Norman Mailer

The war experience: The Naked and the Dead by Norman Mailer, From Here to Eternity and Just Call by James Jones, Slaughterhouse-Five, or The Children's Crusade by Kurt Vonnegut, Sophie’s Choice by William Styron.

Norman Kingsley Mailer (January 31, 1923 – November 10, 2007) is an American novelist, journalist, playwright, screenwriter and film director. Along with Truman Capote, Joan Didion and Tom Wolfe, Mailer is considered an innovator of creative nonfiction, a genre sometimes called New Journalism, but which covers the personal essay to the nonfiction novel. He has been awarded the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award.

Mailer was born to a Jewish family in Long Branch, New Jersey. He was brought up in Brooklyn, New York, graduated from Boys' High School and attended Harvard University in 1939, where he studied aeronautical engineering. He is a former member of the Harvard Advocate. At the university, he became interested in writing and published his first story when he was 18. Mailer was drafted into the Army in World War II and served in the South Pacific. In 1948, just before enrolling in the Sorbonne in Paris, he wrote a book that made him world-famous: The Naked and the Dead, based on his personal experiences during World War II. It was hailed by many as one of the best American novels to come out of the war years and named one of the "100 best novels" by the Modern Library.

In the following years, Mailer continued to work in the field of the novel. Barbary Shore (1951) was a surreal parable of Cold War left politics, set in a Brooklyn rooming-house. His 1955 novel The Deer Park drew on his experiences working as a screenwriter in Hollywood in the early 1950s. It was initially rejected by numerous publishers owing to its sexual content. But in the mid-1950s, he became increasingly known for his counter-cultural essays. He was one of the founders of The Village Voice in 1955. In the book Advertisements for Myself (1959), including the essay The White Negro: Superficial Reflections on the Hipster (1957), Mailer examined violence, hysteria, crime and confusion in American society, in both fictional and reportage forms.

Other famous works include: The Presidential Papers (1963), An American Dream (1965), Why Are We in Vietnam? (1967), Armies of the Night (1968, awarded a Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award), Miami and the Siege of Chicago (1968), Of a Fire on the Moon (1970), The Prisoner of Sex (1971), Marilyn (1973), The Fight (1975), The Executioner's Song (1979, awarded a Pulitzer Prize), Ancient Evenings (1983), Harlot's Ghost (1991), Oswald's Tale (1995), and The Castle in the Forest (2007).

In 1968 he received a George Polk Award for his reporting in Harper's Magazine.

In addition to his experimental fiction and nonfiction novels, Mailer has produced a play version of The Deer Park, and in the late 1960s directed a number of improvisational avant-garde films in a Warhol style, including Maidstone (1970), which includes a brutal brawl between himself and Rip Torn that may or may not have been planned. In 1987, he directed a film version of his novel Tough Guys Don't Dance, starring Ryan O'Neal, which has become a minor camp classic.

A number of Mailer's nonfiction works, such as The Armies of the Night and The Presidential Papers, are political. He covered the Republican and Democratic National Conventions in 1960, 1964, 1968, 1972, 1992, and 1996. In 1967, he was arrested for his involvement in anti-Vietnam demonstrations. Two years later, he ran unsuccessfully in the Democratic Party primary for Mayor of New York City, allied with columnist Jimmy Breslin (who ran for City Council President), proposing New York City secession and creating a 51st state.

He currently lives in Provincetown, MA.

The Naked and the Dead is a 1948 novel, by Norman Mailer. It is based on his experiences during World War II. It was later adapted into a movie of the same title in 1958.

An American brigade is fighting the Japanese on a Pacific island. Set in the South Pacific and dealing primarily with a single reconnaissance platoon of riflemen, the novel contains several combat scenes, but focuses on the psychological portraits of the men in the squad. The tension of the novel derives mostly from the conflict between officers and men, including the lieutenant of the squad and the men under him as well as his superiors. The novel questions the impact of high-ranking officers and their decisions on the outcomes of military campaigns.

The Naked and the Dead was Mailer's first published novel and his only hugely successful one; it established his reputation as a novelist and brought international recognition.

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