Criticism > Contemporary Literary Criticism > Mailer, Norman (Vol. 11) - Robert Alter

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ROBERT ALTER

Norman Mailer,… in his shifting and for the moment truncated career as a novelist, illustrates precisely how American writing has tended to move into a new, problematic relationship with history. His first book, The Naked and the Dead (1948)—in many respects still his most adequate novel—draws on techniques of Dos Passos, Farrell, Steinbeck, and other American social realists of the 30's in order to present a panoramic view of American society in the crucible of war, the writer using his medium to grapple strenuously with the complex ideological forces that were exposed in the war, and struggling to imagine some way to a livable human future beyond this or other wars. Mailer's two novels of the 50's, Barbary Shore and The Deer Park, try to explore technical possibilities and human situations beyond the purview of The Naked and the Dead, but he remains in both of them an essentially political novelist, keenly attentive...

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1. Introduction
2. F. W. Dupee
3. Laura Adams
4. Joyce Carol Oates
5. Robert Alter
6. Philip H. Bufithis
7. Copyright