Norman Mailer facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
Norman Mailer
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Norman Mailer photographed by Carl Van Vechten in 1948
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| Born | Nachem Malech Mailer January 31, 1923 Long Branch, New Jersey, U.S. |
| Died | November 10, 2007 (aged 84) Manhattan, New York City, U.S. |
| Resting place | Provincetown Cemetery Provincetown, Massachusetts |
| Occupation |
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| Nationality | American |
| Alma mater | Harvard University |
| Period | 1941–2007 |
| Spouses |
Beatrice Silverman
(m. 1944; div. 1952)Adele Morales
(m. 1954; div. 1962)Beverly Bentley
(m. 1963; div. 1980)Carol Stevens
(m. 1980; div. 1980) |
| Children | 9, including Susan, Kate, Michael, Stephen, and John |
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 Literature portal |
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Nachem Malech Mailer (January 31, 1923 – November 10, 2007), known by his pen name Norman Kingsley Mailer, was an American novelist, journalist, playwright, filmmaker and actor. In a career spanning over six decades, Mailer had 11 best-selling books, at least one in each of the seven decades after World War II.
His novel The Naked and the Dead was published in 1948 and brought him early renown. His 1968 nonfiction novel Armies of the Night won the Pulitzer Prize for non-fiction as well as the National Book Award. Among his best-known works is The Executioner's Song, the 1979 winner of the Pulitzer Prize for fiction.
Mailer is considered an innovator of "creative non-fiction" or "New Journalism", along with Truman Capote, Joan Didion, Hunter S. Thompson, and Tom Wolfe, a genre which uses the style and devices of literary fiction in factual journalism. He was a cultural commentator and critic, expressing his views through his novels, journalism, frequent press appearances and essays, the most famous and reprinted of which is "The White Negro". In 1955, he and three others founded The Village Voice, an arts and politics-oriented weekly newspaper distributed in Greenwich Village.
In 1960, Mailer was convicted of assault and served a three-year probation. In 1969, he ran an unsuccessful campaign to become the mayor of New York. Mailer was married six times and had nine children.
Contents
Early life
Nachem "Norman" Malech ("King") Mailer was born to a Jewish family in Long Branch, New Jersey, on January 31, 1923. His father, Isaac Barnett Mailer, popularly known as "Barney", was an accountant born in South Africa, and his mother, Fanny (née Schneider), ran a housekeeping and nursing agency. Mailer's sister, Barbara, was born in 1927.
Mailer was raised in Brooklyn, first in Flatbush on Cortelyou Road and later in Crown Heights at the corner of Albany and Crown Streets. He graduated from Boys High School and entered Harvard College in 1939, when he was 16 years old. As an undergraduate, he was a member of the Signet Society. At Harvard, he majored in engineering sciences, but took writing courses as electives. He published his first story, "The Greatest Thing in the World", at the age of 18, winning Story magazine's college contest in 1941.
After graduating in 1943, Mailer married his first wife Beatrice "Bea" Silverman in January 1944, just before being drafted into the U.S. Army. Hoping to gain a deferment from service, Mailer argued that he was writing an "important literary work" which pertained to the war. This deferral was denied, and Mailer was forced to enter the Army. After training at Fort Bragg, he was stationed in the Philippines with the 112th Cavalry.
During his time in the Philippines Mailer was first assigned to regimental headquarters as a typist, then assigned as a wire lineman. In early 1945, after volunteering for a reconnaissance platoon, he completed more than two dozen patrols in contested territory, and engaged in several firefights and skirmishes. After the Japanese surrender, he was sent to Japan as part of the army of occupation, was promoted to sergeant, and became a first cook.
When asked about his war experiences, he said that the army was "the worst experience of my life, and also the most important". While in Japan and the Philippines, Mailer wrote to his wife Bea almost daily, and these approximately 400 letters became the foundation of The Naked and the Dead. He drew on his experience as a reconnaissance rifleman for the central action of the novel: a long patrol behind enemy lines.
Novelist
Mailer wrote 12 novels in 59 years. After completing courses in French language and culture at the University of Paris in 1947–48, he returned to the U.S. shortly after The Naked and the Dead was published in May 1948. A New York Times best seller for 62 weeks, it was the only one of Mailer's novels to reach the number one position. It was hailed by many as one of the best American wartime novels and included in a list of the hundred best English-language novels of the twentieth century by the Modern Library. The book that made his reputation sold over a million copies in its first year, (three million by 1981) and has never gone out of print. It is still considered to be one of the finest depictions of Americans in combat during World War II.
Barbary Shore (1951) was not well received by the critics. It was a surreal parable of Cold War leftist politics set in a Brooklyn rooming-house, and Mailer's most autobiographical novel. His 1955 novel, The Deer Park drew on his experiences working as a screenwriter in Hollywood from 1949 to 1950. It was initially rejected by seven publishers before being published by Putnam's. It was not a critical success, but it made the best-seller list, sold over 50,000 copies its first year, and is considered by some critics to be the best Hollywood novel since Nathanael West's The Day of the Locust.
Mailer wrote his fourth novel, An American Dream, as a serial in Esquire magazine over eight months (January to August 1964), publishing the first chapter two months after he wrote it. In March 1965, Dial Press published a revised version. The novel generally received mixed reviews, but was a best seller. Joan Didion praised it in a review in National Review (April 20, 1965) and John W. Aldridge did the same in Life (March 19, 1965), while Elizabeth Hardwick panned it in Partisan Review (spring 1965).
Mailer's fifth novel, Why Are We in Vietnam? was even more experimental in its prose than An American Dream. Published in 1967, the critical reception of WWVN was mostly positive with many critics, like John Aldridge in Harper's, calling the novel a masterpiece and comparing it to Joyce.
In 1972, Joyce Carol Oates called Vietnam "Mailer's most important work"; it's "an outrageous little masterpiece" that "contains some of Mailer's finest writing" and thematically echoes John Milton's Paradise Lost.
In 1980, The Executioner's Song, Mailer's "real-life novel" of the life and death of murderer Gary Gilmore, won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction. Joan Didion reflected the views of many readers when she called the novel "an absolutely astonishing book" at the end of her front-page review in the New York Times Book Review.
Mailer spent a longer time writing Ancient Evenings, his novel of Egypt in the Twentieth Dynasty (about 1100 BC), than any of his other books. He worked on it for periods from 1972 until 1983. It was also a bestseller, although reviews were generally negative. Harold Bloom, in his review said the book "gives every sign of truncation", and "could be half again as long, but no reader will wish so", while Richard Poirier called it Mailer's "most audacious book".
His final novel, The Castle in the Forest, which focused on Hitler's childhood, reached number five on the Times best-seller list after publication in January 2007. It received reviews that were more positive than any of his books since The Executioner's Song. Castle was intended to be the first volume of a trilogy, but Mailer died several months after it was completed. The Castle in the Forest received a laudatory 6,200-word front-page review by Lee Siegel in the New York Times Book Review.
Journalist
From the mid-1950s, Mailer became known for his countercultural essays. In 1955, he co-founded The Village Voice and was initially an investor and silent partner, but later he wrote a column called "Quickly: A Column for Slow Readers" from January to April 1956. His articles published in this column, 17 in total, were important in his development of a philosophy of hip, or "American existentialism," and allowed him to discover his penchant for journalism. Mailer's famous essay "The White Negro" (1957) fleshes out the hipster figure who stands in opposition to forces that seek debilitating conformity in American society. It is believed to be among the most anthologized, and controversial, essays of the postwar period. Mailer republished it in 1959 in his miscellany Advertisements for Myself, which he described as "The first work I wrote with a style I could call my own." The reviews were positive, and most commentators referred to it as his breakthrough work.
In 1960, Mailer wrote "Superman Comes to the Supermarket" for Esquire magazine, an account of the emergence of John F. Kennedy during the Democratic Party convention. The essay was an important breakthrough for the New Journalism of the 1960s, but when the magazine's editors changed the title to "Superman Comes to the Supermart", Mailer was enraged, and would not write for Esquire for years. (The magazine later apologized. Subsequent references are to the original title.)
Mailer took part in the October 1967 march on the Pentagon, but initially had no intention of writing a book about it. After conversations with his friend, Willie Morris, editor of Harper's magazine, he agreed to produce a long essay describing the march. In a concentrated effort, he produced a 90,000-word piece in two months, and it appeared in Harper's March issue. It was the longest nonfiction piece to be published by an American magazine. As one commentator states, "Mailer disarmed the literary world with Armies. The combination of detached, ironic self-presentation [he described himself in the third person], deft portraiture of literary figures (especially Robert Lowell, Dwight Macdonald, and Paul Goodman), a reported flawless account of the March itself, and a passionate argument addressed to a divided nation, resulted in a sui generis narrative praised by even some of his most inveterate revilers." Alfred Kazin, writing in the New York Times Book Review, said, "Mailer's intuition is that the times demand a new form. He has found it." He later expanded the article to a book, The Armies of the Night (1968), awarded a National Book Award and a Pulitzer Prize.
Mailer's major new journalism, or creative nonfiction, books also include Miami and the Siege of Chicago (1968), an account of the 1968 political conventions; Of a Fire on the Moon (1971), a long report on the Apollo 11 mission to the moon; and The Fight (1975), an account of Muhammad Ali's 1974 defeat in Zaire of George Foreman for the heavyweight boxing championship. Miami, Fire and Prisoner were all finalists for the National Book Award. The hallmark of his five New Journalism works is his use of illeism, or referring to oneself in the third person, rather than the first. Mailer said he got the idea from reading The Education of Henry Adams (1918) when he was a Harvard freshman. Mailer also employs many of the most common techniques of fiction in his creative nonfiction.
Filmmaker
In addition to his experimental fiction and nonfiction novels, Mailer produced a play version of The Deer Park (staged at the Theatre De Lys in Greenwich Village in 1967), which had a four-month run and generally good reviews. In 2007, months before he died, he re-wrote the script, and asked his son Michael, a film producer, to film a staged production in Provincetown, but had to cancel because of his declining health. Mailer obsessed over The Deer Park more than he did over any other work.
In the late 1960s, Mailer directed three improvisational avant-garde films: Wild 90 (1968), Beyond the Law (1968), and Maidstone (1970). The latter includes a spontaneous and brutal brawl between Norman T. Kingsley, played by Mailer, and Kingsley's half-brother Raoul, played by Rip Torn. Mailer received a head injury when Torn struck him with a hammer, and Torn's ear became infected when Mailer bit it. In 2012, the Criterion Collection released Mailer's experimental films in a box set, "Maidstone and Other Films by Norman Mailer". In 1987, he adapted and directed a film version of his novel Tough Guys Don't Dance starring Ryan O'Neal and Isabella Rossellini, which has become a minor camp classic.
Mailer took on an acting role in the 1981 Miloš Forman film version of E.L. Doctorow's novel Ragtime, playing Stanford White. In 1999, he played Harry Houdini in Matthew Barney's Cremaster 2, which was inspired by the events surrounding the life of Gary Gilmore.
In 1976, Mailer went to Italy for several weeks to collaborate with Italian Spaghetti Western filmmaker Sergio Leone on an adaptation of the Harry Grey novel The Hoods. Although Leone would pursue other writers shortly thereafter, elements of Mailer's first two drafts of the commissioned screenplay would appear in the Italian filmmaker's final magnum opus, Once Upon a Time in America (1984), starring Robert DeNiro.
Mailer starred alongside writer/feminist Germaine Greer in D.A. Pennebaker's Town Bloody Hall, which was shot in 1971 but not released until 1979.
In 1982, Mailer and Lawrence Schiller would collaborate on a television adaptation of The Executioner's Song, starring Tommy Lee Jones, Roseanna Arquette, and Eli Wallach. Airing on November 28 and 29, The Executioner's Song received strong critical reviews and four Emmy nominations, including one for Mailer's screenplay. It won two: for sound production and for Jones as best actor.
In 1987, Mailer was to appear in Jean-Luc Godard's experimental film version of Shakespeare's King Lear, to be shot in Switzerland. Originally, Mailer was to play the lead character, Don Learo, in Godard's unscripted film alongside his daughter, Kate Mailer. The film also featured Woody Allen and Peter Sellars. However, tensions surfaced between Mailer and Godard early in the production when Godard insisted that Mailer play a character who had a carnal relationship with his own daughter. Mailer left Switzerland after just one day of shooting.
In 1997, Mailer was set to direct the boxing drama "Ringside," based on an original script by his son Michael and two others. The male lead role, an Irish-American streetfighter who finds redemption in the ring, was to be Brendan Fraser, and it was also to star Halle Berry, Anthony Quinn, and Paul Sorvino.
In 2001, he adapted the screenplay for the movie: Master Spy: The Robert Hanssen Story.
In 2005, Mailer served as a technical consultant on the Ron Howard boxing movie Cinderella Man, about legendary boxer Jim Braddock.
Biographer
Mailer's approach to biography came from his interest in the ego of the artist as an "exemplary type". His own biographer, J. Michael Lennon, explains that Mailer would use "himself as a species of divining rod to explore the psychic depths" of disparate personalities, like Pablo Picasso, Muhammad Ali, Gary Gilmore, Lee Harvey Oswald, and Marilyn Monroe. "Ego," states Lennon, "can be seen as the beginning of a major phase in his writing career: Mailer as biographer."
Beginning as an assignment from Lawrence Schiller to write a short preface to a collection of photographs, Mailer's 1973 biography of Monroe (usually designated Marilyn: A Biography) was not approached as a traditional biography. Mailer read the available biographies, watched Monroe's films, and looked at photographs of Monroe; for the rest of it, Mailer stated, "I speculated." Since Mailer did not have the time to thoroughly research the facts surrounding her death, his speculation led to the biography's controversy.
The book was enormously successful; it sold more copies than did any of Mailer's works except The Naked and the Dead, and it is Mailer's most widely reviewed book. It was the inspiration for the Emmy-nominated TV movie Marilyn: The Untold Story, which aired in 1980. Two later works co-written by Mailer presented imagined words and thoughts in Monroe's voice: the 1980 book Of Women and Their Elegance and the 1986 play Strawhead, which was produced off Broadway starring his daughter Kate Mailer.
In the wake of the Marilyn controversy, Mailer attempted to explain his unique approach to biography. He suggests that his biography must be seen as a "species of novel ready to play by the rules of biography."
Activist
A number of Mailer's nonfiction works, such as The Armies of the Night and The Presidential Papers, are political. He covered the Republican and Democratic National Conventions in 1960, 1964, 1968, 1972, 1992, and 1996, although his account of the 1996 Democratic convention has never been published. In the early 1960s he was fixated on the figure of President John F. Kennedy, whom he regarded as an "existential hero". In the late 1950s and throughout the 1960s and 1970s, his work mingled autobiography, social commentary, history, fiction, and poetry in a formally original way that influenced the development of New Journalism.
Mailer held the position that the Cold War was not a positive ideal for America. It allowed the state to become strong and invested in the daily lives of the people. He critiqued conservative politics as they, specifically those of Barry Goldwater, supported the Cold War and an increase in government spending and oversight. This, Mailer argued, stood in opposition with conservative principles such as lower taxes and smaller government. He believed that conservatives were pro-Cold War because that was politically relevant to them and would therefore help them win.
In September 1961, Mailer was one of 29 original prominent American sponsors of the Fair Play for Cuba Committee organization with which John F. Kennedy assassin Lee Harvey Oswald was associated in 1963. In December 1963, Mailer and several of the other sponsors left the organization.
In October 1967, Mailer was arrested for his involvement in an anti–Vietnam War demonstration at the Pentagon sponsored by the National Mobilization Committee to End the War in Vietnam. In 1968, he signed the Writers and Editors War Tax Protest pledge, vowing to refuse tax payments in protest against the war.
From 1980 until his death in 2007, Mailer contributed to Democratic Party candidates for political office.
Politician
In 1969, at the suggestion of feminist Gloria Steinem, his friend the political essayist Noel Parmentel and others, Mailer ran unsuccessfully in the Democratic Party primary for mayor of New York City, allied with columnist Jimmy Breslin (who ran for city council president), proposing the creation of a 51st state through New York City secession. Although Mailer took stands on a wide range of issues, from opposing "compulsory fluoridation of the water supply" to advocating the release of Black Panther Party leader Huey Newton, decentralization was the overriding issue of the campaign. Mailer "foresaw the city, its independence secured, splintering into townships and neighborhoods, with their own school systems, police departments, housing programs, and governing philosophies." Their slogan was "throw the rascals in." Mailer was endorsed by libertarian economist Murray Rothbard, who "believed that 'smashing the urban government apparatus and fragmenting it into a myriad of constituent fragments' offered the only answer to the ills plaguing American cities," and called Mailer's campaign "the most refreshing libertarian political campaign in decades." Mailer finished fourth in a field of five. Looking back on the campaign, journalist and historian Theodore H. White called it "one of the most serious campaigns run in the United States in the last five years. . . . [H]is campaign was considered and thoughtful, the beginning of an attempt to apply ideas to a political situation." Characterizing his campaign, Mailer said: "The difference between me and the other candidates is that I'm no good and I can prove it."
Artist
Mailer enjoyed drawing and drew prolifically, particularly toward the end of his life. While his work is not widely known, his drawings, which were inspired by Picasso's style, were exhibited at the Berta Walker Gallery in Provincetown in 2007, and are now displayed on the online arts community POBA - Where the Arts Live.
Personal life
Marriages and children
Mailer was married six times and had nine children. He fathered eight children by his various wives and informally adopted his sixth wife's son from another marriage.
Mailer's first marriage was to Beatrice Silverman. They eloped in January 1944 because neither family would likely have approved. They had one child, Susan, and divorced in 1952.
His third wife, whom he married in 1962, and divorced in 1963, was the British heiress and journalist Lady Jeanne Campbell (1929–2007). She was the only daughter of Ian Campbell, 11th Duke of Argyll, a Scottish aristocrat and clan chief with a notorious private life, and his first wife Janet Gladys Aitken, who was a daughter of the press baron Max Aitken, 1st Baron Beaverbrook. The couple had a daughter, actress Kate Mailer.
His fourth marriage, in 1963, was to Beverly Bentley, a former model turned actress. She was the mother of two of his sons, producer Michael Mailer and actor Stephen Mailer. They divorced in 1980.
His fifth wife was Carol Stevens, a jazz singer whom he married on November 7, 1980, and divorced in Haiti on November 8, 1980, thereby legitimating their daughter Maggie, born in 1971.
His sixth and last wife, whom he married in 1980, was Norris Church Mailer (born Barbara Jean Davis, 1949–2010), an art teacher. They had one son together, John Buffalo Mailer, a writer and actor. Mailer raised and informally adopted Matthew Norris, Church's son by her first husband, Larry Norris. Living in Brooklyn, New York and Provincetown, Massachusetts with Mailer, Church worked as a model, wrote and painted.
Works with his children
In 2005, Mailer co-wrote a book with his youngest child, John Buffalo Mailer, titled The Big Empty. Mailer appeared in a 2004 episode of Gilmore Girls titled "Norman Mailer, I'm Pregnant!" with his son Stephen Mailer.
Death and legacy
Mailer died of acute renal failure on November 10, 2007, a month after undergoing lung surgery at Mount Sinai Hospital in Manhattan, New York. He is buried in Provincetown Cemetery, Provincetown, Massachusetts.
More than a thousand boxes of papers from the two-time Pulitzer Prize author may be found at the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas, Austin.
In 2008, Carole Mallory, a former mistress, sold seven boxes of documents and photographs to Harvard University, Norman Mailer's alma mater. They contain extracts of her letters, books and journals.
In 2003, the Norman Mailer Society was founded to help ensure the legacy of Mailer's work. In 2008, The Norman Mailer Center and The Norman Mailer Writers Colony, a non-profit organization for educational purposes, was established to honor Norman Mailer. Among its programs is the Norman Mailer Prize established in 2009.
Throughout his lifetime, Mailer wrote over 45,000 letters. In 2014, Mailer's biographer J. Michael Lennon chose 712 of those letters and published them in Selected Letters of Norman Mailer, which covers the period between the 1940s and the early 2000s.
In March 2018, the Library of America published a two-volume collection of Mailer's works from the sixties: Four Books of the 1960s and Collected Essays of the 1960s. Critic David Denby suggests that based on Mailer's observations about the fractured political atmosphere in America that led to the 1967 march on the Pentagon, Mailer's work seems to be as relevant today as it was fifty years ago and that "Mailer may be due for reappraisal and revival."
In May 2018, the Norman Mailer Society and the city of Long Branch, New Jersey co-sponsored the installation of a bronze plaque where the Mailer family's Queen-Anne style hotel, the Scarboro, used to stand on the city's beachfront.
In October 2019, Wilkes University's Farley Library opened a replica of Mailer's last study in Provincetown, MA, replete with "some of his private library, manuscripts and revisions dating from 1984 as well as his studio furniture". The archive also houses "Mailer's entire 4,000-volume library from his home in Brooklyn, N.Y." and an original portrait of Mailer by painter Nancy Ellen Craig donated by Mailer's daughter Danielle. The room opened with an event on October 10, 2019, to coincide with the annual conference of the Norman Mailer Society and was attended by several members of Mailer's family.
In 2019, Susan Mailer, Norman's eldest daughter, published a memoir about her relationship with her father. In Another Place: With and Without My Father Norman Mailer explores her "intense and complex" relationship with her father and the extended Mailer family. Reviewer Nicole DePolo writes that Susan Mailer, a psychoanalyst, provides sharp insights about her father in "crisp, vibrant prose that captures the essence of moments that are both remarkable and universally resonant".
Works
Novels
- The Naked and the Dead. New York: Rinehart, 1948.
- Barbary Shore. New York: Rinehart, 1951.
- The Deer Park. New York: Putnam's, 1955.
- An American Dream. New York: Dial, 1965.
- Why Are We in Vietnam? New York: Putnam, 1967.
- A Transit to Narcissus. New York: Howard Fertig, 1978.
- The Executioner's Song Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1979.
- Of Women and Their Elegance. New York, Simon and Schuster, 1980.
- Ancient Evenings. Boston: Little, Brown, 1983.
- Tough Guys Don't Dance. New York: Random House, 1984.
- The Gospel According to the Son. New York: Random House, 1997.
- The Castle in the Forest. New York: Random House, 2007.
Plays and screenplays
- The Deer Park: A Play. New York: Dial, 1967.
- Maidstone: A Mystery. New York: New American Library, 1971.
Short Stories
- The Short Fiction of Norman Mailer. New York: Dell, 1967.
Poetry
- Deaths for the Ladies (And Other Disasters). New York: Putman, 1962.
- Modest Gifts: Poems and Drawings. New York: Random House, 2003.
Essays
- "The White Negro." San Francisco: City Lights, 1957.
- The Bullfight: A Photographic Narrative with Text by Norman Mailer. New York: Macmillan, 1967.
- The Faith of Graffiti. New York: Praeger, 1974.
- Why Are We At War? New York: Random House, 2003.
Letters
- Norman Mailer's Letters on An American Dream, 1963-1969. Shavertown, PA: Sligo Press, 2004.
- The Selected Letters of Norman Mailer. New York: Random House, 2014.
Non-fiction narratives
- The Armies of the Night. New York: New American Library, 1968.
- The Idol and the Octopus: Political Writings on the Kennedy and Johnson Administrations. New York: Dell, 1968.
- Miami and the Siege of Chicago: An Informal History of the Republican and Democratic Conventions of 1968. New York: New American Library, 1968.
- Of a Fire on the Moon. Boston: Little, Brown, 1971.
- King of the Hill: Norman Mailer on the Fight of the Century. New York: New American Library, 1971.
- St. George and The Godfather. New York: Signet Classics, 1972.
- The Fight. Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1975.
- Of a Small and Modest Malignancy, Wicked and Bristling with Dots. Northridge, CA: Lord John Press, 1980.
- Oswald's Tale: An American Mystery. New York: Random House, 1995.
Miscellanies, anthologies, and collections
- Advertisements for Myself. New York: Putnam, 1959.
- The Presidential Papers. New York: Putnam, 1963.
- Cannibals and Christians. New York: Dial, 1966.
- The Long Patrol: 25 Years of Writing from the Work of Norman Mailer. New York: World, 1971.
- Existential Errands. Boston: Little, Brown, 1972.
- Some Honorable Men: Political Conventions, 1960-1972. Boston: Little, Brown, 1976.
- Pieces and Pontifications. Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1982.
- Conversations with Norman Mailer. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1988.
- The Time of Our Time. New York: Random House, 1998.
- The Spooky Art: Some Thoughts on Writing. New York: Random House, 2003.
- The Big Empty. New York: Nation Books, 2006.
- On God: An Uncommon Conversation. With J. Michael Lennon. New York: Random House, 2007.
Biographies
- Marilyn: A Biography. New York: Grosset & Dunlap, 1973.
- Portrait of Picasso as a Young Man: An Interpretive Biography. Atlantic Monthly Press, 1995.
- Oswald's Tale: An American Mystery. New York: Random House, 1996.
Decorations and awards
- 1969: Pulitzer Prize, George Polk Award, and National Book Award for The Armies of the Night; Honorary Doctor of Letters from Rutgers University
- 1970: Harvard University's Signet Society Medal for Achievement in the Arts
- 1973: Edward MacDowell Medal
- 1980: Pulitzer Prize for Executioner's Song
- 1984: Honorary Doctor of Letters from Mercy College in White Plains, NY; Inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Letters
- 1985: Lord and Taylor's Rose Award
- 1987: Independent Spirit Award for best film and Golden Raspberry Award for Worst Director (both for Tough Guys Don't Dance)
- 1989: PEN Oakland / Josephine Miles Award; Emerson-Thoreau Medal
- 1991: New York State Edith Wharton Citation of Merit
- 1994: Harvard University's Signet Society Medal for Achievement in the Arts
- 1995: Honorary Doctor of Letters from Wilkes University, in Wilkes-Barre, PA
- 2000: F. Scott Fitzgerald Award for Achievement in American Literature
- 2002: Lifetime Achievement Award from the James Jones Literary Society, June 22; Austrian Cross of Honour for Science and Art, 1st class
- 2004: Golden Plate Award of the American Academy of Achievement
- 2005: National Book Award for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters
See also
In Spanish: Norman Mailer para niños
- List of peace activists
