# Norman Mailer bibliography

This Norman Mailer bibliography lists major books by and about Mailer (January 31, 1923 – November 10, 2007), an American novelist, new journalist, essayist, public intellectual, filmmaker, and biographer. Over a fifty-nine-year period, Mailer won two Pulitzer Prizes and had eleven books spend a total of 160 weeks on the New York Times bestseller list. Mailer's output included fiction, non-fiction, poems and essays. Biographer J. Michael Lennon called Mailer the chronicler of the American Century, and a talent whose career has "been at once so brilliant, varied, controversial, improvisational, public, productive, lengthy and misunderstood".

## Chronology

| Title | Abbr. | Year | Type | Notes |
| The Naked and the Dead | NAD | 1948 | novel | spent 62 weeks on the bestseller list, achieving no. 1; received a New York Newspaper Guild's "Page One Award"; chosen as one of the four best books of 1948 by Newsweek; original manuscript housed at Yale University |
| Barbary Shore | BS | 1951 | novel | spent 3 weeks on the bestseller list, achieving no. 3 |
| The Deer Park | DP | 1955 | novel | spent 15 weeks on the bestseller list, achieving no. 6 |
| The White Negro: Superficial Reflections on the Hipster | WN | 1959 | essay | first published in Dissent 4, Summer 1957 |
| Advertisements for Myself | AFM | 1959 | miscellany | original working title: The Hip and the Square: a Miscellany |
| Deaths for the Ladies (and Other Disasters) | DFL | 1962 | poetry | |
| The Presidential Papers | PP | 1963 | miscellany | |
| An American Dream | AAD | 1965 | novel | spent 6 weeks on the bestseller list, achieving no. 8 |
| Cannibals and Christians | CAC | 1966 | miscellany | |
| The Short Fiction of Norman Mailer | SFNM | 1967 | short story collection | nineteen stories — one new ("The Shortest Novel of Them All") and eighteen previously published with an original introduction; published with material from Existential Errands under the title The Essential Mailer, Sevenoaks, Kent: New English Library, 1982 |
| The Deer Park: A Play | | 1967 | play | |
| Why Are We in Vietnam? | WWVN | 1967 | novel | nominated for the National Book Award |
| The Bullfight: A Photographic Narrative with Text by Norman Mailer | | 1967 | essay | |
| The Armies of the Night: History as a Novel, the Novel as History | AON | 1968 | nonfiction narrative | won the Pulitzer Prize for general nonfiction and the National Book Award for arts and letters; ranked nineteenth on a list of the top 100 works of journalism of the twentieth century |
| The Idol and the Octopus: Political Writings on the Kennedy and Johnson Administrations | | 1968 | miscellany | selections from PP and CAC, including the new "On Lady Chatterley and Tropic of Cancer" |
| Miami and the Siege of Chicago: An Informal History of the Republican and Democratic Conventions of 1968 | MSC | 1968 | nonfiction narrative | nominated for the National Book Award in history and biography |
| Of a Fire on the Moon | OFM | 1971 | nonfiction narrative | nominated for the National Book Award in the sciences category |
| King of the Hill: Norman Mailer on the Fight of the Century | | 1971 | nonfiction narrative | |
| Prisoner of Sex | POS | 1971 | essay | nominated for the National Book Award in the arts and letters category |
| Maidstone: A Mystery | MM | 1971 | screenplay | based on the 1968 film that was mostly improvised |
| The Long Patrol: 25 Years of Writing from the Work of Norman Mailer | | 1971 | collection | edited and introduced by Robert F. Lucid |
| Existential Errands | EE | 1972 | miscellany | |
| St. George and the Godfather | SGG | 1972 | nonfiction narrative | |
| Marilyn: A Biography; Pictures by the World's Foremost Photographers | MAR | 1973 | biography | spent 9 weeks on the bestseller list, achieving no. 6 |
| The Faith of Graffiti | FOG | 1974 | essay | |
| The Fight | FIG | 1975 | nonfiction narrative | |
| Some Honorable Men: Political Conventions, 1960-1972 | SHM | 1976 | anthology | includes a new preface and four previously published political narratives: "Superman Comes to the Supermarket", "In the Red Light", MSC, and SSG |
| Genius and Lust: A Journey through the Major Writings of Henry Miller | GAL | 1976 | essay | |
| A Transit to Narcissus | TTN | 1978 | novel | facsimile of typescript of previously unpublished novel written in 1943 |
| The Executioner's Song | ES | 1979 | nonfiction narrative | spent 25 weeks on the bestseller list, achieving no. 3; won the Playboy Writing Award for fiction in 1979 and the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 1980; nominated for the American Book Award for fiction and the National Book Critics Circle Award for fiction in 1979; ranked 72 on a list of the top 100 works of journalism of the twentieth century; Mailer insisted on calling ES a "true-life novel" |
| Of Women and Their Elegance | OWE | 1980 | novel | photographs by Milton Greene |
| The Essential Mailer | EM | 1982 | collection | combines SFNM and EE in a British release |
| Pieces and Pontifications | PAP | 1982 | miscellany | Pontifications edited and introduced by J. Michael Lennon |
| Ancient Evenings | AE | 1983 | novel | spent 17 weeks on the bestseller list, achieving no. 6 |
| Tough Guys Don't Dance | TGD | 1984 | novel | spent 10 weeks on the bestseller list, achieving no. 5 |
| Conversations with Norman Mailer | CNM | 1988 | collection | edited and introduced by J. Michael Lennon; contains 34 previously published interviews, including three self-interviews, an introduction, and chronology of Mailer's life |
| Harlot's Ghost | HG | 1991 | novel | spent 4 weeks on the bestseller list, achieving no. 12 |
| Oswald's Tale: An American Mystery | OT | 1995 | nonfiction narrative | |
| Portrait of Picasso as a Young Man: An Interpretive Biography | POP | 1995 | biography | |
| The Gospel According to the Son | GAS | 1997 | novel | spent 6 weeks on the bestseller list, achieving no. 7 |
| The Time of Our Time | TOOT | 1998 | anthology | contains 139 excerpts from 26 of Mailer's books and uncollected periodical pieces; includes "The Shadow of the Crime: A Word from the Author", a one-page reflection on the 1960 stabbing of his second wife Adele; Mailer signed 25,000 copies |
| The Spooky Art: Thoughts on Writing | SA | 2003 | miscellany | edited and introduced by J. Michael Lennon; contains previously published and original material |
| Modest Gifts: Poems and Drawings | MG | 2003 | poetry | old (some revised) and new poems; reprint of DFL and poems from CAC |
| Why Are We at War? | WWW | 2003 | essay | assembled from two interviews and a speech, September 2002 to February 2003, against the Iraq war |
| Norman Mailer's Letters on An American Dream, 1963-1969 | LAD | 2004 | letters | 76 letters about the writing and publication of AAD, edited by J. Michael Lennon |
| The Big Empty: Dialogues on Politics, Sex, God, Boxing, Morality, Myth, Poker and Bad Conscience in America | BE | 2006 | conversations | with John Buffalo Mailer |
| The Castle in the Forest | CIF | 2007 | novel | spent 3 weeks on the bestseller list, achieving no. 5 |
| On God: An Uncommon Conversation | OG | 2007 | conversations | with J. Michael Lennon; edited transcripts of ten conversations between Lennon and Mailer, 2003–2006 |
| Mind of an Outlaw: Selected Essays of Norman Mailer | MO | 2013 | collection | 49 important essays, 1948–2006, including "Freud" an unpublished essay from the mid-1950s; edited by Phillip Sipiora |
| The Selected Letters of Norman Mailer | SLNM | 2014 | letters | 714 letters, 1940 to 2007, selected from the approximately 50,000 Mailer wrote over his lifetime, edited by J. Michael Lennon |
| Norman Mailer: Four Books of the 1960s | | 2018 | collection | Library of America #305 contains AAD, WVN, AON, and MSC; edited by J. Michael Lennon |
| Norman Mailer: Collected Essays of the 1960s | | 2018 | collection | Library of America #306; edited by J. Michael Lennon |
| Lipton's: A Marijuana Journal | | 2024 | journal | A journal written in the winter of 1954–1955, containing an introduction, annotations, an index, and correspondence between Mailer and Robert Lindner; edited by J. Michael Lennon, Gerald R. Lucas, and Susan Mailer |

## Novels

| Title | Year | Publication Information |
| The Naked and the Dead | 1948 | New York: Rinehart, 6 May; London: Wingate, 9 May 1949. |
| Barbary Shore | 1951 | New York: Rinehart, 24 May; London: Cape, 21 January 1952. |
| The Deer Park | 1955 | New York: Putnam's, 14 October; London: Wingate, 1957. |
| An American Dream | 1965 | New York: Dial, 15 March. London: Deutsch, 26 April. |
| Why Are We in Vietnam? | 1967 | New York: Putnam's, 15 September; London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, March or April 1969. |
| A Transit to Narcissus | 1978 | New York: Howard Fertig, 29 March. |
| Of Women and Their Elegance | 1980 | New York: Simon and Schuster, 26 November; London: Hodder and Stoughton. |
| Ancient Evenings | 1983 | Boston: Little, Brown, 4 April; London: Macmillan, 26 May. |
| Tough Guys Don't Dance | 1984 | New York: Random House, 20 August; London: Michael Joseph, 15 October. |
| Harlot's Ghost | 1991 | New York: Random House, 2 October. London: Michael Joseph, October. |
| The Gospel According to the Son | 1997 | New York: Random House, 2 May; London: Little, Brown, 18 September. |
| The Castle in the Forest | 2007 | New York: Random House, 23 January. |

## Non-fiction

| Title | Year | Publication Information |
| The White Negro | 1959 | San Francisco: City Lights Books. |
| The Armies of the Night | 1968 | New York: New American Library. |
| Miami and the Siege of Chicago | 1968 | New York: New American Library. |
| Of a Fire on the Moon | 1971 | Boston: Little, Brown. |
| King of the Hill | 1971 | New York: New American Library. |
| Prisoner of Sex | 1971 | Boston: Little, Brown. |
| St. George and the Godfather | 1972 | New York: New American Library. |
| The Faith of Graffiti | 1974 | New York: Praeger. |
| The Fight | 1975 | Boston: Little, Brown. |
| Genius and Lust | 1976 | New York: Grove. |
| The Executioner's Song | 1979 | Boston: Little, Brown. |
| Oswald's Tale: An American Mystery | 1995 | New York: Random House. |
| Why Are We at War? | 2003 | New York: Random House. |
| Lipton's: A Marijuana Journal | 2024 | New York: Arcade. |

## Anthologies, collections and miscellanies

Beginning in 1959, it became a habit of Mailer's to release his periodical writing, excerpts, and the occasional new piece in collections and miscellanies every few years. Not including letters, Mailer had written for over 100 magazines and periodicals, including Dissent, Ladies Home Journal, One: The Homosexual Magazine, Playboy, Esquire, Vanity Fair, Harper's, New Yorker, and others.
| Title | Year | Publication Information |
| Advertisements for Myself | 1959 | New York: Putnam, 1959. |
| The Presidential Papers | 1963 | New York: Putnam, 1963. |
| Cannibals and Christians | 1966 | New York: Dial, 1966. |
| The Short Fiction of Norman Mailer | 1967 | New York: Dell, 1967. |
| The Idol and the Octopus | 1968 | New York: Dell, 1968. |
| The Long Patrol: 25 Years of Writing from the Work of Norman Mailer | 1971 | New York: World, 1971. |
| Existential Errands | 1972 | Boston: Little, Brown, 1972. |
| Some Honorable Men: Political Conventions, 1960-1972 | 1976 | Boston: Little, Brown, 1976. |
| The Essential Mailer | 1982 | Sevenoaks, Kent: New English Library, 1982. |
| Pieces and Pontifications | 1982 | Boston: Little, Brown, 1982. |
| The Time of Our Time | 1998 | New York: Random House, 1998. |
| The Spooky Art: Thoughts on Writing | 2003 | New York: Random House, 2003. |
| Mind of an Outlaw: Selected Essays of Norman Mailer | 2013 | New York: Random House: 2013. |
| Norman Mailer: Four Books of the 1960s | 2018 | New York: Library of America, 2018. |
| Norman Mailer: Collected Essays of the 1960s | 2018 | New York: Library of America, 2018. |

## Conversations and interviews

By 1986, Mailer had been interviewed approximately 200 times, perhaps more than any other American author on a wide range of topics. He may maintain that distinction today.
| Title | Year | Publication Information | Notes |
| Pieces and Pontifications | 1982 | Boston: Little, Brown, 1982. | contains 20 interviews |
| Conversations with Norman Mailer | 1988 | Jackson: University Press of Mississippi. | Edited by J. Michael Lennon. |
| The Big Empty | 2006 | New York: Nation Books. | With John Buffalo Mailer. |
| On God: An Uncommon Conversation | 2007 | New York: Random House. | With J. Michael Lennon. |

## Short stories

| Title | Written | Published | Original Publication | Collected In | Notes |
| "The Greatest Thing in the World" | 1940 | 1941 | Harvard Advocate | Story 19 (1941); Hold Your Breath: Suspense Stories (1947); Story: The Fiction of the Forties (1949); AFM (1959); SFNM (1967) | written during Mailer's sophomore year at Harvard; won Story magazine's eighth annual college writing contest |
| "Right Shoe on Left Foot" | 1941 | 1942 | Harvard Advocate | - | never reprinted |
| "Maybe Next Year" | 1941 | 1942 | Harvard Advocate | The Harvard Advocate Anthology (1942); AFM (1959); SFNM (1967) | written in Mailer's junior year at Harvard |
| "A Calculus at Heaven" | 1942 (Oct.) | 1944 | Cross-Section: A Collection of New American Writing | AFM (1959); SFNM (1967); EM (1982) | written for Robert Hillyer's English A-5 class in Mailer's senior year at Harvard |
| "The Paper House" | 1951–1952 (Winter) | 1952 | New World Writing: Second Mentor Collection | Lilliput's Extra Holiday Reading (London 1953); AFM (1959); SFNM (1967); A Selection from the Short Fiction of Norman Mailer (1968); EM (1982); Stag (1975) | based on an anecdote by Vance Bourjaily, to whom Mailer dedicated the story |
| "The Dead Gook" | 1951–1952 (Winter) | 1952 | Discovery, No. 1 | AFM (1959); SFNM (1967); A Selection from the Short Fiction of Norman Mailer (1968); EM (1982) | |
| "The Language of Men" | 1951–1952 (Winter) | 1953 | Esquire | Various Temptations (1955); The Armchair Esquire (1958); AFM (1959); SFNM (1967); A Selection from the Short Fiction of Norman Mailer (1968); EM (1982) | |
| "Pierrot" | 1951 | 1953 | World Review | AFM (1959); SFNM (1967) | published as "The Patron Saint of MacDougal Alley" in AFM and SFNM with changes |
| "The Notebook" | 1951–1952 (Winter) | 1953 | Cornhill Magazine no. 996 | The Berkley Book of Modern Writing, No. 3 (1956); AFM (1959); SFNM (1967); EM (1982) | reprinted in The Mailer Review 12.1 (2018) |
| "The Man Who Studied Yoga" | 1951–1952 (Winter) | 1956 | New Short Novels 2 | AFM (1959); SFNM (1967); EM (1982); TOOT (1998) | |
| "Advertisements for Myself on the Way Out" | 1958 | 1958 | Partisan Review 25 | AFM (1959); SFNM (1967); EM (1982) | |
| "The Time of Her Time" | 1958 | 1959 | AFM | SFNM (1967); Writer’s Choice: Each of Twenty American Authors Introduces His Own Best Story (1974); EM (1982); TOOT (1998) | |
| "It" | 1939 | 1959 | AFM | SFNM (1967) | |
| "Great in the Hay" | 1950 | 1959 | AFM | SFNM (1967) | |
| "Truth and Being: Nothing and Time" | 1960 (Dec.) | 1962 | Evergreen Review no. 26 | PP (1963); SFNM (1967); Evergreen Review Reader: A Ten Year Anthology, 1962–1967, Vol. II (1980); EM (1982) | |
| "The Locust Cry" | 1963 | 1963 | Commentary | PP (1963); CAC (1966); SFNM (1967); EM (1982) | |
| "The Last Night: a Story" | 1962 | 1963 | Esquire | CAC (1966); SFNM (1967); EM (1982); The Last Night (1984) | reprinted in The Mailer Review 13.1 (2019) with an introduction by J. Michael Lennon |
| "The Killer: a Story" | 1960 | 1964 | Evergreen Review no. 32 | CAC (1966); SFNM (1967); EM (1982) | |
| "Ministers of Taste: A Story" | 1965 | 1965 | Partisan Review no. 32 | CAC (1966); SFNM (1967); EM (1982) | |
| "The Shortest Novel of Them All" | 1963 | 1967 | SFNM | - | the only story in SFNM that was not previously published |
| "The Blood of the Blunt" | 1951 | 2012 | The Mailer Review | - | previously unpublished short story, circa 1951 |
| "Love Buds" | 1942–43 | 2013 | The Mailer Review | - | previously unpublished short story written in Mailer's senior year in college, 1942–43 |
| "La Petite Bourgeoise" | 1951 | 2014 | The Mailer Review | - | previously unpublished short story, circa 1951 |
| "The Thalian Adventure" | 1951 | 2015 | The Mailer Review | - | previously unpublished short story, circa 1951 |
| "The Collision" | 1933 | 2016 | The Mailer Review | - | Mailer's first complete story, previously unpublished, written January 1933 |
| "Dr. Bulganoff and the Solitary Teste" | 1951 | 2017 | The Mailer Review | - | previously unpublished short story, circa 1951 |

## Critical studies of Mailer's work

* Leeds, Barry H. (1969). The Structured Vision of Norman Mailer. New York: NYU Press. OCLC 474531468.
* Kaufmann, Donald (1969). Norman Mailer: The Countdown (The First Twenty Years). Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press. ISBN 9780809303878. OCLC 977535620.
* Lucid, Robert F., ed. (1971). Norman Mailer: The Man and His Work. Boston: Little Brown. OCLC 902036360.
* Braudy, Leo, ed. (1972). Norman Mailer: a Collection of Critical Essays. Twentieth Century Views. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall. ISBN 9780135455333. OCLC 868765103.
* Poirier, Richard (1972). Norman Mailer. Modern Masters. New York: Viking Press. OCLC 473033417.
* Solotaroff, Robert (1973). Down Mailer's Way. Urbana; London: University of Illinois Press. ISBN 9780252003981. OCLC 644343516.
* Adams, Laura, ed. (1974a). Will the Real Norman Mailer Please Stand Up. Port Washington; London: Kennikat Press. ISBN 9780804690669. OCLC 1050855202.
* Adams (1974).
* Radford, Jean (1975). Norman Mailer: A Critical Study. London; Basingstoke: Macmillan Press. OCLC 463529477.
* Adams, Laura (1977). Existential Battles: the Growth of Norman Mailer. Athens: Ohio UP. OCLC 787841439.
* Bufithis, Philip (1978). Norman Mailer. New York: Frederick Ungar. OCLC 932270728.
* Merrill, Robert (1978). Norman Mailer. New York: Twayne. OCLC 463500243.
* Gordon, Andrew (1980). An American Dreamer: A Psychoanalytic Study of the Fiction of Norman Mailer. London: Fairleigh Dickinson UP. OCLC 1046256795.
* Begiebing, Robert J. (1980). Acts of Regeneration: Allegory and Archetype in the Works of Norman Mailer. Columbia; London: University of Missouri Press. OCLC 466533555.
* Mills, Hilary (1982). Mailer: A Biography. New York: Empire Books. OCLC 966034621.
* Manso, Peter (1985). Mailer: His Life and Times. New York: Washington Square Press. ISBN 9781416562863. OCLC 1035697738.
* Lennon (1986).
* Bloom, Harold, ed. (1986). Norman Mailer. Modern Critical Views. Philadelphia, PA: Chelsea House. ISBN 9780877546566. OCLC 12420979.
* Lennon (1988).
* Begiebing, Robert J. (1989). Toward a New Synthesis: John Fowles, John Gardner, and Norman Mailer. Ann Arbor, MI: UMI. ISBN 9780835719476. OCLC 924803474.
* Nigel, Leigh (1989). Radical Fictions and the Novels of Norman Mailer. Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire: Macmillan. OCLC 68171016.
* Rollyson (1991).
* Merrill, Robert (1992). Norman Mailer Revisited. Boston: Twayne. OCLC 463568236.
* Glenday, Michael K. (1995). Norman Mailer. New York: St. Martins Press. OCLC 878025365.
* Dearborn (1999).
* Dickstein, Morris (2002). Leopards in the Temple: The Transformation of American Fiction, 1945-1970. Cambridge, MA; London: Harvard UP. OCLC 606732230.
* Leeds, Barry H. (2002). The Enduring Vision of Norman Mailer. Bainbridge Island, Wash.: Pleasure Boat Studio. OCLC 845519995.
* Bloom, Harold, ed. (2003). Norman Mailer. Bloom's Modern Critical Views. Philadelphia, PA: Chelsea House. OCLC 263706819.
* Lennon (2013).
* Lennon, J. Michael, ed. (2014). The Selected Letters of Norman Mailer. New York: Random House. OCLC 933749753.
* Wenke, Joseph (2014) [1987]. Mailer's America. Hanover, NH; London: University Press of New England for University of Connecticut. ISBN 978-0874513936.
* Bailey, Jennifer (2014) [1979]. Norman Mailer Quick-Change Artist. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. OCLC 935186576.
* Schultz, Kevin (2016). Buckley and Mailer: the Difficult Friendship that Shaped the Sixties. New York: W.W. Norton. OCLC 921868954.
* Bozung, Justin, ed. (2017). The Cinema of Norman Mailer: Film is Like Death. New York: Bloomsbury Academic. OCLC 1011515088.
* McKinley, Maggie (2017). Understanding Norman Mailer. Columbia, SC: The University of South Carolina Press. OCLC 985080064.
* Lennon & Lennon (2018).
* McKinley, Maggie, ed. (2021). Norman Mailer in Context. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 9781108774413.
* Begiebing, Robert J. (2023). Norman Mailer at 100: Conversations, Correlations, Confrontations. Baton Rogue, LA: Louisiana State University Press.