1959

The decade's capstone year. On 28 September Mailer's third daughter, Elizabeth Anne ("Betsy"), is born to Adele; on 6 November Putnam's publishes Advertisements for Myself (59.13), the omnibus that gathers up the decade's work and relaunches Mailer's reputation. City Lights issues "The White Negro" as a pamphlet (59.8a). Across the year Mailer publishes some twenty pieces (59.1–59.19) and takes part in the University of Iowa and Judson Church symposia on the writer and mass culture.

A year in print

1959 is Mailer’s busiest publishing year of the decade — Dissent essays (59.1, 59.7), the major interview “Hip, Hell, and the Navigator” (59.2), letters and squibs (59.4, 59.5, 59.6), the Picasso essay (59.8), the Eisenhower–Khrushchev playlet “Buddies” (59.9), the contemporaries-survey “Quick and Expensive Comments” (59.10), and scenes from the Deer Park play (59.11) — much of it folded that autumn into Advertisements for Myself.

28 September — Betsy born

28 September — Elizabeth Anne (“Betsy”) is born to Adele.

Autumn — heralding the omnibus

Mailer trails the forthcoming book through periodical placements: “Sentiments Larger than Work” (59.12, Saturday Review, 10 October) and the watershed “The Mind of an Outlaw” (59.14, Esquire, November).

6 November — Advertisements for Myself

6 November — Putnam’s publishes Advertisements for Myself (59.13), a 532-page miscellany containing new and previously published work — “The White Negro,” critical assessments of his contemporaries, and “The Mind of an Outlaw,” his essay on the struggle to write and publish The Deer Park. Lawrence Ferlinghetti’s City Lights Books also issues “The White Negro” as a pamphlet (59.8a).

December — the symposia

4–5 December — Mailer joins Dwight Macdonald, Mark Harris, and Ralph Ellison at “The Writer in a Mass Culture,” a symposium at the University of Iowa co-sponsored by Esquire and moderated by Paul Engle and Arnold Gingrich (reported in 59.15–59.18). 18 December — Mailer sits on a Dissent-sponsored panel, “Happy Critics and a Rigged Society,” at Judson Memorial Church (59.19).

Related pages

• 1958 | 1960
• Advertisements for Myself | The Mind of an Outlaw | Hip, Hell, and the Navigator | Quick and Expensive Comments on the Talent in the Room | The White Negro (City Lights pamphlet)
• Elizabeth Mailer | Arnold Gingrich | Ralph Ellison | G. P. Putnam's Sons | Adele Morales
• Comment (59.1) | From Surplus Value to the Mass-Media (59.7) | Who Said What? (59.4) | Ingenue (59.5) | Ten Words from the Dean (59.6) | An Eye on Picasso (59.8) | Buddies, or the Hole in the Summit (59.9) | Scenes from 'The Deer Park' (59.11) | Sentiments Larger than Work (59.12) | 2 Symposium Authors Say Write for Elite, Not Masses (59.15) | Eggheads in the Tall Corn (59.18) | Is Modern Man Meaningless (59.19)

Cite as: /days/1959
Last updated: 2026-05-23