Norman Mailer: Works and Days/Bibliography/Criticism

Overview

First Editions

Key Critical Texts

Bibliographies

Biographies

Criticism

Cultural Backgrounds

A

• Adams, Laura (1976). Existential Battles: The Growth of Norman Mailer. Athens: Ohio University Press. Good discussion of themes and techniques, especially early narrators; includes description of extra-literary activities.

• —, ed. (1974). Will the Real Norman Mailer Please Stand Up. Port Washington, NY: Kennikat Press. Fourteen essays and reviews and one interview examining Mailer’s protean activities. Includes two essays on Mailer’s cosmology, a long bibliography and Adams’s useful introduction.
• Aldridge, John W. (1992). Classics and Contemporaries. Columbia: University of Missouri Press. pp. 54–58. Contains Aldridge’s reviews of Genius and Lust (76.12), The Long Patrol (71.29), and Harlot’s Ghost (91.26).
• — (1985) [1951]. "Mailer, Burns, and Shaw". After the Lost Generation: A Study of the Writers of Two Wars. New York: Arbor House. pp. 133–156. Reprint, with an introduction by Norman Mailer. In his introduction Mailer says, “Aldridge was the nearest guideline to absolute truth that the working novelist had in my young days.” See 85.14.
• Algren, Nelson (1963). "New York: Rapietta Greensponge, Girl Counselor Comes to My Aid". Who Lost An American. New York: Macmillan. pp. 1–29. Satirical portrait of Mailer (Norman Manlifellow) and James Baldwin (Giovanni Johnson) and other New York literary figures. See 63.10.
• Amis, Martin (1987). "The Avenger and the Bitch". The Moronic Inferno and Other Visits to America. New York: Viking. pp. 37–43. See 86.42.
• Anderson, Chris (1987). "Norman Mailer: The Record of a War". Style as Argument: Contemporary American Nonfiction. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press. pp. 82–132. Concrete reading of Mailer’s “rhetoric of self-dramatization,” with deft discussion of Mailer’s “Left-conservatism.”
• Apple, Max (1976). "Inside Norman Mailer". The Oranging of America and Other Stories. New York: Grossman. pp. 49–60. One of the best comic fantasy struggles with a larger-than-life Mailer.
• Arlett, Robert M. (1987). "The Veiled Fist of a Master Executioner". Criticism. 29 (2): 215–2232. xamination of free indirect speech in The Executioner’s Song (79.14).

B

• Bailey, Jennifer (1979). Norman Mailer: Quick-Change Artist. New York: Harper and Row. Provides extended summaries of his work from a feminist perspective. Bailey sees Advertisements for Myself (59.13) as the key transitional work.
• Balbert, Peter (1990). "From Lady Chatterly's Lover to The Deer Park: Lawrence, Mailer, and the Dialectic of Erotic Risk". Studies in the Novel. 22 (spring): 67–81. Best study of Lawrence’s influence. See 90.2.
• Barnes, Hazel (1967). "The Negative Rebels: The Apolitical Left". An Existential Ethics. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. pp. 56–96. Professional philosopher’s sympathetic examination of Mailer’s existential credentials.
• Begiebing, Robert J. (1980). Acts of Regeneration: Allegory and Archetype in the Works of Norman Mailer. Columbia: University of Missouri Press. Close reading of major works from Barbary Shore (51.1) on; fine discussion of Mailer’s “heroic consciousness.”
• — (2015). The Territory Around Us: Collected Literary and Political Journalism, 1982–2015. BookBaby. Discusses Mailer and other American authors at a transformative moment in his career.
• — (1989). "Norman Mailer: The Magician as Tragic Hero". Toward a New Synthesis: John Fowles, John Gardner, Norman Mailer. Ann Arbor, MI: UMI Research Press. pp. 87–125. Demonstration of how Mailer uses metafictional technique but rejects postmodern negativism. Important study of Ancient Evenings (83.18).
• Berthoff, Warner (1971). "Witness and Testament: Two Contemporary Classics". In Miller, J. Hillis. Aspects of Narrative: Selected Papers from the English Institute. New York: Columbia University Press. pp. 173–198. One of the first extended treatments of The Armies of the Night (68.8), which Berthoff places—along with The Autobiography of Malcolm X—in the American tradition of personal witness and “the saving counterforce of personality.”
• Bloom, Harold, ed. (1986). Norman Mailer: Modern Critical Views. New York: Chelsea House. Sixteen reviews and essays covering Mailer’s major works and emphasizing the influence of Hemingway, with Bloom’s brief introduction.
• —, ed. (2003). Norman Mailer: Critical Views. Philadelphia: Chelsea House. Thirteen reviews and essays focusing on Mailer’s later works.
• Bozung, Justin (2017). The Cinema of Norman Mailer: Film Is Life Death. New York: Bloomsbury Academic. A collection of mixed contributions: essays and memoirs from critics, collaborators, and Mailer himself (67.21 and 71.25), some reprinted, but mostly original texts including many stills from Mailer’s films.
• Booth, Wayne (1988). The Company We Keep: An Ethics of Fiction. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press. p. 207–210, 327–336. Useful to gauge how Mailer’s public image has alienated an important critic.
• Braudy, Leo (1991). "Maidstone: A Mystery by Norman Mailer". Native Informant: Essays on Film, Fiction and Popular Culture. New York: Oxford. pp. 60–63, 145–151. Rpt: Adams (1974). Informed comment on Mailer’s film and the Mailer-Pynchon dichotomy.
• —, ed. (1972). Norman Mailer: A Collection of Critical Essays. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall. Thirteen essays on Mailer’s work through Of a Fire on the Moon (71.1); includes Steven Marcus interview (64.1) and a thoughtful introduction with useful insights into Miami and the Siege of Chicago (68.25).
• Brookeman, Christopher (1987). "Norman Mailer and Mass America". In Brookeman, Christopher. American Culture and Society Since the 1930s. New York: Schocken. pp. 150–170. Staid overview of Mailer as “a personal index of American history since the Second World War.”
• Bryant, Jerry H. (1970). "The Moral Outlook". The Open Decision: The Contemporary American Novel and Its Intellectual Background. New York: Free Press. pp. 369–394. Authenticity, courage and the belief that “self-discovery must precede the establishment of satisfactory societies” in the early novels of Mailer.
• Bufithis, Philip M. (1978). Norman Mailer. Modern Literature Monographs. New York: Ungar. Perhaps the most readable and reliable study of Mailer’s early work.
• Busch, Frederick (1986). "The Whale as Shaggy Dog". When People Publish: Essays on Writers and Writing. Iowa City: Iowa University Press. pp. 65–82. Argues persuasively for the influence of Moby-Dick on “The Man Who Studied Yoga” (56.25). See 51.2.

C—F

• Cappell, Ezra (2016). "Hemingway's Jewish Progeny". Mailer Review. 10 (1): 208–228.
• Capote, Truman (1985). Grobel, Lawrence, ed. Conversations with Capote. New York: New American Library. pp. 112–116, passim. Capote criticizes The Executioner’s Song (79.14).

• Foster, Richard Jackson (1968). Norman Mailer. University of Minnesota Pamphlets on American Writers. 73. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P. Rpt: Lucid (1971); partial in Bloom (1986). This monograph, one of the first extended treatments of Mailer’s work, is still one of the best. Excellent on Mailer’s urgent, “forcing style.”

G

• Glenday, Michael (1995). Norman Mailer. London: Macmillan. Examines Mailer’s novels in a socio-political context. Contains one of the finest discussions of Why Are We in Vietnam (67.15), which he deftly relates to the issues of the day.

L

• Leeds, Barry H. (2002). The Enduring Vision of Norman Mailer. Bainbridge Island, Wash.: Pleasure Boat Studio. Examination of Mailer’s later works, including an interview with Mailer, and a deft descriptive chapter, “The Critical Climate: Books on Mailer.”
• Leeds, Barry H. (1969). The Structured Vision of Norman Mailer. New York: NYU Press. First major study of Mailer’s work; valuable for its analysis of An American Dream (65.7), and consideration of The Armies of the Night (68.8) and Deaths for the Ladies (and Other Disasters) (62.3).
• Leigh, Nigel (1990). Radical Fictions and the Novels of Norman Mailer. London: Macmillan. Leigh writes about Mailer and power from a Foucauldian perspective, but ignores the nonfiction narratives. Excellent readings of Why Are We in Vietnam? (67.15) and Ancient Evenings (83.18). Many misquotations, typos, incorrect page numbers.
• Lennon, J. Michael, ed. (1986). Critical Essays on Norman Mailer. Boston: G.K. Hall & Co. Ten reviews and ten essays, including two original ones: Robert F. Lucid’s overview of his proposed biography and Michael Cowan’s on Mailer’s Americanness. Introduction summarizes critical response to Mailer’s work.

• —, ed. (1986). Critical Essays on Norman Mailer. Critical Essays on American Literature. Boston: G. K. Hall. Ten reviews and ten essays, including two original ones: Robert F. Lucid’s overview of his proposed biography and Michael Cowan’s on Mailer’s Americanness. Introduction summarizes critical response to Mailer’s work.
• Lucid, Robert F., ed. (1971). Norman Mailer: The Man and His Work. Boston: Little, Brown. First major collection of essays: 13 on his work, four on his life and Paul Carroll’s interview (68.1). Contains checklist of his work and important introduction in which Lucid attempts to resolve the apparent conflict between Mailer’s public and artistic activities.

M

• Merrill, Robert (1978). Norman Mailer. Boston: Twayne Publishers. Thoughtful examination of the formal structure of Mailer’s novels and nonfiction narratives; contains perhaps best analysis of The Executioner’s Song (79.14). Includes biographical chapter. Most comprehensive study to date.
• Merrill, Robert (1992). Norman Mailer Revisited. Boston: Twayne Publishers.

P

• Parker, Hershel (1984). "Norman Mailer's Revision of the Esquire Version of An American Dream: The Authority of 'Built-in' Intentionality". Flawed Texts and Verbal Icons: Literary Authority in American Fiction. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press. pp. 181–212. Argues that the magazine version of 65.7 is superior to the book version. See 83.6.
• Pease, Donald E. (1992). "Citizen Vidal and Mailer's America". Raritan. 11 (spring): 72–98. Argues for Vidal as an ignored genius who prefigured the New Historicism and Mailer as anti-homosexual. Tendentious.
• Pizer, Donald (1982). "Norman Mailer: The Naked and the Dead". Twentieth-Century American Literary Naturalism. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press. pp. 90–144. Arguably the best essay on Mailer’s first novel (48.2).
• Podhoretz, Norman (1964). "Norman Mailer: The Embattled Vision". Doings and Undoings: The Fifties and After in American Writing. New York: Farrar, Strauss. pp. 179–204. Rpt: Lucid (1971). One of the first essays to examine Mailer’s shifting ideologies and idiosyncratic existentialism.
• Poirier, Richard (1972). Norman Mailer. Modern Masters. New York: Viking Press. Rpt: Partial in Bloom (1986). Still considered to be most intelligent study of Mailer. Contains three chapters: on Mailer’s career, his relation to history, and his dualisms. Poirier’s Mailer is perhaps too postmodern, but Poirier is acute on Mailer’s endlessly modulating rhetoric, even if he is incredulous about Mailer’s cosmology.
• — (1971). "The Performing Self". The Performing Self: Compositions and Decompositions in the Languages of Contemporary Life. New York: Oxford University Press. pp. 86–111. Prelude to his 1972 volume on Mailer.
• Pratt, William C. (1982). "Mailer's Barbary Shore and His Quest for a Radical Politics". Illinois Quarterly. 44 (winter): 48–56. Ideological context for Mailer’s second novel (51.1). Excellent sources.

R

• Radford, Jean (1975). Norman Mailer: A Critical Study. New York: Harper and Row. General survey of Mailer’s work from a feminist perspective. Her study is marred by its focus on ideology and lack of interest in stylistic nuance; contains a fine analyses of the Eitel-Esposito affair in The Deer Park (55.4).
• Raleigh, John Henry (1973). "History and Its Burdens: The Example of Norman Mailer". In Engel, Monroe. Uses of Literature. Harvard English Studies 4. Cambridge: Howaard University Press. pp. 163–186. Mailer’s historical sense, use of the small town and the “dynamic, orgiastic, explosive accelerating city.”
• Ross, Mitchell (1978). "Norman Mailer". The Literary Politicians. Garden City, NJ: Doubleday. pp. 166–216. Lacking notes and an index, this vicious diatribe is valuable to help understand the depth of anger among Mailer’s detractors. Ross is the Babe Ruth of Mailer revilers.
• Rother, James (1978). "Mailer's 'O'Shaugnessy Chronicle': A Speculative Autopsy". Critique. 19 (3): 21–39. Contends that Lawrence Durrell’s Alexandria Quartet caused Mailer to rethink his plans.

S

• Schaub, Thomas Hill (1991). "Rebel without a Cause: Mailer's White Negro and Consensus Liberalism". American Fiction in the Cold War. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press. pp. 137–162. Attempt to deconstruct “The White Negro” (59.8a) into consensus liberalism.
• Scheffler, Judith A. (1983). "The Prisoner as Creator in Norman Mailer's The Executioner's Song". Midwest Quarterly. 24 (summer): 400–411. Rpt: Bloom (1986). Focus on Gilmore’s self-definition.
• Schickel, Richard (1985). "Super Hero, Super Victim; The Politics of Illusion". Intimate Strangers: The Culture of Celebrity. Garden City, NY: Doubleday. pp. 88–208. Discussion of Mailer’s insights about Marlon Brando, Marilyn Monroe, Ernest Hemingway and John F. Kennedy.
• Schrader, George Alfred (December 1961). "Norman Mailer and the Despair of Defiance". Yale Review. 51: 267–280. Rpt: Braudy (1972). Argues that hipsterism is not existentialism, but a violent variant of romanticism based on “libidinal urges.”
• Schultz, Kevin M. (2015). Buckley and Mailer: The Difficult Friendship That Shaped the Sixties. New York: W. W. Norton & Company. A critical/biographical history of the friendship between Mailer and William F. Buckley concentrating on their frequently oppositional writing, politics, and public personae in the sixties.
• Schulz, Max F. (1974). "Norman Mailer's Divine Comedy". Radical Sophistication: Studies in Contemporary Jewish-American Novelists. Athens, OH: Ohio University Press. pp. 69–109. Examination of Mailer’s novels, with only modest procrusteanism, in a Dantesque framework.
• Schwenger, Peter (1984). Phallic Critiques: Masculinity and Twentieth-Century Literature. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul. pp. 24–36, 103–107 and passim. Worthy exploration of Mailer’s rhetoric and obscenity.
• Scott, Nathan A., Jr. (1973). "Norman Mailer—Our Whitman". Three American Moralists: Mailer, Bellow, Trilling. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press. pp. 15–97. In detailed readings, Scott makes the case that Mailer, like Whitman, is a “spokesperson for the American conscience.”
• Seib, Kenneth A. (1974). "Mailer's March: The Epic Structure of The Armies of the Night". Essays in Literature. 1 (spring): 89–95. Surprising parallels.
• Shechner, Mark (1987). "Memoirs of a Revolutionist". After the Revolution: Studies in the Contemporary American Imagination. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. pp. 159–179. Examination of Mailer’s post-Marxist revolutionary impulses through Advertisements for Myself (59.13). Contains extensive discussion of influence of Wilhelm Reich and Robert Lindner. See 56.9.
• Sheed, Wilfrid (1971). "Norman Mailer: Genius or Nothing". The Morning After: Selected Essays and Reviews. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux. pp. 9–17. Tribute to Mailer as a weather vane: “As Mailer goes, so goes the nation.”
• Sheets, Diana; Shaughnessy, Michael F. (2016). "An Interview with Diana Sheets: Norman Mailer and Tom Wolfe, Two Leaders of 'New Journalism' or Writers Striving to Create the 'Great American Novel'?". The Doubling: Those Influential Writers That Shape Our Contemporary Perceptions of Identity and Consciousness in the New Millennium. UK: Nova Science Publishers, Inc. p. 109–124.
• Shloss, Carol (1987). "Norman Mailer and Combat Photography". In Visible Light: Photography and the American Writer, 1840-1940. New York: Oxford University Press. p. 233–249. Interesting consideration of the subjective-objective dilemma in The Naked and the Dead (48.2).
• Shoemaker, Steve (1991). "Norman Mailer's 'White Negro': Historical Myth or Mythical History". Twentieth Century Literature. 37 (fall): 242–260. Important reconsideration via the “New Historicism” of Stephen Greenblatt.
• Silverstein, Howard (1977). "Norman Mailer: The Family Romance and the Oedipal Fantasy". American Imago. 34 (fall): 277–286. Triangular relationships in the early work.
• Smolla, Rodney A. (1992). "Harlot's Ghost and 'JFK': A Fictional Conversation with Norman Mailer, Oliver Stone, Earl Warren, and Hugo Black". Suffolk University Law Review. 26 (fall): 587–613. Discussion of aesthetics and conspiracy.
• Solotaroff, Robert (1972). Down Mailer’s Way. Urbana: University of Illinois Press. Rpt: Partial in Lennon (1986). General survey containing a comprehensive and penetrating examination of Mailer’s existentialism and its debts to European philosophers. Contains one of the best critiques of “The White Negro” (59.8a) in print.
• Staid, George (1972). "Mailer and Miller". Partisan Review. 4 (4): 616–624. Thoughtful comparison.
• Stark, John (1971). "Barbary Shore: The Basis of Mailer's Best Work". Modern Fiction Studies. 17 (autumn): 403–408. The Hollingworths of Mailer and Nathaniel Hawthorne are considered.
• Stone, Albert E. (1982). "Factual Fictions: Experiments in Autobiography by Norman Mailer, Frank Conroy, Lillian Hellman". Autobiographical Occasions and Original Acts: Versions of American Identity from Henry Adams to Nate Shaw. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. pp. 265–290, 340–342. Valuable examination of The Armies of the Night (68.8) as part of the American autobiographical tradition.
• "Studies of Norman Mailer". Modern Fiction Studies. 17 (autumn): 345–463. 1971. Special issue containing nine essays on Mailer’s writings, and Laura Adams’s pioneering checklist of criticism.
• Styron, William (1982). "Aftermath of 'Aftermath'". This Quiet Dust and Other Writings. New York: Random House. pp. 137–1422. Styron empathizes with Mailer on the Jack Abbott affair. See 81.10.

T–V

• Taylor, James (March 1974). "Of Adams and Aquarius". American Literature. 46: 68–82. Best essay on the influence of Henry Adams on Mailer’s nonfiction. See 81.16.
• Toback, James (October 1967). "Norman Mailer Today". Commentary. Retrieved 2019-03-23. Examination of Mailer’s religious commitments, and the role of existential dread. Rpt: Mailer Review (2011), 413–432.
• Trilling, Diana (1964). "The Radical Moralism of Norman Mailer". Claremont Essays. New York: Harcourt, Brace and World. pp. 175–202. Rpt: Lucid (1971), Braudy (1972). Best developed and most intelligent examination of Mailer’s work through Advertisements for Myself (59.13). Sensitive mediation between extremes of Mailer’s sensibility with praise for his “high political consciousness” and “moral affirmation.”
• Vidal, Gore; Stanton, Robert J., eds. (1980). Views from a Window: Conversations with Gore Vidal. Secaucus, NJ: Lyle Stuart. passim. Vidal’s rivalry with Mailer is palpable here.
• Vidal, Gore (1972). "Women's Liberation Meets Miller-Mailer-Manson Man". Homage to Daniel Shays. New York: Random House. pp. 398–402. Cause of Mailer’s fight with Vidal on the Dick Cavett television show in December 1971. See 77.7.
• Vogelgesang, Sandy (1974). The Long Dark Night of the Soul: The American Intellectual Left and the Vietnam War. New York: Harper and Row. pp. 9–10, 131–133, 149–151, 178–179. The powerful influence of The Armies of the Night (68.8) on the anti-Vietnam War movement.
• Volpe, Edmond L. (1964). "James Jones—Norman Mailer". In Moore, Harry T. Contemporary American Novelists. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press. Two existentialists compared.

W–Z

• Waldron, Randall H. (March 1972). "The Naked, the Dead and the Machine: A New Look at Norman Mailer's First Novel". PMLA. 87: 271–277. Rpt: Bloom (1986). The U.S. Army as the epitome of technology in The Naked and the Dead (48.2).
• Weber, Ronald (1980). The Literature of Fact. Athens: Ohio University Press. pp. 80–87, 166–171, passim. Examination of The Armies of the Night (68.8) and The Executioner’s Song (79.14) from an American Studies perspective.
• Weinberg, Helen A. (1970). "The Heroes of Norman Mailer's Novels". The New Novel in America: The Kafkan Mode in Contemporary Fiction. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. pp. 108–140. Emergence of Mailer’s “activist hero” from Barbary Shore (51.1) to An American Dream (65.7).
• Wenke, Joseph (2014) [1987]. Mailer's America. Hanover, NH; London: University Press of New England for University of Connecticut. Wenke’s focus is almost completely thematic. Contains first extended treatment of Ancient Evenings (83.18).
• Werge, Thomas (October 1972). "An Apocalyptic Voyage: God, Satan, and the American Tradition in Norman Mailer's Of a Fire on the Moon". The Review of Politics. 34: 208–228. Rich discussion of Mailer’s “conviction of the essential religious drama of man’s experience,” focusing on 71.1 as a continuation of the vision of Herman Melville.
• Whalen-Bridge, John (1998). "Adamic Purity as Double-Agent in Harlot's Ghost". Political Fiction and the American Self. Urbana: University of Illinois Press. Subtle examination of “Mailer’s dual aptitude for representing and resisting American mythologies.”
• —, ed. (2010). Norman Mailer's Later Fictions: Ancient Evenings through Castle in the Forest. Springer. Foreword by Jason Epstein. Afterword by Norris Church Mailer. Eleven essays on Mailer’s novels from Ancient Evenings (83.18) to The Castle in the Forest (07.10).
• — (1998). Political Fiction and the American Self. Urbana: U of Illinois P. Subtle examination of Mailer's dual aptitude of representing and resisting American mythologies.
• Widmer, Kingsley (1965). "Several American Perplexes". The Literary Rebel. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press. pp. 175–198. Comparison of Mailer and Paul Goodman.
• Wilson, Andrew (2008). Norman Mailer: An American Aesthetic. Oxford, England: Peter Lang.
• Zavarzadeh, Mas'ud (1976). The Mythopoeic Reality: The Postwar American Nonfiction Novel. Urbana: University of Illinois Press. pp. 153–176 and passim. Attempts to prove, unconvincingly, that The Armies of the Night (68.8) has a “zero degree of interpretation” of reality.