Contents: Introduction chapter I american author norman mailer

1.2. Norman Mailer as a Novelist
Mailer has written 12 novels in 59 years. After graduating from the University of Paris in 1947–48 with a degree in French language and culture, Naked and the Dead returned to the United States shortly after its publication in May 1948.16 It was the best-selling book of the New York Times for 62 weeks. The number of Mailer's novels came to the fore.17 It is widely recognized as one of the American Wartime novels18 and is listed by the Modern Library as one of the hundreds of best English-language novels of the twentieth century. The book that led to his reputation sold more than a million copies in its first year19 (three million as of 1981) 20 and was never published. It is still one of the best depictions of Americans during World War II.³
Barbary Shore (1951) was not well received by critics.23 It was a surreal illustration of the leftist policies of the Cold War described in a Brooklyn apartment and Meyler's most autobiographical novel.24 His 1955 novel, The Deer Garden, was based on his own experiences. From 1949 to 1950, he worked as a screenwriter in Hollywood. It was initially rejected by seven publishers because it was sexually explicit before it was published by Putnam. It wasn’t a major success, but it made the list of best-selling books, selling more than 50,000 copies in its first year25 and being considered by some critics as the best Hollywood novel since Nathanael West’s The Day of the Locust.262728
Meyler wrote his fourth novel, The American Dream, in Esquire magazine for eight months (January to August 1964) as a series, and published it two months after writing the first chapter. In March 1965, the Dial Press published a revised version. The novel generally received mixed reviews, but was a bestseller.29 Joan Didion praised it in the National Review (April 20, 1965) and John V. Oldridge Life (March 19, 1965), while Elizabeth Hardwick did the same. sheltered him in the Partizan Review (spring 1965) .30
In 1980, Meyler’s “real-life novel” about the life and death of the murderer Gary Gilmor won the Pulitzer Prize for Fantasy Song.31 When Joan Didion called the novel an “absolutely amazing book,” many o. reflected the views of the students. “At the end of the first page of the New York Times Book Review.32
Meyler spent more time than his other books to write his novel, Egypt in the Twentieth Dynasty (c. 1100 BC), Ancient Evenings. He worked on it from 1972 to 1983. It was also a bestseller, although the reviews were negative. Harold Bloom in his commentary said the book “gives all the signs of a cut” and “it can be half as long again, but no reader wants it” 33, while Richard Puirier called it Meyler’s “most daring book”.
Mailer’s longest novel (p. 1310) was published in 1991 and received the best ratings since “The Executioner’s Song” 35 This is a study of the CIA’s unprecedented dramas from the end of World War II to 1965. The amount of research for a novel that is still on CIA reading lists. quote He finished the novel with the words "To Continue" and planned to write a sequel called "The Tomb of the Lord," but other projects got involved and he never wrote. The image of a prostitute sold well.⁴
His last novel, Castle in the Woods, about Hitler's childhood, was the fifth best-selling book in the Times since its publication in January 2007.17 It was rated more positively than any other book after The Executioner's Song. Castle was supposed to be the first volume of the trilogy, but Mailer died a few months after it was completed. The Castle in the Forest received a 6,200-word first-page praise from Lee Siegel in the New York Times Book Review36, as well as the Bad Sex Award in Fiction by Literary Review magazine.
From the mid-1950s, Meyler became famous for his anti-cultural essays. In 1955, he founded the Voice of the Village and was initially an investor and silent partner38, but later from January to April 1956 he wrote a column entitled "Fast: A Column for Slow Learners." In general, this was important in the development of philosophy or ‘American existentialism’, which enabled him to discover his propensity for journalism.38 Meyler’s famous essay ‘The White Negro’ (1957) reflects the hipster figure standing here. It is one of the most anthological and controversial essays of the post-war period. This is the first work I have written in a style that can be called my own. ”43 The comments were positive and most commentators called it his winning work.44
In 1960, Meyler wrote for Esquire magazine, "Superman Comes to the Supermarket," about the appearance of John F. Kennedy during the Democratic Party convention. The essay was a major breakthrough for new journalism in the 1960s, but when the magazine's editors changed the title to "Superman Comes to Supermart," Mailer was outraged and didn't write for Esquire for years. (The magazine later apologized. Subsequent links are to the original title.)
Meyler took part in a march to the Pentagon in October 1967, but initially had no intention of writing a book about it.45 After a conversation with a friend, Harper's magazine editor Willie Morris, he agreed to write a long essay describing the march. 46 As a result of a concerted effort, he created a 90,000-word work in two months, and it appeared in Harper’s March issue. It was the longest work of art published by an American magazine.47 As one commentator noted, “Myler disarmed the literary world with armies. He described himself as a third person, a combination of satirical self-expression, literary was a masterful portrait of the portrait. The celebrities (especially Robert Lowell, Dwight McDonald, and Paul Goodman), as a result of the spotless information about March itself and the passionate debate about the divided nation, made the genre story even its own zi has been praised by his most ruthless insults. " 48 Alfred Kazin, who wrote in the New York Times Book Review, said, "Mailer's intuition is that time demands a new form. He found it." 49 He later expanded the article to The Army of the Night (1968). ), National Book Award50 and Pulitzer Prize.⁵
Mailer's major new journalistic or creative fiction book, The Miami and Chicago Siege (1968), about the 1968 political conventions; On Fire on the Moon (1971), a long report on Apollo 11's mission to the Moon; The Sex Prisoner (1971), his response to Kate Millett's critique of patriarchal legends in the works of Meyler, Jean Genet, Henry Miller, and D.H. Lawrence; and “Jang” (1975), the story of Muhammad A’s defeat to George Forman for the 1974 heavyweight boxing championship in Zaire. Miami, Fire and Prisoner were finalists for the National Book Award.51 A distinctive feature of his five new works of journalism is that they load from illeism or present themselves as personal, not first-person. Mailer took the course from reading The Doctrine of Henry Adams (1918) when he was the first student at Harvard Mailer is one of the most expansive possibilities of fiction in his creative fuzzy literature.
In the late 1960s, Meyler directed three improvisational avant-garde films: Wild 90 (1968), Outlaw (1968) and Maidston (1970). The second involves Norman T. Kingsley, played by Meyler, and Raul, Kingsley’s half-brother, played by Rip Thorne, in his own spontaneous and brutal brawl. Thorne left him with Meyler sick with a hammer, and Thorne's ear became ill when Meyler fell ill.56 In 2012, the Criterion Collection released Meyler's experimental film, "Maidstone and Other Norman Mailer's Films," in a set of boxes.57 In 198, he adapted and directed a film version of his novel, Tough Kids Don’t Dance, starring Ryan O’Neill and Isabella Rossellini, which became a small camping classic.
In 1976, Meyler traveled to Italy for a few weeks to collaborate with Italian Spaghetti Western filmmaker Sergio Leone on adapting Harry Gray’s novel The Hoods. "Once Upon a Time in America" ​​(1984), starring Italian filmmaker Robert DeNiro.
In 2001, he adapted the screenplay for The Master Spy: The Story of Robert Hanssen.
In 2005, Meyler worked as a technical consultant in Ron Howard’s boxing film “Cinderella Man” about legendary boxer Jim Braddock.⁶