Norman Mailer
Story Stream
Norman Mailer Changed the Face of Biography January 01, 2025
Many labels leap to mind in association with the prolific and controversial Norman Mailer, who died in 2007, but “biographer” is not typically one of them. He was not considered a serious practitioner of the genre in the same sense as Edmund Morris, ...
Norman Mailer vs. the Big Empty October 22, 2024
In 1962, Norman Mailer sat down to debate his friend William F. Buckley Jr. Buckley was America’s most influential conservative, and Mailer was a homegrown radical. Mailer boldly proposed, “End the Cold War. Pull back our boundaries ... Let the Commu...
How Do You Solve a Problem Like Norman Mailer? July 25, 2024
The contemporary brief against Norman Mailer is long and sordid. He was a misogynist, a violent man who extolled violence. In his brawling and chest-thumping, he tried to out-Hemingway Hemingway and became a parody of Papa—a blowhard narcissist who p...
The New York Intellectuals’ Battle of the Sexes July 09, 2024
Alcove 1 at the City College of New York is surely the most famous lunch table in American intellectual history. No Ivy League dining hall can compete. In the 1930s, a remarkable coterie of students gathered there. (The neighboring alcove, Alcove 2, ...
