Hard-hitting journalist and novelist Norman Mailer [Credit: Sara Krulwich—The New York Times/Redux]
American novelist and journalist (born Jan. 31, 1923, Long Branch, N.J.—died Nov. 10, 2007, New York, N.Y.) was best known for using a form of journalism—called New Journalism—that combines the imaginative subjectivity of literature with the more objective qualities of journalism. Mailer graduated (1943) from Harvard University with a degree in aeronautical engineering. Drafted into the army in 1944, he served in the Pacific until 1946. While he was enrolled at the Sorbonne, in Paris, he wrote The Naked and the Dead (1948), hailed immediately as one of the finest American novels to come out of World War II. His next important work was a long essay, The White Negro (1957).
Mailer's subsequent novels included An American Dream (1965) and Why Are We in Vietnam? (1967). A controversial figure whose egotism and belligerence often antagonized both critics and readers, Mailer did not command the same respect for his fiction that he received for his journalism. The Armies of the Night (1968) was based on the Washington peace demonstrations of October 1967, during which Mailer was jailed and fined for an act of civil disobedience; it won a Pulitzer Prize and a National Book Award. Other works in the journalistic vein included Siege of Chicago (1968) and Of a Fire on the Moon (1970). In 1969 Mailer ran unsuccessfully for mayor of New York City. Among his other works were his essay collections The Presidential Papers (1963) and Cannibals and Christians (1966); The Executioner's Song (1979), a Pulitzer Prize-winning novel based on the life of convicted murderer Gary Gilmore; and Harlot's Ghost (1991), a novel focusing on the CIA. Mailer's final two novels were The Gospel According to the Son (1997) and The Castle in the Forest (2007). In 2003 Mailer published two works of nonfiction: The Spooky Art and Why Are We at War?On God (2007) recorded conversations about religion between Mailer and scholar Michael Lennon.
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Hard-hitting journalist and novelist Norman Mailer [Credit: Sara Krulwich—The New York Times/Redux]
