1941
Mailer's sophomore year at Harvard produces his first published story — "The Greatest Thing in the World" in the Harvard Advocate, April — which goes on to win Story magazine's Eighth Annual College Contest and a $100 prize. He is elected to the Advocate editorial board, joins the Signet Society, writes an unpublished first novel over the summer, and in mid-December meets Beatrice Silverman, his first wife, in Chelsea.
Spring
April — The Harvard Advocate publishes “The Greatest Thing in the World” (41.1) on pages 3–6 and 24–28. Mailer wrote it for Robert Gorham Davis‘s English 1-A in 1940–41 under the original title “The Suckers and the Setup.” In April, Mailer is also accepted to the Advocate’s editorial board.
21 April — A Harvard Crimson editorial (unsigned) comments on the Advocate publication of 41.1 — recorded by Lennon as “the first published critical (and favorable) comment on Mailer’s work”. See [[bibliography/1941]].
Late spring — At Davis’s encouragement, Mailer submits the story to Story magazine’s Eighth Annual College Contest under the byline “Norman K[ingsley]. Mailer.” It wins first prize of $100 and gains him some attention from New York publishers.
May — Mailer is elected to the Signet Society, a merit-based luncheon club at Harvard.
Summer
Mailer learns of the Story contest win at the start of the summer. In the interview recorded as 64.1, he recalled: “when I found out it had won — which was at the beginning of the summer after my sophomore year — well, that fortified me, and I sat down and wrote a novel. It was called No Percentage. It was just terrible. But I never questioned any longer whether I was started as a writer”.
September — Mailer completes No Percentage, a 408-page manuscript set in Long Branch and Brooklyn. It remains unpublished.
Fall and winter
November–December — Story 19 reprints “The Greatest Thing in the World” on pages 17–26 — the first of the story’s many reprints.
Mid-December — Mailer meets Beatrice Silverman, a Boston University music major who lives in nearby Chelsea, Massachusetts. She will become his first wife on 7 January 1944.
Context
The U.S. enters World War II on 8 December, after the attack on Pearl Harbor. The draft and the war that will define the next five years of Mailer’s life (and that feed The Naked and the Dead) open in the middle of his sophomore year; he continues at Harvard.
Related pages
- 1940 | 1942
- The Greatest Thing in the World
- Harvard University | The Harvard Advocate | Story | Robert Gorham Davis | Beatrice Silverman
- Norman Mailer: The Art of Fiction XXXII (64.1)