The Mailer Review/Volume 5, 2011/Through the Lens of the Beatniks: Norman Mailer and Modern American Man’s Quest for Self-Realization

Written by
Raj Chandarlapaty

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Abstract: An analysis of the relationship, similarities, and cultural connections between Mailer and the major Beat writers.

Few mid-century writers were friendly with the Beat Generation. Most, including Norman Mailer, cited their criminal and licentious impulses as an undermining tangling of ethically strong American sensibilities. I have noted Mailer’s criticism found in “The White Negro,” where Mailer sketched the unkempt and ghettoized portrait of white rebels such as Neal Cassady. Whether it is Mailer, Arthur Miller, or left poet-rockers such as Bob Dylan, or even fiction writers such as Truman Capote, the recurring message of a degenerated gang of would-be hoodlums abandoning mainstream lifestyles remained a cynical counter-step to the endless innovations and cultural adventurism that was unheard of for most Americans in the 1950s.