The Mailer Review/Volume 8, 2014/Teaching Controversy: Mailer in the College Classroom: Difference between revisions

{{MR08}}

Provocative. Shocking. Pornographic. These words have been used frequently to describe Norman Mailer’s extraordinary life and work. But these words began to appear trite and tedious as Mailer’s shock value declined in the 1960s and 1970s. “Even Mailer cannot be obscene any longer,” remarked Louis Menand. “Everyone has heard it all.”{{sfn|Menand|2002|p=154}} Yet despite our supposed disenchantment with vulgarity, Mailer worked to change definitions of obscenity in his writing and his life. Menand, in his 2013 ''New Yorker'' piece, “The Norman Invasion,” reminds us that Mailer “hated books that prettified the stuff of ordinary life and speech.”{{sfn|Menand|2013|p=88}} He was also a vocal opponent of the obscenity trials involving works like D. H. Lawrence’s ''Lady Chatterley’s Lover'' (1928) and Henry Miller’s ''Tropic of Cancer'' (1934).{{sfn|Menand|2013|p=88}} Yet the very fact that Mailer’s contentious personality cannot be parceled out from the brash controversies of his writing makes him an especially compelling figure for the college classroom: teaching provocative works like Mailer’s encourages students to see how controversies change over time and how their authors are celebrated and censored, often in direct response to these changes.