Preceded by excerpts in The New Yorker and New York Review of Books, Oswald's Tale: An American Mystery (95.16) is published on 12 May.

Mailer receives honorary Doctor of Humane Letters from Wilkes University in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania on 27 May.

Portrait of Picasso as a Young Man: An Interpretive Biography (95.38) is published on 15 October. It receives the worst reviews of any of his books save Barbary Shore (51.1), many of them written by art critics.

Begins work on The Gospel According to the Son (97.13), a retelling of the New Testament as told by Jesus.