants of American literature.
Lipton's, A Marijuana Journal is the only work by Norman Mailer that has not been published previously. Written between 1954-55, from December to March, it contains many ideas he would develop in his later work. The journal includes daily musings, as well as thoughts profound. It is a must-read for Norman Mailer scholars, as well as literature professors.
Lipton’s, A Marijuana Journal also includes never before published letters between Robert Lindner (author of Rebel Without a Cause, Prescription for a Reberllion, and The 50 Minute Hour) and Norman Mailer. They introduce the reader to Mailer’s state of mind during the time he was writing the journal and to the unique relationship he had with Dr. Lindner.
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$28.99
Miami and the Siege of Chicago (New York Review Books Classics)
1968. The Vietnam War was raging. President Lyndon Johnson, facing a challenge in his own Democratic Party from the maverick antiwar candidate Eugene McCarthy, announced that he would not seek a second term. In April, Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated and riots broke out in inner cities throughout America. Bobby Kennedy was killed after winning the California primary in June. In August, Republicans met in Miami, picking the little-loved Richard Nixon as their candidate, while in September, Democrats in Chicago backed the ineffectual vice president, Hubert Humphrey. TVs across the country showed antiwar protesters filling the streets of Chicago and the police running amok, beating and arresting demonstrators and delegates alike.
In Miami and the Siege of Chicago, Norman Mailer, America’s most protean and provocative writer, brings a novelist’s eye to bear on the events of 1968, a decisive year in modern American politics, from which today’s bitterly divided country arose.
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Norman Mailer: Four Books of the 1960s (LOA #305): An American Dream / Why Are We in Vietnam? / The Armies of the Night / Miami and the Siege of Chicago (Library of America Norman Mailer Edition)
Four Mailer classics in one volume for the first time, books that crackle with the creative energy and raw passions of America's most turbulent decade
No writer plunged more wholeheartedly into the chaotic energies of the 1960s than Norman Mailer, as he fearlessly revolutionized literary norms and genres to capture the political, social, and sexual explosions of an unsettled era. Here, for the first time in one volume, are his unforgettable books of the 1960s: two disruptive and visionary novels, and two radically innovative journalistic masterpieces. War hero, television star, existential hipster, seducer, murderer: such is the protagonist of An American Dream, Mailer's hallucinatory voyage through the dark night of an America awash in money, sex, and violence. In Why Are We in Vietnam? a motor-mouthed 18-year-old Texan on the eve of military service recounts with manic and obscene exuberance a grizzly bear hunt in Alaska that exposes the macho roots of the war. The acclaimed "non-fiction novel" The Armies of the Night (winner of the Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award) and its follow-up Miami and the Siege of Chicago are on-the-scene, in-the-scene accounts of an antiwar march on the Pentagon and the party conventions of 1968, as Mailer casts himself as a player in the drama he reports, bringing a sharp and merciless eye on the decade's political upheavals.
LIBRARY OF AMERICA is an independent nonprofit cultural organization founded in 1979 to preserve our nation’s literary heritage by publishing, and keeping permanently in print, America’s best and most significant writing. The Library of America series includes more than 300 volumes to date, authoritative editions that average 1,000 pages in length, feature cloth covers, sewn bindings, and ribbon markers, and are printed on premium acid-free paper that will last for centuries.
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Norman Mailer: Collected Essays of the 1960s (LOA #306) (Library of America Norman Mailer Edition)
Politics, war, sex, boxing, and the art of writing: an era's most controversial writer at his slashing and provocative best
The electric and fearless essays of Norman Mailer were essential to the intellectual climate of 1960s America. Here, gathered into one volume for the first time by acclaimed Mailer biographer J. Michael Lennon, are all the essential essays from the classic collections The Presidential Papers (1963), Cannibals and Christians (1966), and Existential Errands (1972), each a fascinating window on one of the most extraordinary and tumultuous decades in the nation's history. A self-appointed exorcist of the culture's demons and an unrestrained mythologizer of his own identity, Mailer contemplated and often skewered icons of politics and literature, charted psychosexual undercurrents and covert power plays, and gloried in the exercise of a pugnacious prose style that was all his own. Whether writing about Jackie Kennedy or Sonny Liston, the realist tradition in America or the internal culture wars of the Republican Party, the death of Ernest Hemingway or the battle against censorship, Mailer was always ready to intervene in what he called "the years of the plague."
LIBRARY OF AMERICA is an independent nonprofit cultural organization founded in 1979 to preserve our nation’s literary heritage by publishing, and keeping permanently in print, America’s best and most significant writing. The Library of America series includes more than 300 volumes to date, authoritative editions that average 1,000 pages in length, feature cloth covers, sewn bindings, and ribbon markers, and are printed on premium acid-free paper that will last for centuries.
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An American Dream: A Novel
In this wild battering ram of a novel, which was originally published to vast controversy in 1965, Norman Mailer creates a character who might be a fictional precursor of the philosopher-killer he would later profile in The Executioner’s Song. As Stephen Rojack, a decorated war hero and former congressman who murders his wife in a fashionable New York City high-rise, runs amok through the city in which he was once a privileged citizen, Mailer peels away the layers of our social norms to reveal a world of pure appetite and relentless cruelty. One part Nietzsche, one part de Sade, and one part Charlie Parker, An American Dream grabs the reader by the throat and refuses to let go.
Praise for An American Dream
“Perhaps the only serious New York novel since The Great Gatsby.”—Joan Didion, National Review
“A devil’s encyclopedia of our secret visions and desires . . . the expression of a devastatingly alive and original creative mind.”—Life
“A work of fierce concentration . . . perfectly, and often brilliantly, realistic [with] a pattern of remarkable imaginative coherence and intensity.”—Harper’s
“At once violent, educated, and cool . . . This is our history as Hawthorne might have written it.”—Commentary
Praise for Norman Mailer
“[Norman Mailer] loomed over American letters longer and larger than any other writer of his generation.”—The New York Times
“A writer of the greatest and most reckless talent.”—The New Yorker
“Mailer is indispensable, an American treasure.”—The Washington Post
“A devastatingly alive and original creative mind.”—Life
“Mailer is fierce, courageous, and reckless and nearly everything he writes has sections of headlong brilliance.”—The New York Review of Books
“The largest mind and imagination [in modern] American literature . . . Unlike just about every American writer since Henry James, Mailer has managed to grow and become richer in wisdom with each new book.”—Chicago Tribune
“Mailer is a master of his craft. His language carries you through the story like a leaf on a stream.”—The Cincinnati Post
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Advertisements for Myself
Originally published in 1959, Advertisements for Myself is an inventive collection of stories, essays, polemic, meditations, and interviews. It is Norman Mailer at his brilliant, provocative, outrageous best. Emerging at the height of “hip,” Advertisements is at once a chronicle of a crucial era in the formation of modern American culture and an important contribution to the great autobiographical tradition in American letters.
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The Gospel According to the Son: A Novel
Norman Mailer fused fact and fiction to create indelible portraits of such figures as Marilyn Monroe, Gary Gilmore, and Lee Harvey Oswald. In The Gospel According to the Son, Mailer reimagines, as no other modern author has, the key character of Western history. Here is Jesus Christ’s story in his own words: the discovery of his divinity and the painful, powerful journey to accepting and expressing it, “as if I were a man enclosing another man within.” In its brevity and piercing simplicity, it may be Mailer’s most accessible, direct, and heartfelt work.
Praise for The Gospel According to the Son
“Quietly penetrating . . . [Norman Mailer’s] gospel is written in a direct, rather relaxed English that yet has an eerie, neo-Biblical dignity.”—John Updike, The New Yorker
“A book of considerable intellectual force . . . The writer’s powerful mind works in a specialized way, not by theological argumentation but by telling or retelling a story.”—The New York Review of Books
“Challenges readers on the religious right and the atheist left with equally rich interpretive tasks.”—The Dallas Morning News
“An informed and believable work of fiction . . . of what may have been going through the mind of Jesus during his epic ministry.”—San Francisco Chronicle
Praise for Norman Mailer
“[Norman Mailer] loomed over American letters longer and larger than any other writer of his generation.”—The New York Times
“A writer of the greatest and most reckless talent.”—The New Yorker
“Mailer is indispensable, an American treasure.”—The Washington Post
“A devastatingly alive and original creative mind.”—Life
“Mailer is fierce, courageous, and reckless and nearly everything he writes has sections of headlong brilliance.”—The New York Review of Books
“The largest mind and imagination [in modern] American literature . . . Unlike just about every American writer since Henry James, Mailer has managed to grow and become richer in wisdom with each new book.”—Chicago Tribune
“Mailer is a master of his craft. His language carries you through the story like a leaf on a stream.”—The Cincinnati Post
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Barbary Shore: A Novel
Published at the height of the McCarthy era, Norman Mailer’s audacious novel of socialismis at once an elegy and an indictment, a sinuous moral thriller and an intellectual slugfest. Wounded during World War II, Mike Lovett is an amnesiac, and much of his past is a secret to himself. But when Lovett rents a room in Brooklyn, he finds that his housemates have secrets of their own: One betrays a husband no one ever sees; another may have been a Communist executioner. Combining Kafkaesque unease with Orwellian paranoia, Barbary Shore plays havoc with our certainties and delivers its effects with a force that is pure Mailer.
Praise for Barbary Shore
“A work of remarkable power, of amazing penetration, both into people and the determining forces of American life.”—The Atlantic Monthly
“Vibrant with life, abundant with real people . . . [Mailer has] a scintillating skill in observation, a mature sense of meaning.”—The Philadelphia Inquirer
“This book is nothing short of amazing.”—Newsweek
“Barbary Shore [is] about the kind of country—and what you might call the psychic territory—that American war heroes were returning to.”—The Guardian
Praise for Norman Mailer
“[Norman Mailer] loomed over American letters longer and larger than any other writer of his generation.”—The New York Times
“A writer of the greatest and most reckless talent.”—The New Yorker
“Mailer is indispensable, an American treasure.”—The Washington Post
“A devastatingly alive and original creative mind.”—Life
“Mailer is fierce, courageous, and reckless and nearly everything he writes has sections of headlong brilliance.”—The New York Review of Books
“The largest mind and imagination [in modern] American literature . . . Unlike just about every American writer since Henry James, Mailer has managed to grow and become richer in wisdom with each new book.”—Chicago Tribune
“Mailer is a master of his craft. His language carries you through the story like a leaf on a stream.”—The Cincinnati Post
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Classic Stories of World War II (Word Cloud Classics)
by Kurt Vonnegut, John Steinbeck, James A. Michener, Norman Mailer, J. G. Ballard
A collection of the greatest stories ever written about World War II.
World War II brought grief and destruction, but it also inspired some of the most impassioned literature in history. Classic Stories of World War II includes excerpts from novels such as James Jones’s From Here to Eternity and Joseph Heller’s Catch-22, as well as real-life accounts of the Battle of Britain by Guy Gibson and the exploits of the French Resistance by Nancy Wake. More than a dozen riveting stories of the war from esteemed authors are featured, providing the reader with a rich variety of perspectives that will bring a new understanding of this global conflict.
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The Castle in the Forest: A Novel
The final work of fiction from Norman Mailer, a defining voice of the postwar era, is also one of his most ambitious, taking as its subject the evil of Adolf Hitler. The narrator, a mysterious SS man in possession of extraordinary secrets, follows Adolf from birth through adolescence and offers revealing portraits of Hitler’s parents and siblings. A crucial reflection on the shadows that eclipsed the twentieth century, Mailer’s noveldelivers myriad twists and surprises along with characteristically astonishing insights into the struggle between good and evil that exists in us all.
Praise for The Castle in the Forest
“This remarkable novel about the young Adolf Hitler, his family and their shifting circumstances, is Mailer’s most perfect apprehension of the absolutely alien. . . . Mailer doesn’t inhabit these historical figures so much as possess them.”—The New York Times Book Review
“Terrifically creepy . . . an icy and convincing portrait of the dictator as a young sociopath.”—Entertainment Weekly
“The work of a bold and confident writer who may yet be seen as the preeminent novelist of our time . . . a source of tremendous narrative pleasure . . . Every character . . . lives and breathes.”—South Florida Sun-Sentinel
“Blackly hilarious, beautifully written . . . [The Castle in the Forest] has vigor, excitement, humor and vastness of spirit.”—The New York Observer
Praise for Norman Mailer
“[Norman Mailer] loomed over American letters longer and larger than any other writer of his generation.”—The New York Times
“A writer of the greatest and most reckless talent.”—The New Yorker
“Mailer is indispensable, an American treasure.”—The Washington Post
“A devastatingly alive and original creative mind.”—Life
“Mailer is fierce, courageous, and reckless and nearly everything he writes has sections of headlong brilliance.”—The New York Review of Books
“The largest mind and imagination [in modern] American literature . . . Unlike just about every American writer since Henry James, Mailer has managed to grow and become richer in wisdom with each new book.”—Chicago Tribune
“Mailer is a master of his craft. His language carries you through the story like a leaf on a stream.”—The Cincinnati Post
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On God: An Uncommon Conversation
“I see God,” wrote Norman Mailer, “as a Creator, as the greatest artist. I see human beings as His most developed artworks.” In these moving, amusing, and probing dialogues conducted in the years before his death, Mailer establishes his own system of belief, rejecting both organized religion and atheism. He avows that sensual pleasures were bestowed on us by God; he finds fault with the Ten Commandments; and he holds that technology was the Devil’s most brilliant creation. In short, Mailer is original and unpredictable in this inspiring journey, in which “God needs us as much as we need God.”
Praise for On God
“[Norman Mailer’s] theology is not theoretical to him. After eight decades, it is what he believes. He expects no adherents, and does not profess to be a prophet, but he has worked to forge his beliefs into a coherent catechism.”—New York
“The glory of an original mind in full provocation.”—USA Today
“At once illuminating and exciting . . . a chance to see Mailer’s intellect as well as his lively conversational style of speech.”—American Jewish Life
“Remarkable . . . [Mailer’s] a believer—in his own fashion. . . . He has made [God] into a complex character.”—The Globe and Mail
Praise for Norman Mailer
“[Norman Mailer] loomed over American letters longer and larger than any other writer of his generation.”—The New York Times
“A writer of the greatest and most reckless talent.”—The New Yorker
“Mailer is indispensable, an American treasure.”—The Washington Post
“A devastatingly alive and original creative mind.”—Life
“Mailer is fierce, courageous, and reckless and nearly everything he writes has sections of headlong brilliance.”—The New York Review of Books
“The largest mind and imagination [in modern] American literature . . . Unlike just about every American writer since Henry James, Mailer has managed to grow and become richer in wisdom with each new book.”—Chicago Tribune
“Mailer is a master of his craft. His language carries you through the story like a leaf on a stream.”—The Cincinnati Post
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Tough Guys Don't Dance A Novel
“Spectacular . . . [Norman Mailer] makes every word count, like a master knife thrower zinging stilettos in a circle around your head.”—People
Norman Mailer peers into the recesses and buried virtues of the modern American male in a brilliant crime novel that transcends genre. When Tim Madden, an unsuccessful writer living on Cape Cod, awakes with a gruesome hangover, a painful tattoo on his upper arm, and a severed female head in his marijuana stash, he has almost no memory of the night before. As he reconstructs the missing hours, Madden runs afoul of retired prizefighters, sex addicts, mediums, former cons, a world-weary ex-girlfriend, and his own father, old now but still a Herculean figure. Stunningly conceived and vividly composed, Tough Guys Don’t Dance represents Mailer at the peak of his powers.
Praise for Tough Guys Don’t Dance
“As brash, brooding and ultimately mesmerizing as the author himself . . . [Mailer strikes a] dazzling balance between humor and horror.”—New York Daily News
“A first-rate page-turner of a murder mystery . . . full of great characters, littered with dead bodies and replete with plausible suspects.”—Chicago Tribune
“[Tough Guys Don’t Dance] has that charming Mailer bravado.”—The New York Times
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Ancient Evenings: A Novel
Norman Mailer’s dazzlingly rich, deeply evocative novel of ancient Egypt breathes life into the figures of a lost era: the eighteenth-dynasty Pharaoh Rameses and his wife, Queen Nefertiti; Menenhetet, their creature, lover, and victim; and the gods and mortals that surround them in intimate and telepathic communion. Mailer’s reincarnated protagonist is carried through the exquisite gardens of the royal harem, along the majestic flow of the Nile, and into the terrifying clash of battle. An extraordinary work of inventiveness, Ancient Evenings lives on in the mind long after the last page has been turned.
Praise for Ancient Evenings
“Astounding, beautifully written . . . a leap of imagination that crosses three millennia to Pharaonic Egypt.”—USA Today
“Mailer makes a miraculous present out of age-deep memories, bringing to life the rhythms, the images, the sensuousness of a lost time.”—The New York Times
“Mailer’s Egypt is a haunting and magical place. . . . The reader wallows in the scope, depth, the sheer magnitude and—yes—the fertility of his imagination.”—The Washington Post Book World
“An enormous pyramid of a novel [reminiscent of] Thomas Pynchon’s Gravity’s Rainbow and Carlos Fuentes’s Terra Nostra.”—Los Angeles Herald Examiner
Praise for Norman Mailer
“[Norman Mailer] loomed over American letters longer and larger than any other writer of his generation.”—The New York Times
“A writer of the greatest and most reckless talent.”—The New Yorker
“Mailer is indispensable, an American treasure.”—The Washington Post
“A devastatingly alive and original creative mind.”—Life
“Mailer is fierce, courageous, and reckless and nearly everything he writes has sections of headlong brilliance.”—The New York Review of Books
“The largest mind and imagination [in modern] American literature . . . Unlike just about every American writer since Henry James, Mailer has managed to grow and become richer in wisdom with each new book.”—Chicago Tribune
“Mailer is a master of his craft. His language carries you through the story like a leaf on a stream.”—The Cincinnati Post
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