Norman Mailer-Cancelled?

"Top American American Writer" in 1968

Pulitzer Prize 1980 for fiction

In 1968 Norman Mailer was characterized as the “Top American Writer.”¹

The Norman Mailer ( 1923 – 2007) centenary is 2023.

A collection of Norman Mailer’s nonfiction writings, scheduled for publication in 2023 to mark the centenary of his birth, has been “cancelled” by Random House. The reasons seem to be some his writing from his hipster cringe phase and his anti-women writing.

In “Cancelling Mailer” Kevin Power² writes in The Dublin Review:

To complain that Norman Mailer has been cancelled is to complain that the rules of politics and art that for so long favoured middle class liberal white men are now in crisis – have perhaps been fatally undermined. The map in your hands, oh well-meaning liberal male, no longer matches the territory. The writers who loomed so large in your self-fashioning have been, like unreplicatable scientific studies, discredited. If Norman Mailer can be cancelled, are any of us safe?

Skyhorse picks up Norman Mailer collection amid Random House drama

Skyhorse Publishing will publish the Norman Mailer collection. ³

Highlights from Norman Mailer’s career:

• During World War II Mailer was stationed in the Philippines with the 112th Cavalry.

• The Naked and the Dead -1948. (characterized as best novel on World War II when published). New York Times best seller for 62 weeks.

• Founder of the Village Voice-1955.

• Mailer stabbed his second wife, Adele Morales, nearly killing her. He received a suspended sentence of three years' probation.-1960.

• An American Dream - 1965 novel (previously serialized for Esquire magazine).

• Armies of the Night- Pulitzer Prize for nonfiction - 1969.

• Ran for mayor of New York city-1969.

• Prisoner of Sex- 1971 (Mailer's response to the 1960s Women's Liberation movement)

• Marilyn: A Biography - 1973.

• The Executioner's Song- Pulitzer Prize for fiction- 1980.

• Spearheaded convicted killer Jack Abbott's successful bid for parole.

• Oswald's Tale: An American Mystery- 1996.

• National Book Award for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters in 2005.

• Of Norman Mailer’s 45,000 letters a selection was published in 2014.⁴

Mailer was married six times and had nine children.

There is a Norman Mailer Society.

1. “William Buckley Interviews Norman Mailer on Firing Line” (1968) . YouTube.

2. Power, Kevin. April 2022, Cancelling Mailer. The Dublin Review.

3. Skyhorse picks up Norman Mailer collection amid Random House drama. AOL. January 22, 2022.

4. Lennon, J. Michael, ed. (2014). The Selected Letters of Norman Mailer. New York: Random House.