The Mailer Review/Volume 2, 2008/Norman Mailer’s Best Sellers: Difference between revisions

{{MR02}}

{{abstract|In six decades of work, Norman Mailer made the best seller list with eleven of his books, more than any other post-war American writer. }}

On June 20, 1948, a Pacific war novel by a twenty-five year-old combat veteran from Brooklyn reached the number one position on the ''New York Times'' best-seller list. It remained on the list for sixty-two consecutive weeks, nineteen of them in the number one spot. After ''[[The Naked and the Dead]]'', Norman Mailer never again made the first position on the ''Times'' list. But ten more of his books — eight of them novels — over six decades made the list, including his last novel, ''[[The Castle in the Forest]]''. It reached number five on February 11, 2007, shortly after Mailer’s eighty-fourth birthday on January 31, and less than a year before his death on November 10.