72.7

Existential Errands. Boston: Little, Brown, 17 April; Sevenoaks, Kent: New English Library, August 1982. Miscellany, 365 pp., $7.95.

The British edition combines 72.7 with The Short Fiction of Norman Mailer (67.11) under the title The Essential Mailer (82.19).

Dedication: “To Barbara, to Susan, to Adeline, and to Al.” Rpt: 98.7 (partial).

“ This collection covers pieces written almost entirely in the last five years, a period in which The Deer Park as a play was given its last draft and then produced, Why Are We in Vietnam? was written and then The Armies of the Night, Miami and the Siege of Chicago, Of a Fire on the Moon and The Prisoner of Sex. Three movies were also made. So it is a period when, with every thought of beginning a certain big novel which had been promised for a long time, the moot desire to have one’s immediate say on contemporary matters kept diverting the novelistic impulse into journalism. ” — Mailer, 72.7

Of the six books named above all but The Deer Park: A Play were nominated for a National Book Award in four different categories. The Armies of the Night won for arts and letters, and a Pulitzer Prize in general nonfiction as well.

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  Cover of the first edition.

Bibliography

Reviews

• Buchanan, Cynthia (April 16, 1972). "We Read Mailer because He Is Our Genius". New York Times Book Review. pp. 27–28. Retrieved 2018-12-18. Positive.
• Edwards, Thomas (June 15, 1972). "Keeping Up with Mailer". New York Review of Books. pp. 21–22. Retrieved 2018-12-18. Mixed.
• Lask, Thomas (May 5, 1972). "Review of Existential Errands". New York Times. p. 38. Retrieved 2018-12-18. Mixed.

Essays