The Mailer Review/Volume 5, 2011/Norman Mailer Today: Difference between revisions

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{{Byline|last=Toback|first=James |abstract=Toback explores Mailer’s shift from political to spiritual radicalism, his obsession with existential heroism and metaphysical dread, and his fusion of personal crisis with national malaise. Analyzing works like ''The Presidential Papers'', ''An American Dream'', and ''Why Are We in Vietnam?'', Toback presents Mailer as a prophetic, polarizing figure whose complex vision of America combines Puritan eschatology, pop culture, and psychosexual exploration. |note=This essay first appeared in ''Commentary'' magazine in 1967. |url=http://prmlr.us/mr05tob}}

{{Byline|last=Toback|first=James|note=This essay first appeared in ''Commentary'' magazine in 1967}}

{{dc|dc=I|n the late 50’s, Norman Mailer’s Reputation}} still stood on ''The Naked and the Dead'' (1948), neither of his subsequent efforts, ''Barbary Shore'' (1951) and ''The Deer Park'' (1955), having quite convinced Mailer or anyone else that he was the major novelist he insisted he could become. By his own later account, his head was leaden with seconal, benzedrene, and marijuana: a sense of what he himself has termed passivity, stupidity, and dissipation threatened to overcome him. Only gradually, after returning to New York from Paris and giving up drugs and cigarettes, did he begin to feel that he could write once again. Then, in 1957, Mailer produced “The White Negro,” an essay which restored his faith in his literary future and presaged the forms and directions that it would take.

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=== Notes ===

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+{{Byline|last=Toback|first=James |abstract=Toback explores Mailer’s shift from political to spiritual radicalism, his obsession with existential heroism and metaphysical dread, and his fusion of personal crisis with national malaise. Analyzing works like ''The Presidential Papers'', ''An American Dream'', and ''Why Are We in Vietnam?'', Toback presents Mailer as a prophetic, polarizing figure whose complex vision of America combines Puritan eschatology, pop culture, and psychosexual exploration. |note=This essay first appeared in ''Commentary'' magazine in 1967. |url=http://prmlr.us/mr05tob}}
-{{Byline|last=Toback|first=James|note=This essay first appeared in ''Commentary'' magazine in 1967}}
 {{dc|dc=I|n the late 50’s, Norman Mailer’s Reputation}} still stood on ''The Naked and the Dead'' (1948), neither of his subsequent efforts, ''Barbary Shore'' (1951) and ''The Deer Park'' (1955), having quite convinced Mailer or anyone else that he was the major novelist he insisted he could become. By his own later account, his head was leaden with seconal, benzedrene, and marijuana: a sense of what he himself has termed passivity, stupidity, and dissipation threatened to overcome him. Only gradually, after returning to New York from Paris and giving up drugs and cigarettes, did he begin to feel that he could write once again. Then, in 1957, Mailer produced “The White Negro,” an essay which restored his faith in his literary future and presaged the forms and directions that it would take.
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 === Notes ===
 {{notelist}}