97.13
The Gospel According to the Son. New York: Random House, 2 May; London: Little, Brown, 18 September. Novel, 224 pp., $22.
Dedication: “To Susan, Danielle, Elizabeth, Kate, Michael, Stephen, Maggie, Matthew, and John Buffalo.”
Acknowledgments: “I would like to give an acknowledgment to my wife, Norris; to my assistant, Judith McNally; to my friends Michael Lennon and Robert Lucid; to Veronica Windholz; and to James and Gaynell Davis, who all offered signal contributions to this work. And not least, to Jason Epstein, Joy de Menil, and Andrew Wylie.”
Rpt: All of 97.13 was published in the (New York) Daily News (97.6) in 19 parts before book publication. Advance excerpts also appeared in the New York Times (97.8) and the Chicago Sun-Times (97.9). Seven excerpts are reprinted in The Time of Our Time (98.7). See 1997 entries.
| “ | So I thought: If I can write about Osiris and Ra, then certainly the New Testament is not going to be that difficult to do. And in a sense, it wasn’t. In contrast to the complexity of the ancient Egyptian myth of Isis and Osiris, this is simpler and more beautiful. And far more cohesive. It was perfectly conceivable to me that one could have a character in a novel who’s the son of God. Novelists are supposed to look into the eye of the tiger. | ” |
| — Mailer, 97.3 | ||
Bibliography
Reviews
- Gelernter, David (July 28, 1997). "One Gospel Too Many". National Review. pp. 55–56. Negative.
- Gray, Paul (April 23, 1997). "Using the Lord's Name". Time. p. 75. Negative.
- Kakutani, Michiko (April 14, 1997). "Norman Mailer's Perception of Jesus". New York Times. Sec. B. p. 7. Retrieved 2019-03-11. Negative. See 95.36.
- Kermode, Frank (May 15, 1997). "Advertisements for Himself". New York Review of Books. pp. 4, 6–8. Positive.
- "Review of The Gospel According to the Son". Publisher's Weekly. March 31, 1997. p. 59. Positive. Rpt: On the dust jacket of the second impression and the back cover of the subsequent Random House softcover edition.
- Moore, Steven (April 27, 1997). "Mailer and the Not-So-Good News". Washington Post Book World. pp. 1, 9. Retrieved 2019-03-11. Negative.
- Price, Reynolds (May 4, 1997). "Mailer, Mark, Luke and John". New York Times Book Review. p. 4. Retrieved 2019-03-11.
- Updike, John (May 4, 1997). "Stones into Bread". New Yorker. pp. 92–94, 96–97. Positive.
- Wilson, A. N. (April 24, 1997). "Don't Take This Autobiography as Gospel". Daily Telegraph. p. 24.
Essays
- Bernstein, Mashey (2010). "A Jewish Reading of The Gospel of the Son". In Whalen-Bridge, John. Norman Mailer’s Later Fictions: Ancient Evenings through Castle in the Forest. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. pp. 73–84.
- Howley, Ashton (2010). "Mailer's 'Gnostic' Gospel". In Whalen-Bridge, John. Norman Mailer’s Later Fictions: Ancient Evenings through Castle in the Forest. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. pp. 55–72.
- Macdonald, Brian (Fall 2006). "Post-Holocaust Theodicy, American Imperialism, and the 'very Jewish Jesus' of Norman Mailer's The Gospel According to the Son". Journal of Modern Literature. 30: 78–103.
- Partridge, Jeffrey F. L. (2010). "Augustinian Evil in The Gospel According to the Son and The Castle in the Forest: A Case for Non-Dualism". In Whalen-Bridge, John. Norman Mailer’s Later Fictions: Ancient Evenings through Castle in the Forest. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. pp. 85–102.