A complete lesson plan by BookRags. This lesson plan is sold separately and is not included with any subscription or study pack.

Norman Kingsley Mailer (born 1923), American author, film producer and director, wrote one of the most noteworthy American novels about World War II. Only in his later political journalism did he reach that level of achievement again. Norman Mailer was b...

[This entry was updated by J. Michael Lennon (Wilkes University) from his update in the Concise Dictionary of American Literary Biography, volume 6, pp. 162-183, of the entries by Philip H. Bufithis (Shepherd College) in DLB 2: American Novelists Since W...

Norman Mailer's achievement lies primarily in his treatment of the conflict between man's search for self-actualization and the strictures society places upon him. Mailer has rendered this theme with an energy of style, an ideational power, and a vivid d...

Many are the pleasant things about London in summer. Each year they recur: the Isley Brothers' "Summer Breeze through open car windows; the black boys' fluorescent string vests; the sound of the neighbours washing up drifting across the street; the smell of hot plane...

Athol Fugard asks a lot of the actors who perform his work. Not only must they delve into the emotional and psychological complexities of living under South Africa's apartheid system, but they must-at least in his one-act "Statements After an Arrest Under the Immorality...

His friends all tell similar stories: Norman Mailer at a dinner party, awards ceremony or afternoon gathering, hobbling on canes up or down a few steps or a flight of stairs, short of breath, as if getting from one place to another was a struggle...

Within the past year, three of the most famous authors to emerge after World War II have died: Norman Mailer, Kurt Vonnegut and William Styron. Their deaths all resulted in front-page stories, lengthy appreciations and ongoing discussions about their place in American letters.No writer was...

In the following essay, Merrill explores elements of documentary, social critique, and dramatic action in The Naked and the Dead. Upon reevaluation, Merrill concludes that the novel "remains one of Mailer's most impressive achievements."

Over the perspective of both officers and enlisted men [in The Naked and the Dead] prevails the narrative voice of Mailer, who, Olympian-like, remains a detached, omniscient observer. He conveys the tribulations of war with almost scathing objectivity. (p. 18) Clearly, Mailer's perspective in this novel seems noninnovational for it is derived from naturalism, the prevailing point of view of the American masters of the 1930s—Steinbeck, Dos Passos, Farrell, and Hemingway—who inspired him....

Through the years Mailer has acquired notoriety through incidents ranging from the stabbing of his second wife to his New York mayoralty campaign, and his facility for antagonizing his audiences is well known. Whatever the circumstances of his exposure to the public, Mailer rarely fails to be "good copy" and consequently has been fair game for the media newsmakers. Because of the difficulty of reconciling this notorious Mailer with the much-admired author of The Naked and the Dead and The Armi...

An argumentive essay over the modern characteristics of the novel, The Naked and the Dead, by Norman Mailer.