1998

Mailer turns 75 the same spring The Naked and the Dead turns 50. Random House marks the double anniversary with The Time of Our Time (6 May), a 1,286-page retrospective arranged by the dates of the events described; Henry Holt reissues The Naked and the Dead with a new introduction. The publication party at the Rainbow Room draws Muhammad Ali and literary New York. Mailer gives a wave of interviews on religion and craft, attacks Clinton over the Lewinsky affair, and reviews Tom Wolfe's A Man in Full.

The double anniversary

The spring of 1998 brought Mailer’s 75th birthday and the 50th anniversary of The Naked and the Dead. Random House marked it on 6 May with The Time of Our Time (98.7), a 1,286-page retrospective of 139 excerpts arranged by the dates of the events they describe; the same day Henry Holt reissued The Naked and the Dead with a new introduction (98.6). David Denby‘s New Yorker appreciation “The Contender” (98.3, with Avedon’s portrait) set the tone for a strongly favorable reception (Bloom, Shapiro, Menand, Hitchens). The publication party at the Rainbow Room drew Muhammad Ali and much of literary New York (98.10).

Interviews, politics, and the Wolfe review

Mailer gave a long sequence of interviews around the anthology — on religion (“I am searching for a notion of God that is alive to me,” 98.9), on fiction and nonfiction (98.11), on his mother and the “gene stream” (98.11b), and on his readiness to write the Harlot’s Ghost sequel. In an Observer essay he charged President Clinton, amid the Lewinsky affair, with “betraying the poor” (98.1), and in December he reviewed Tom Wolfe‘s A Man in Full in “A Man Half Full” (98.17). Lighter notes: a New Yorker article on his living-room Lego city (98.5), and a celebrated punch to New Republic publisher Marty Peretz’s stomach (98.12a).

Related pages

• 1997 | 1999
• The Time of Our Time (98.7) | The Naked and the Dead (50th anniv.) | “A Man Half Full”
• Introduction to The Naked and the Dead (98.6) | Life and Letters: The Contender (98.3) | After Half a Century, Still Writing, Still Questing (98.9) | Fine Distinctions: Norman Mailer on Fiction, Non-Fiction and the Differences between Them (98.11) | In Prose or in Person, Still the Tough Guy (98.11b) | The Joy of Bricks (98.5)

Cite as: /days/1998
Last updated: 2026-06-06