Norman Mailer

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he shold have won the nobel prize long time ago.
contact - pammisahni@rediffmail.com

>>By harminder sahni   (Sunday, 27 Apr 2003 12:34)



Norman Mailer has had a radical trajectory through the course of his career, and now, at age 80 with fifty years as a professional writer behind him, a summary collection is the fashion, and "The Time of Our Time" is the door stopper through which posterity should judge either his ascension, or decline in our literary Olympus.

Mailer merits the Nobel Prize for Literature for the sheer wealth and variety of his writings and related, which include novels, plays, essays, journalism, films; it may be argued that he is often imperfect with his range, but it is that range, nonetheless, that curiosity with how form advances ideas, that makes him a worthy addition to the roster.

It's amazing, actually, how Mailer has controlled the course of criticism of his work, as he did with "Advertisements for Myself" and later with the "Prisoner of Sex", both books through which his aesthetics were linked with a peculiarly Maileresque cosmology. One might despise Mailer and his philosophy, but a critic was still trapped discussing the work through the author's obsessions. And that is the mark of brilliance, Mailer could get is readers to talk about things he wanted to speak to, because his language is strangely persuasive, at his high point, even as it addresses the dark and obscene corners of the imagination, and the baser instincts of American power.

"The Time of Our Time" again makes us consider his entire career through Mailer's filter, and understandably, it can be aggravating for someone expecting an easy in to the body of work. But it gives us the rewards, with generous selections form his best work, "Naked and the Dead", Armies of the Night", "Executioner's Song"," An American Dream"--and like wise long excerpts from slighter efforts, like "Gospel According to the Son" and his recent Picasso biography. What there is an impressive reach over the five decades that he's been in the public eye, an early brashness turning into a combative and provocative brilliance that at times trips over it's own eloquence that later turned into thoughtful, epic scale story telling through which the previous ego centric prose vanished behind the tragedy writ in the Gary Gilmore saga.

It's difficult not to be impressed with the range of Mailer's topics, in fiction, journalism, and essays! --World War 2 in the Pacific, Moon Landings, Black power, Women's Rights, Hunting, Reichian sexuality, the failure of Marxism, The Kennedy Assassination, Ancient Egypt, masculinity and American Literature, the dread of Modern architecture, the real meaning of the right wing, Boxing--and while Mailer at times seems breathless and throat clearing in his writing, that he's spreading a style too thin to cover the feeling that he's , for the moment, is bereft of anything interesting to say, you note the way he changes tact, changes styles, and ushers in another period of solid books that stand as his strongest." The Time of Our Time" provides an over long reflection of a career that has been victim of the author's proclaimed desire to be the champ of his generation, but it also gives us a chance to appreciate a brilliant talent that found expression in spite of Mailer's the self-annihilating quirks.

Controversial, problematic, self-absorbed, but quintessentially American, and one of the best witnesses we could have had for the second half of the century

>>By Ted Burke   (Saturday, 5 Jul 2003 03:32)



SALVADOR DALI and NORMAN MAILER spent most of world war two togther in virgian as close friends when they left MAILER was painting a picandDALIwas writing a book.HEDGEHOG

>>By hedgehog   (Monday, 5 Jul 2004 17:39)



Ted Burke's comments are well written and well thought out . I would agree with a lot of what he Burke wrote but I think it might be worthwhile to add a little amplification.
Some facets of Mailer's work and his life that bear mentioning:
Mailer's inspiration for "The Naked and the Dead" was his own experience as an infantryman in WWII. His early experience as an amateur boxer helped him to create a number of his characters. His marital experiences inspired "Tough Guys Don't Dance" (among other things)
His own tumultuous private life was frequently grist for the media mill. He was arrested but never tried for assault on his ex-wife (He attacked with a knife at a party)
Mailer was a wannabe politician. He and Jimmy Breslin ran for the NY City Council in the '60's.
Mailer published a book of poetry in 1962. It was titled "Deaths for the Ladies (and other disasters) containing bits like this ;

"Freedom of the Press

Let every
writer
tell his
own
lies
That's freedom
of the
press.

His essay: "The White Hipster" was published in pamphlet form (I think by City Lights Press)
it was an entertaining and in retrospect perhaps somewhat whimsical attempt by Mailer to capture the spirit of the nascent Dylan /Beatles era.

Mailer was a product of and spokesman for the post world war II He was "quintessentially"
American, male chauvinist, politically active, intelellectually gifted, talented, outspokem, often drunken, antagonistic, idealistic, self destructive and very creative .
He was completely "engage" as his French predecessor, Camus would say.
He could have bee greater, he could have been "a contendor"

>>By mythster   (Monday, 4 Sep 2006 18:25)



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