The Riptides of Fame: June 1948: Difference between revisions

After delivering the manuscript of his war novel, ''[[The Naked and the Dead]]'' to his publisher, [[Norman Mailer]] sailed to Europe with his wife Beatrice on October 1, 1947. Having for most of his life known only the Depression and the War, he was still in thrall to the writers of the Lost Generation—Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Dos Passos and Henry Miller—and viewed his trip to Europe on the GI Bill as a miraculous opportunity. Paris was the bulls-eye destination for aspiring writers, including Stanley Karnow, a Harvard graduate and veteran who arrived there a few months before Norman Mailer. His memoir, ''Paris in the Fifties'', opens with the question: “''Porquoi Paris?'' Its name alone was magic. The city, the legendary, ''Ville Lumiѐre'', promised something for everyone—beauty, sophistication, culture, cuisine, sex, escape and that indefinable called ambiance.”<ref>{{cite book |last=Karnow |first=Stanley |date=1997 |title=Paris in the Fifties |url= |location=New York |publisher=Times Books |page=3 |isbn= |author-link= |ref=harv }}</ref> Mailer partook of all of these pleasures during his ten-month stay in Paris. He differed from most of his countrymen, however, in one respect: he was a writer when he arrived: besides ''Naked'', he had written two unpublished novels in college. While enjoying himself in Paris and taking trips to other countries, he was trying to get a new novel going. It was one of the happiest seasons of his life, shadowed only by his anxiety about the future.