1968

Mailer's annus mirabilis of nonfiction: The Armies of the Night is published on 6 May (twenty years to the day after The Naked and the Dead) to near-unanimous acclaim and will win the Pulitzer and National Book Award; Miami and the Siege of Chicago follows in October. His films Wild 90 and Beyond the Law premiere, and he shoots a third, Maidstone, on Long Island — its set marked by the filmed hammer fight with Rip Torn. He covers the 1968 conventions and the violence in Chicago.

Winter and spring

7 January — Mailer’s first feature film, Wild 90, premieres; Beyond the Law follows on 2 April (premiering at Notre Dame, 68.5–68.6d). His major Playboy interview (68.1) appears in January.

March–April — “The Steps of the Pentagon” (68.2) runs as the Harper’s cover story — the longest article in the magazine’s history — followed by “The Battle of the Pentagon” (68.6) in Commentary; together they are the two-part magazine version of The Armies of the Night.

May

6 May — New American Library publishes The Armies of the Night (68.8), twenty years to the day after The Naked and the Dead. The reviews are almost unanimously favorable, led by Alfred Kazin’s front-page notice in the New York Times Book Review (68.8a, 68.8b); the book will win the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award (awarded 1969). See reception and prizes.

Summer

June — Dell issues the political collection The Idol and the Octopus (68.11).

July — Mailer shoots his third experimental film, Maidstone, on Long Island, playing director Norman T. Kingsley. After formal shooting ends, Rip Torn (as Raoul) attacks Kingsley-Mailer with a hammer; the two fight on camera, and Mailer keeps the footage as the film’s conclusion (68.14–68.17, 68.21a, 68.28).

Fall

August — Mailer covers the Republican convention in Miami Beach and the Democratic convention in Chicago, speaking at the Grant Park rally amid the police violence (68.18). His account appears first in Harper’s (“Miami Beach and Chicago,” 68.27) and then, on 24 October, in book form as Miami and the Siege of Chicago (68.25), a National Book Award nominee.

December — Newsweek runs Mailer on its cover (“Flying High with Mailer,” 68.29), accompanied by his “Open Letter to Richard Nixon” (68.30).

Context

1968 is a year of assassinations (Martin Luther King Jr. in April, Robert Kennedy in June), the Tet Offensive, the Columbia uprising, and the Chicago convention violence — the national upheaval that Mailer’s two nonfiction narratives of the year set out to read.

Related pages

• 1967 | 1969
• The Armies of the Night: History as a Novel, The Novel as History | Miami and the Siege of Chicago: An Informal History of the Republican and Democratic Conventions of 1968 | The Idol and the Octopus: Political Writings by Norman Mailer on the Kennedy and Johnson Administrations
• New American Library | The World Publishing Company | Rip Torn
• Beyond the Law (68.5) | From Split Ends to Bookends: Notre Dame and Norman Mailer (68.6d) | Playboy Interview: Norman Mailer (68.1) | The Steps of the Pentagon (68.2) | The Battle of the Pentagon (68.6) | Mailer at Ease (68.8a) | A Writer's Diary: Mailer Sees Mailer as Book Character for his 'Armies' (68.8b) | Norman Mailer Enlists His Private Army to Act in Film (68.14) | Norman Mailer, Movie Maker (68.17) | War & Peace: The Mailer Version (68.21a) | At Play in the Fields of the Bored (68.28) | Hundred Injured: 178 Are Arrested as Guardsmen Join in Using Tear Gas (68.18) | Miami Beach and Chicago (68.27) | Flying High with Mailer (68.29) | Norman Mailer's Open Letter to Richard Nixon (68.30)

Cite as: /days/1968
Last updated: 2026-05-30