Mailer, Norman (Vol. 1) - Mailer, Norman 1923–
Mailer, Norman 1923–
American novelist and social critic, best known for his first novel, The Naked and the Dead. (See also Contemporary Authors, Vols. 11-12.)
The Naked and the Dead was a solid job of realism and social criticism in one of the main traditions of American writing. Mr. Mailer's second novel Barbary Shore is a drama of ideas that is held together by a symbolic framework of complete human frustration. It is fashionable, it is literary by current standards, it is well done, but I think it is a mistake….
[There] is no human center in The Deer Park; no balancing episodes of warmth, affection, or generosity. Love is indeed a dirty word; and we read through the story in much the same way that we follow the movie scandals in the magazine called Confidential; this also is clever journalism. Like his closest literary forebear, Dos Passos, Mailer has no confidence in human nature itself, and...
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