Abstract
In his last years as a celebrity author, Norman Mailer had a following of scholars who assured him that they were at work to address one of his greatest anxieties: namely, the securing of his literary reputation for posterity. At the 2007 annual symposium of the “Norman Mailer Society” in Provincetown, Massachusetts, the 84-year-old author sat in his favorite chair—a “geriatric Buddha,” as biographer Peter Manso described him—as more than 150 scholars, graduate students, and Mailer enthusiasts gathered to deliver papers about his writings and attend meetings under a floor-to-ceiling banner of the likeness of Mailer in the main auditorium.1
Keywords
Literary Achievement Literary Canon Fiction Writing English Prose Fictional Work
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Notes
- 1.Peter Manso, Mailer: His Life and Times (1985; reprint, New York: Washington Square, 2008), 726–727.Google Scholar
- 4.Doug Underwood, Journalism and the Novel: Truth and Fiction, 1700–2000 (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 167–168;CrossRefGoogle Scholar
- Norman Mailer, The Armies of the Night: History as a Novel/The Novel as History (New York: New American Library, 1968), 21–22.Google Scholar
- 5.J. Michael Lennon, “Norman Mailer: Novelist, Journalist, or Historian?” Journal of Modern Literature 30:1 (Fall 2006): 91–103.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
- 7.Manso, Mailer, 403; Lennon, “Norman Mailer,” 93; Joan Didion, “A Social Eye,” National Review 20 (April 1965): 329–330;Google Scholar
- Barry H. Leeds, The Structured Vision of Norman Mailer (New York: New York University Press, 1969), 125–177;Google Scholar
- Tony Tanner, “On the Parapet,” in City of Words: American Fiction, 1950–1970 (New York: Harper and Row, 1971), 344–371.Google Scholar
- 8.Doug Underwood, Chronicling Trauma: Journalists and Writers on Violence and Loss (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2011), 174.Google Scholar
- 9.Underwood, Journalism and the Novel, 168. If anything, Mailer’s nonfiction has fallen in critical esteem while the reputation of his fiction has not necessarily risen, at least as measured by the judgments of the literary scholars who edited the 2011 Norton Anthology/American Literature. In 1979, the first edition of the anthology included selections from Mailer’s nonfictional, The Armies of the Night, as well as “The Man Who Studied Yoga” and “The Dynamic of American Letters.” In contrast, none of Mailer’s writing was included in the 2011 edition. Nina Baym and Robert S. Levine, eds., The Norton Anthology/American Literature, eighth edition, 6 volumes (New York: Norton, 2011);Google Scholar
- Ronald Gottesman, Laurence B. Holland, David Kalstone, Francis Murphy, Hershel Parker, William H. Pritchard, eds., The Norton Anthology of American Literature, first edition, second volume (New York: Norton, 1979), 2045–2113.Google Scholar
- 11.Shelley Fisher Fishkin, From Fact to Fiction: Journalism and Lmaginative Writing in America (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1985), 208–209, 212, 216; John Hersey, “Joe Is Home Now,” Life (July 3, 1944): 68–74, 76, 78, 80.Google Scholar
- 13.Robert S. Boynton, The New New Journalism: Conversations with America’s Best Nonfiction Writers on Their Craft (New York: Vintage, 2005), 267, 269.Google Scholar
- 14.Joe Bageant, Deer Hunting with Jesus: Dispatches from America’s Class War (New York: Three Rivers Press, 2007); “An Interview with Joe Bageant,” EnergyGrid Magazine, www.energygrid.com./society/ap-bageant.htn. For Internet sites that feature literary journalism, see Byliner.com; Longform.org; Atavist.com; and LongStories.net.Google Scholar
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© Doug Underwood 2013