Norman Mailer: Works and Days/Bibliography/Criticism

===A===
* Good discussion of themes and techniques, especially early narrators; includes description of extra-literary activities.
* Fourteen essays and reviews and one interview examining Mailer’s protean activities. Includes two essays on Mailer’s cosmology, a long bibliography and Adams’s useful introduction.
* Contains Aldridge’s reviews of Genius and Lust (76.12), The Long Patrol (71.29), and Harlot’s Ghost (91.26).
* Reprint, with an introduction by Norman Mailer. In his introduction Mailer says, “Aldridge was the nearest guideline to absolute truth that the working novelist had in my young days.” See 85.14.
* Satirical portrait of Mailer (Norman Manlifellow) and James Baldwin (Giovanni Johnson) and other New York literary figures. See 63.10.
* See 86.42.
* Concrete reading of Mailer’s “rhetoric of self-dramatization,” with deft discussion of Mailer’s “Left-conservatism.”
* One of the best comic fantasy struggles with a larger-than-life Mailer.
* xamination of free indirect speech in The Executioner’s Song (79.14).
===B===
* Provides extended summaries of his work from a feminist perspective. Bailey sees Advertisements for Myself (59.13) as the key transitional work.
* Best study of Lawrence’s influence. See 90.2.
* Professional philosopher’s sympathetic examination of Mailer’s existential credentials.
* Close reading of major works from Barbary Shore (51.1) on; fine discussion of Mailer’s “heroic consciousness.”
* Discusses Mailer and other American authors at a transformative moment in his career.
* Demonstration of how Mailer uses metafictional technique but rejects postmodern negativism. Important study of Ancient Evenings (83.18).
* One of the first extended treatments of The Armies of the Night (68.8), which Berthoff places—along with The Autobiography of Malcolm X—in the American tradition of personal witness and “the saving counterforce of personality.”
* Sixteen reviews and essays covering Mailer’s major works and emphasizing the influence of Hemingway, with Bloom’s brief introduction.
* Thirteen reviews and essays focusing on Mailer’s later works.
* A collection of mixed contributions: essays and memoirs from critics, collaborators, and Mailer himself (67.21 and 71.25), some reprinted, but mostly original texts including many stills from Mailer’s films.
* Useful to gauge how Mailer’s public image has alienated an important critic.
* Rpt: Adams (1974). Informed comment on Mailer’s film and the Mailer-Pynchon dichotomy.
* Thirteen essays on Mailer’s work through Of a Fire on the Moon (71.1); includes Steven Marcus interview (64.1) and a thoughtful introduction with useful insights into Miami and the Siege of Chicago (68.25).
* Staid overview of Mailer as “a personal index of American history since the Second World War.”
* Authenticity, courage and the belief that “self-discovery must precede the establishment of satisfactory societies” in the early novels of Mailer.
* Perhaps the most readable and reliable study of Mailer’s early work.
* Argues persuasively for the influence of Moby-Dick on “The Man Who Studied Yoga” (56.25). See 51.2.
===C–G===
* 
* Capote criticizes The Executioner’s Song (79.14).
* Rpt: Lucid (1971); partial in Bloom (1986). This monograph, one of the first extended treatments of Mailer’s work, is still one of the best. Excellent on Mailer’s urgent, “forcing style.”
* Examines Mailer’s novels in a socio-political context. Contains one of the finest discussions of Why Are We in Vietnam (67.15), which he deftly relates to the issues of the day.
* 
===H===
* Feminist critique focusing on the “fixed principles” of Mailer’s work: “anger and the adversary relation.”
* Attack on the veracity of The Executioner’s Song (79.14).
* Argues that Mailer fails as a thinker and ignores earlier intellectual leaders.
* Reviews of four Mailer narratives by Saturday Review’s longtime literary reviewer and Mailer misconstruer.
* First major appraisal of Mailer as a New Journalist, with excellent bibliography.
* Definitive. Rpt: Mailer Review (2016), 379–85. See 51.2.
===J–K===
* Marxist critique which argues that Mailer is dependent on the very diseases and poisons of technology that he condemns.
* One of the few commentators to question the truthfulness of The Executioner’s Song (79.14).
* Extravagant praise for Why Are We in Vietnam? (67.15) and delineation of Mailer’s concern for a schizophrenic America.
* 
* Pioneering discussion of the beast-seer conflict in the early work which overlooks Mailer’s political interests.
* Richly allusive generic discussion of The Executioner’s Song (79.14).
* Rpt: Bloom (1986). Perhaps the best thing written on Mailer’s narrative of the Apollo 11 mission.
* Mailer and Merrill against Cartesian mechanism and postmodern despair.
===L===
* Careful tracing of the pattern of definition, revilement, warning and visionary promise in Mailer, Joan Didion, Tom Wolfe and earlier writers such as John Ruskin and Henry David Thoreau.
* Rpt: Bloom (1986). Important essay on the evolution of Mailer’s “hallucinated realism.”
* The most complete discussion of the topic.
* “The coherence of Mailer’s vision of [Marilyn] Monroe, of women, and of heterosexual love.”
* Examination of Mailer’s later works, including an interview with Mailer, and a deft descriptive chapter, “The Critical Climate: Books on Mailer.”
* First major study of Mailer’s work; valuable for its analysis of An American Dream (65.7), and consideration of The Armies of the Night (68.8) and Deaths for the Ladies (and Other Disasters) (62.3).
* Most nuanced discussion of the adaptation of Tough Guys Don’t Dance (84.17) to the screen.
* Mailer’s cosmology as an existential recreation.
* Comment on Mailer’s films and those made from his novels.
* Leigh writes about Mailer and power from a Foucauldian perspective, but ignores the nonfiction narratives. Excellent readings of Why Are We in Vietnam? (67.15) and Ancient Evenings (83.18). Many misquotations, typos, incorrect page numbers.
* Ten reviews and ten essays, including two original ones: Robert F. Lucid’s overview of his proposed biography and Michael Cowan’s on Mailer’s Americanness. Introduction summarizes critical response to Mailer’s work.
* Comparison of the introspective-empathic narratives of Mailer and Erik Erikson.
* Delineation of the “three linked strands” of Mailer’s cosmology: 1) universe in process, 2) intensified free will and 3) intensified presence of evil.
* Discussion of point of view in Mailer as it relates to his thought.
* How Mailer’s view of his audience helps shape his work.
* Masterful delineation of the origins and possibilities of the nonfiction novel, including [[The Armies of the Night (68.8).
* Careful exploration of the parallels between Advertisements for Myself (59.13) and Whitman’s “Song of Myself.”
* A study of the relationship between Mailer and Jack Abbott.
* Lowell says Mailer’s portrait of him in The Armies of the Night (68.8) is “the best, the only thing written about me as a living person.”
* “The Ambition of Norman Mailer” could serve as the title to this brilliant recapitulation of Mailer’s career through Of a Fire on the Moon (71.1). See 71.29.
* How increasingly greater demands on Mailer have made him disassemble himself into various avatars and employ new narrative strategies. Indispensable.
* First major collection of essays: 13 on his work, four on his life and Paul Carroll’s interview (68.1). Contains checklist of his work and important introduction in which Lucid attempts to resolve the apparent conflict between Mailer’s public and artistic activities.
* Subtle exploration of the love-hate relationship of three public writers and their audiences.
===M===
* Besides Mailer, Macdonald chooses James Baldwin in the prose category and mentions Truman Capote, Norman Podhoretz, John Updike and Flannery O’Connor. Macdonald says Mailer’s failures are “more interesting than the successes of less-talented writers” and praises “his enthusiasm for general ideas.”
* Inevitable and careful comparison.
* The virtues of the American vernacular in Mailer, Walt Whitman, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Mark Twain and others.
* See 70.4.
* Why Are We in Vietnam? (67.15) and William Faulkner’s “The Bear” are related to Indian stories, with an ecological emphasis.
* Traces the shift from ideological to “visionary” politics in Mailer’s work.
* Convincingly sorts out the generic status of The Executioner’s Song (79.14) by comparing/contrasting it with Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood.
* An examination of violence, masculinity, and racial and ethnic tension in several American novelists, including Mailer.
* An introduction to Mailer’s work in an accessible volume. A solid primer on Mailer’s writings and concerns.
* 
* Forceful and detailed critique.
* Rpt: Bloom (1986). Sound analysis of point of view and structure in 68.8.
* Thoughtful examination of the formal structure of Mailer’s novels and nonfiction narratives; contains perhaps best analysis of The Executioner’s Song (79.14). Includes biographical chapter. Most comprehensive study to date.
* A shrewd study of Mailer’s emerging persona in the essays preceding The Armies of the Night (68.8).
* Extended personal essay on Mailer’s ties to American romantics, including a comic account of his first meeting with Mailer.
* 
* Raises serious doubts about the specific influence of John Dos Passos’s U.S.A. on The Naked and the Dead (48.2).
===N–O===
* Lowell comments on his portrait in The Armies of the Night (68.8).
* Contains three essays and an interview by Matthew Grace and Steve Roday. See 73.14.
* Discussion of Mailer’s dualisms in Why Are We In Vietnam? (67.15) and Of a Fire on the Moon (71.1) by a novelist who “disagree[s] with nearly every one of Mailer’s stated or implied ideas.”
* Mailer is seen as a transitional figure between modernism and postmodernism; focus is on his writings of the 1960s.
* Pseudonymous attack in rhymed couplets on Mailer as male chauvinist.
===P===
* Argues that the magazine version of 65.7 is superior to the book version. See 83.6.
* Argues for Vidal as an ignored genius who prefigured the New Historicism and Mailer as anti-homosexual. Tendentious.
* Arguably the best essay on Mailer’s first novel (48.2).
* Rpt: Lucid (1971). One of the first essays to examine Mailer’s shifting ideologies and idiosyncratic existentialism.
* Rpt: Partial in Bloom (1986). Still considered to be most intelligent study of Mailer. Contains three chapters: on Mailer’s career, his relation to history, and his dualisms. Poirier’s Mailer is perhaps too postmodern, but Poirier is acute on Mailer’s endlessly modulating rhetoric, even if he is incredulous about Mailer’s cosmology.
* Prelude to his 1972 volume on Mailer.
* Ideological context for Mailer’s second novel (51.1). Excellent sources.
===R===
* General survey of Mailer’s work from a feminist perspective. Her study is marred by its focus on ideology and lack of interest in stylistic nuance; contains a fine analyses of the Eitel-Esposito affair in The Deer Park (55.4).
* Mailer’s historical sense, use of the small town and the “dynamic, orgiastic, explosive accelerating city.”
* Lacking notes and an index, this vicious diatribe is valuable to help understand the depth of anger among Mailer’s detractors. Ross is the Babe Ruth of Mailer revilers.
* Contends that Lawrence Durrell’s Alexandria Quartet caused Mailer to rethink his plans.
===S===
* Attempt to deconstruct “The White Negro” (59.8a) into consensus liberalism.
* Rpt: Bloom (1986). Focus on Gilmore’s self-definition.
* Discussion of Mailer’s insights about Marlon Brando, Marilyn Monroe, Ernest Hemingway and John F. Kennedy.
* Rpt: Braudy (1972). Argues that hipsterism is not existentialism, but a violent variant of romanticism based on “libidinal urges.”
* A critical/biographical history of the friendship between Mailer and William F. Buckley concentrating on their frequently oppositional writing, politics, and public personae in the sixties.
* Examination of Mailer’s novels, with only modest procrusteanism, in a Dantesque framework.
* Worthy exploration of Mailer’s rhetoric and obscenity.
* In detailed readings, Scott makes the case that Mailer, like Whitman, is a “spokesperson for the American conscience.”
* Surprising parallels.
* Examination of Mailer’s post-Marxist revolutionary impulses through Advertisements for Myself (59.13). Contains extensive discussion of influence of Wilhelm Reich and Robert Lindner. See 56.9.
* Tribute to Mailer as a weather vane: “As Mailer goes, so goes the nation.”
* 
* Interesting consideration of the subjective-objective dilemma in The Naked and the Dead (48.2).
* Important reconsideration via the “New Historicism” of Stephen Greenblatt.
* Triangular relationships in the early work.
* Discussion of aesthetics and conspiracy.
* Rpt: Partial in Lennon (1986). General survey containing a comprehensive and penetrating examination of Mailer’s existentialism and its debts to European philosophers. Contains one of the best critiques of “The White Negro” (59.8a) in print.
* Thoughtful comparison.
* The Hollingworths of Mailer and Nathaniel Hawthorne are considered.
* Valuable examination of The Armies of the Night (68.8) as part of the American autobiographical tradition.
* Special issue containing nine essays on Mailer’s writings, and Laura Adams’s pioneering checklist of criticism.
* Styron empathizes with Mailer on the Jack Abbott affair. See 81.10.
===T–V===
* Best essay on the influence of Henry Adams on Mailer’s nonfiction. See 81.16.
* Examination of Mailer’s religious commitments, and the role of existential dread. Rpt: Mailer Review (2011), 413–432.
* Rpt: Lucid (1971), Braudy (1972). Best developed and most intelligent examination of Mailer’s work through Advertisements for Myself (59.13). Sensitive mediation between extremes of Mailer’s sensibility with praise for his “high political consciousness” and “moral affirmation.”
* Vidal’s rivalry with Mailer is palpable here.
* Cause of Mailer’s fight with Vidal on the Dick Cavett television show in December 1971. See 77.7.
* The powerful influence of The Armies of the Night (68.8) on the anti-Vietnam War movement.
* Two existentialists compared.
===W–Z===
* Rpt: Bloom (1986). The U.S. Army as the epitome of technology in The Naked and the Dead (48.2).
* Examination of The Armies of the Night (68.8) and The Executioner’s Song (79.14) from an American Studies perspective.
* Emergence of Mailer’s “activist hero” from Barbary Shore (51.1) to An American Dream (65.7).
* Wenke’s focus is almost completely thematic. Contains first extended treatment of Ancient Evenings (83.18).
* Rich discussion of Mailer’s “conviction of the essential religious drama of man’s experience,” focusing on 71.1 as a continuation of the vision of Herman Melville.
* Subtle examination of “Mailer’s dual aptitude for representing and resisting American mythologies.”
* Foreword by Jason Epstein. Afterword by Norris Church Mailer. Eleven essays on Mailer’s novels from Ancient Evenings (83.18) to The Castle in the Forest (07.10).
* Subtle examination of Mailer's dual aptitude of representing and resisting American mythologies.
* Comparison of Mailer and Paul Goodman.
* 
* Attempts to prove, unconvincingly, that The Armies of the Night (68.8) has a “zero degree of interpretation” of reality.