Norman Mailer: Biography

Norman Kingsley Mailer is an American writer and innovator of the nonfictional novel. He exploded on the literary scene at the age of 25 with his novel The Naked and the Dead which is still the best American fictional account of the 1939-1945 war. Norman Mailer was born to a Jewish family in Long Branch, New Jersey. He was brought up in Brooklyn, New York, and began attending Harvard University in 1939, where he studied aeronautical engineering. At the university, he became interested in writing and published his first story when he was 18.

He was drafted into the Army in World War II and served in the South Pacific. In 1948, just before enrolling in the Sorbonne in Paris, he wrote a book that made him world-famous: THE NAKED AND THE DEAD based on his personal experiences during World War II. It was hailed by many as one of the best American novels to come out of the war years and named one of the "100 best novels" by the Modern Library. The novel was Mailer's first and was hugely successful, establishing his reputation as a novelist and bringing international recognition.Mailer presents the individual within the military organization. His heroes are members of a reconnaissance squad. The slow and tortured progress of the military action also marks their physical and moral disintegration as human beings. Their complete spiritual impoverishment and reduction of experience to sex in its crudest terms are presented mainly in the inter-chapters called “The Time-Machine”. In the following years, Mailer worked as a scriptwriter in Hollywood. Much of his work was refused by many publishers.

But in the mid-1950s, he became famous as an anti-establishment essayist, and he was one of the founders of The Village Voice. He is also noted as a biographer. His subjects have included Marilyn Monroe, Pablo Picasso, and Lee Harvey Oswald. Since May 2005, he has been a contributing blogger at The Huffington Post.BibliographyBARBARY SHORETHE DEER PARK- bitter view of Hollywood as representative of the entire nationAN AMERICAN DREAM- shocking story of murder and violenceWHY ARE WE IN VIETNAM- equally shocking, generally accepted features of American society through the eyes of a sensitive boyTHE ARMIES OF THE NIGHT- Pulitzer prizeA FIRE ON THE MOONTHE EXECUTIONER´S SONG- Pulitzer prize, man put to death in 1977 for murder, true story ANCIENT EVENINGS- lengthy tale of Egypt some 3000 years agoTOUGH GUYS DON´T DANCE- thrilling mystery story