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 ==I. Introduction==
-Norman Mailer was one of the most ambitious writers of our time. He had
+Norman Mailer was one of the most ambitious writers of our time. He had enormous faith in the power of writing to influence and change society and to alter the quality of human life. Despite the controversies that swirled around his public figure, he should be more recognized for the scope of his efforts to use his writing to transform America. With bravado, courage, and a bit of recklessness, he has repeatedly proclaimed his ''personal'' ambition to place himself, as a writer, in the company of literary giants and thereby remedy what he believes are America’s literary deficiencies, while also promising that he is about to write a novel that will create the “revolution in consciousness” (''Advertisements 17'') which he believes is necessary to rejuvenate a stagnant America,1 through writing the “great American novel” which
-enormous faith in the power of writing to influence and change society and to alter the quality of human life. Despite the controversies that swirled around his public figure, he should be more recognized for the scope of his efforts to use his writing to transform America. With bravado, courage, and a bit of recklessness, he has repeatedly proclaimed his ''personal'' ambition to place himself, as a writer, in the company of literary giants and thereby remedy what he believes are America’s literary deficiencies, while also promising that he is about to write a novel that will create the “revolution in consciousness” (''Advertisements 17'') which he believes is necessary to rejuvenate a stagnant America,1 through writing the “great American novel” which
 will “tell the truth of our times.” Undoubtedly, however, this effort has been fraught with difficulties; as Carl Rollyson explains in his biography of Mailer: “In the forty years since The Naked and the Dead Mailer has been searching for a way to write the great panoramic American novel.... America had seemed too complex for any single novelist—no matter how mature—to take on (359).” His last, sustained effort to reveal America through a work of fiction is the long historical novel about the CIA, ''Harlot’s Ghost''. However, this novel has been overlooked as the culmination of Mailer’s project of a fictional representation of America and therefore largely ignored as the important work of politically engaged fiction that I believe it is.2 This is undoubtedly because the novel presents a strange puzzle; both its content and form need careful consideration before its significance can be understand.
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 won’t be written on paper.
-notes
+==Notes==
+{{notelist}}
 . See again Advertisements as well as essays in Cannibals and Christians and Norman Mailer,
 Pieces and Pontifications ~Boston: Little Brown, 1982!. This point recurs throughout his
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 . See Mailer, Genius and Lust.
 . The most famous version of this comes from Francis Fukiyama’s book. He has since basically abandoned his thesis and now warns of the dangers to civilization by “radical Islamist” forces.
+==Works Cited==
+{{Refbegin}}
+Adorno, Teodor, et al. Aesthetics and Politics. New York: Verso, 1978.
+Benjamin, Walter. “The Author as Producer.” Understanding Brecht. Trans. by Anna Bostock.
+New York: Verso, 1998.
+Bloom, Harold, ed. Norman Mailer: Modern Critical Views. New York: Chelsea House Publishers, 1986.
+———. “Norman in Egypt.” Bloom’s Modern Critical Views: Norman Mailer. Ed. and with
+Intro. Harold Bloom. Philadelphia: Chelsea House Publishers, 2003.
+Brecht, Bertolt. Brecht on Theater: the Development of an Aesthetic. Trans. and ed. by John Willet. New York: Hill and Wang, 2001.
+Coover, Robert. The Public Burning. New York: Grove Press, 1977.
+Dearborn, Mary V. Mailer a Biography. New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1999.
+DeLillo, Don. Underworld. New York: Simon and Shuster, 1997.
+Doctorow, E.L. The Book of Daniel. New York: Plume Penguin Press, 1996.
+Fukikyama, Francis. The End of History and the Last Man. New York: Avon Books, 1998.
+Glenday, Michael K. Norman Mailer. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1995.
+Jameson, Fredric. Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism. Durham: Duke UP,
+.
+Lenin, V.I. Selected Works in 3 Volumes. Moscow: International Press, 1977.
+Mailer, Norman. Advertisements for Myself. New York: Putnam, 1959.
+———. An American Dream. New York: Dial, 1965.
+———. Cannibals and Christians. New York: Dial, 1966.
+———. The Deer Park. New York: Putnam, 1955.
+———. Genius and Lust: A Journey through the Major Writings of Henry Miller. New York:
+Grove, 1976.
+———. Harlot’s Ghost. New York: Random House, 1991
+———. Pieces and Pontifications. Boston: Little Brown, 1982.
+McHale, Brian. Constructing Postmodernism. London and New York: Routledge, 1992.
+Nielson, Heather.“Jack’s Ghost: Reappearances of John Kennedy in the work of Gore Vidal and
+Norman Mailer.” American Studies International ~October 1997!: 23–24.
+Rollyson, Carl. The Lives of Norman Mailer. New York: Paragon House, 1991.
+Whalen-Bridge, John. “The Myth of American Adam in Late Mailer.” Connotations ~1995–6!:
+–321.
+———. Political Fiction and the American Self. Urbana: U of Illinois P, 1998
+{{Refend}}