Includes bibliographical references (p. [907]-914) and index.

This book is a comprehensive study of the work of the American author Norman Mailer, charting his response to critical events in his country's development since 1945. Focusing on Mailer's descriptions of World War II, 1960s counter-culture, the Vietnam War, the Apollo 11 mission and the execution of Gary Gilmore in Utah in 1977, the book analyses the native vernaculars in ten of his most critically acclaimed works. Moving beyond politically orientated scholarship, the author outlines Mailer's New York, American GI, Mid-West and Southern styles, contextualising his prose against earlier American authors, including Henry Adams, Ernest Hemingway and John Dos Passos, and positioning his writing alongside contemporary notables such as Joan Didion, William Burroughs and Truman Capote. Incorporating over forty years of scholarship in the form of articles, reviews and interviews, this book pinpoints the American attributes in Mailer's writing with a view to identifying trends in post-war American literary movements, the Beat Generation, New Journalism and Pop Art among others.

"As the biographer of both Henry Miller (one of Mailer's heroes) and the radical journalist Louise Bryant, Dearborn is uniquely sensitive to Mailer's best and worst sides."--BOOK JACKET.

An American novelist, journalist, essayist, poet, playwright, screenwriter and film director, Norman Mailer won the Pulitzer Prize twice and the National Book Award once. Along with Joan Didion, Truman Capote, and Tom Wolfe, Mailer was a practitioner of New Journalism, a genre which encompassed the essay and other nonfiction writing.

This book is an analysis of the social criticism and the political implications of rhetorical strategies in personal-political (nonfictional) narratives by liberal American writers from the 18th century till the 1970s. Using the theories of Mikhail Bakhtin, Schueller examines works by Benjamin Franklin, Henry David Thoreau, Henry James, Henry Adams, Jane Addams, James Agee, Norman Mailer, and Maxine Hong Kingston.

The first biography to examine Mailer's life as a twisted lens, offering a unique insight into the history of America from the end of World War II to the election of Barack Obama. Twice winner of the Pulitzer Prize, firstly in 1969 for The Armies of the Night and again in 1980 for The Executioner's Song, Norman Mailer's life comes as close as is possible to being the Great American Novel: beyond reason, inexplicable, wonderfully grotesque and addictive. The Naked and the Dead was acclaimed not so much for its intrinsic qualities but rather because it launched a brutally realistic sub-genre of military fiction – Catch 22 and MASH would not exist without it. Richard Bradford combs through Mailer's personal letters – to lovers and editors – which appear to be a rehearsal for his career as a shifty literary narcissist, and which shape the characters of one of the most widely celebrated World War II novels. Bradford strikes again with a merciless biography in which diary entries, journal extracts and newspaper columns set the tone of this study of a controversial figure. From friendships with contemporaries such as James Baldwin, failed correspondences with Hemingway and the Kennedys, to terrible – but justified – criticism of his work by William Faulkner and Eleanor Roosevelt, this book gives a unique, snappy and convincing perspective of Mailer's ferocious personality and writings.

Reader's Guide Literature in English provides expert guidance to, and critical analysis of, the vast number of books available within the subject of English literature, from Anglo-Saxon times to the current American, British and Commonwealth scene. It is designed to help students, teachers and librarians choose the most appropriate books for research and study.

This referential collection of essays is an important guide to the emergence and development of literary journalism through the centuries. The book begins with the defining of genres, literature and journalism, which blur the lines between them. It also gives an insight into the theories of narratology. Some practitioners included in this book are great American writers like, John Hersey, Truman Capote, Norman Mailer and Don DeLillo. These literary journalists bring to life both major as well trivial issues of the society. New journalists coalesce all the fictional techniques with the journalistic methods to present a unique and sophisticated style which requires extensive research and even more careful reporting than done in the typical news articles. The book closes with the concluding thoughts followed by list of works cited.