Norman Mailer

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Norman Kingsley Mailer (January 31, 1923 to November 10, 2007,) was an American novelist, journalist, essayist, playwright, filmmaker, and liberal political activist.

In 1948, his book The Naked and the Dead was published, and it brought him both early and well-renown.

Armies of the Night, a 1968 nonfiction book, received the Pulitzer Prize for nonfiction as well as the National Book Award.

His best-known work, The Executioner's Song, the 1979 winner of the Pulitzer Prize for fiction, is widely believed to be The Executioner's Song.

Mailer produced eleven best-selling books in more than six decades, including at least one in each of the seven decades after World War II, as well as Truman Capote, Joan Didion, Hunter S. Thompson, and Tom Wolfe, Mailer is regarded as an innovator of experimental nonfiction, which often refers to literary fiction in fact-based journalism.

Mailer was also known for his essays, one of which is the most popular and reprinted of which is "The White Negro."

He was a cultural commentator and critic, expressing his convictions through his books, journalism, essays, and numerous television appearances.

Mailer and three others founded The Village Voice, an arts-and-political weekly newspaper distributed in Greenwich Village in 1955.

After stabbed his wife, Adele Morales, with a penknife, almost killing her, he was found guilty of assault and three-year probation in 1960.

He ran unsuccessfully for mayor of New York in 1969. Mailer, who was primarily known as a novelist and journalist, was not afraid to change genres or venture outside of his comfort zone; rather, he lived a life that represented an idea that echoes throughout his career: "There was that law of life, so cruel and painful, that one must grow or else pay more to remain the same."

Early life

Nachem "Norman" Malech ("King") Mailer was born in Long Branch, New Jersey, on January 31, 1923. Isaac Barnett Mailer, a father who was born in South Africa, and his mother, Fanny (née Schneider), operated a housekeeping and nursing service. Barbara, Mailer's sister, was born in 1927.

Mailer was born in Brooklyn, first on Cortelyou Road and later in Crown Heights, at the corner of Albany and Crown Streets. In 1939, he graduated from Boys High School and enrolled in Harvard College, when he was 16 years old. He was a student at the Signet Society and was a member of the Society of Signet Society. He majored in engineering sciences at Harvard, but writing courses were offered as electives. At the age of 18, he won the Story magazine's college competition in 1941, and he published his first book, "The Greatest Thing in the World."

Mailer married Beatrice "Bea" Silverman in January 1944, just before being recruited into the US Army after graduating in 1943. Mailer, who wanted to get a deferral from service, argued that he was writing a "important literary piece" that predates the conflict. This deferral was turned down, and Mailer was forced to join the Army. He was stationed in the Philippines with the 112th Cavalry after training at Fort Bragg.

During his time in the Philippines Mailer, he was first assigned to regimental headquarters as a typist and then assigned as a wire lineman. In early 1945, after serving as a reconnaissance platoon, he completed more than two dozen patrols in contested territory and was involved in many firefights and skirmishes. After the Japanese surrender, he was sent to Japan as part of the army of occupation and was promoted to sergeant and became a first cook.

When asked about his war experiences, he said that the army was "the worst experience of my life, but also the most significant." Mailer wrote to Bea almost daily during his stay in Japan and the Philippines, and The Naked and the Dead became the basis of the Mailer's Naked and the Dead's roots. For the novel's central action, he based himself on his experiences as a reconnaissance rifleman: a long patrol behind enemy lines.

Personal life

Mailer was married six times and had nine children. He raised eight children by his various husbands and formally adopted his sixth wife's son from another marriage.

Beatrice Silverman was the mailer's first marriage. They eloped in January 1944 because neither family would have likely have approved. Susan and Susan were married in 1952 due to Mailer's infidelities with Adele Morales.

Morales were born in 1951-1951 and moved to a second floor apartment in the East Village's Old Village's First Avenue. Danielle and Elizabeth were their two children. Mailer stabbed Adele twice with a two-and-a-half inch blade she used to clean his nails on Saturday, almost killing her by puncturing her pericardium. He stabbed her once in the chest and once in the back. Adele required emergency surgery but made a quick recovery. Adele had been stabbed "to cure her of cancer," the mailer said. He was admitted to Bellevue Hospital on a voluntary basis for 17 days. Adele denied press charges and said she needed to shield their children, Mailer pleaded guilty to a reduced charge of assault, saying, "I do a lousy, dirty, coward act" and was given a three-year suspended term of three years' probation. The two couples divorced in 1962. Adele's husband stabbing her at a party and the aftermath in 1997. This incident has sparked a discussion among feminist Mailer's feminist defenders, who refer to themes of sexual abuse in his writing.

Lady Jeanne Campbell, the British heiress and journalist, married in 1962 and divorced in 1963. Janet Gladys Aitken, the youngest daughter of Scottish Baron Ian Campbell, a controversial private life, and his first wife Janet Baron Beaverbrook, was her only daughter of press baron Max Aitken. Kate Mailer, the couple's daughter, was born.

Beverly Bentley, a former model turned actor, was his fourth marriage, in 1963. She was the mother of two of his sons, producer Michael Mailer, and actor Stephen Mailer. In 1980, they divorced.

Carol Stevens, a jazz musician who married on November 7, 1980, and divorced in Haiti on November 8, 1980, thereby legitimizing their daughter Maggie, who was born in 1971.

Norris Church Mailer, his sixth and last wife, who married in 1980, was a visual artist. They had one son together, John Buffalo Mailer, a writer and actor. By her first husband, Larry Norris, Mailer raised and informally adopted Matthew Norris, Church's son. With Mailer, a life in Brooklyn, New York, and Provincetown, Massachusetts, Church lived as a model.

Mailer co-wrote a book with his youngest child, John Buffalo Mailer, titled The Big Empty in 2005. "Norman Mailer, I'm Pregnant" was a Gilmore Girls episode in 2004. Stephen Mailer's son Stephen Mailer.

Mailer was associated with several people other than his wives, including Carole Mallory, who wrote a "tell all" biography, Loving Mailer, after his death.

Gloria Leonard first met Mailer in a chance meeting in a restaurant on Upper East Side New York in 1982. After recognizing her, he started a chat with Leonard. The meeting was said to have resulted in a brief exchange between the two characters. Leonard was approached by a group of movie distributors from the Midwest to finance later this year, who later called it "the world's first million-dollar pornographic film." She welcomed Mailer to lunch and made her case for her writery services. "I never knew I'd one day make a porny," Leonard said in a televised interview. Leonard demanded what his commission would be, Mailer replied with "two-hundred fifty thousand dollars." Leonard wondered if he'd be interested in adapting Marilyn Monroe's book-biography, but Mailer replied that he wanted to do something original. Due to scheduling conflicts between the two teams, the project was delayed until now.

The Dick Cavett Show, 1971, taping of The Dick Cavett Show, with Janet Flanner and Gore Vidal, Mailer, irritated with a less-than-stellar study by Vidal of Prisoner of Sex, insulted then head-butted Vidal backstage. When the show began taping, a clearly belligerent Mailer, who admitted to being drinking, compelled Vidal and Cavett to trade insults with him on air and even referred to his own "greater intelligence." During the discussion, he openly taunted Vidal (who responded in kind), eventually earning Flanner's respect by stating that she was "becoming very, very bored," despite Mailer and Vidal's that "you act as if you're the only one here." Mailer wrote: "Why don't you look at your question sheet and ask your question as Cavett made quips comparing Mailer's intelligence to his ego?" Mailer's intelligence to his ego. "Why don't you fold it five ways and put it where the moon don't shine?" Cavett replied. A long laugh ensued, after which Mailer asked Cavett if he'd come up with the quote, and Cavett replied, "I have to give you a quote from Tolstoy." Mailer's essay "Of a Small and Modest Malignancy, Wicked, and Bristling with Dots" described the head-butting and later on-air altercation.

According to his obituary in The Independent, his "relentless machismo seemed out of place in a man who was actually quite small, though perhaps here was where the aggression originated."

In his book Taking the Stand, Alan Dershowitz recalls when Claus von Bülow held a dinner party after being found not guilty at his appeal. Dershowitz argued that if it was a "victory ball," he would not attend, but that it was only a dinner for "several friends." Norman Mailer attended the dinner, where, among other things, Dershowitz explained why the facts point to von Bülow's innocence. Mailer reached his wife's arm as Dershowitz recalled, saying, "Let's get out of here." This guy seems to be innocent, according to me. We should have dinner with a man who actually attempted to murder his wife. This is boring.

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Decorations and awards

• 1969: Pulitzer Prize, George Polk Award, and National Book Award for The Armies of the Night; Honorary Doctor of Letters from Rutgers University
• 1970: Harvard University's Signet Society Medal for Achievement in the Arts
• 1973: Edward MacDowell Medal
• 1975: Playboy's Best Nonfiction Award for The Fight
• 1976: Gold Medal for Literature by the National Arts Club; Playboy's Best Major Work in Fiction Award
• 1979: Best Major Work in Fiction Award from Playboy for The Executioner's Song
• 1980: Pulitzer Prize for Executioner's Song
• 1984: Honorary Doctor of Letters from Mercy College in White Plains, NY; Inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Letters
• 1985: Lord and Taylor's Rose Award
• 1987: Independent Spirit Award for best film and Golden Raspberry Award for Worst Director (both for Tough Guys Don't Dance)
• 1989: PEN Oakland / Josephine Miles Award; Emerson-Thoreau Medal
• 1991: New York State Edith Wharton Citation of Merit
• 1994: Harvard University's Signet Society Medal for Achievement in the Arts
• 1995: Honorary Doctor of Letters from Wilkes University, in Wilkes-Barre, PA
• 2000: F. Scott Fitzgerald Award for Achievement in American Literature
• 2002: Lifetime Achievement Award from the James Jones Literary Society, June 22; Austrian Cross of Honour for Science and Art, 1st class
• 2004: Golden Plate Award of the American Academy of Achievement
• 2005: National Book Award for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters