Mailer, Norman (Vol. 8) - Mailer, Norman 1923–
Mailer, Norman 1923–
A novelist, essayist, critic, and film-maker, Mailer is one of America's most controversial literary personalities. The subjects of Mailer's writings vary tremendously from war, in The Naked and The Dead, to artistic creation, in Barbary Shore. A recurrent concern is the psychological forces at work in each American's daily life, and, to Mailer, these forces reflect a nation that is often immature and irrational. Mailer has received the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award. (See also CLC, Vols. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and Contemporary Authors, Vols. 9-12, rev. ed.)
I could not, with the best will in the world, make any sense out of The White Negro and, in fact, it was hard for me to imagine that this essay had been written by the same man who wrote the novels. Both The Naked and the Dead and (for the most part) Barbary Shore are written in a lean, spare, muscular prose which...
[The entire page is 11857 words long]
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