The Harvard Advocate
The undergraduate literary magazine of Harvard (founded 1866), to which Mailer was elected in April 1941 and which published his first three stories in print: "The Greatest Thing in the World" (April 1941), "Right Shoe on Left Foot" (May 1942), and "Maybe Next Year" (June 1942).
Mailer was elected to the editorial board of the Harvard Advocate in April 1941, the same month the magazine published “The Greatest Thing in the World” (41.1) on pages 3–6 and 24–28 — the story that went on to win Story magazine’s eighth annual college contest and a $100 prize.
The Advocate then carried Mailer’s two 1942 stories: “Right Shoe on Left Foot” (42.1) on pages 12–18 and 30–33 of the May 1942 issue (Vol. CXXVIII, No. 5 — the Spring Fiction Issue) — a story of “racial and sexual violence in the South,” never reprinted — and “Maybe Next Year” (42.2) on pages 25–27 of the June 1942 issue. Mailer later commented of the second in Advertisements for Myself that “the prose is Salinger-ish, but the inspiration was by Faulkner”.
The May 1942 issue additionally places Mailer on the editorial masthead as one of two Editors, alongside Bruce B. Phemister — a step up from the general editorial-board membership following his April 1941 election, and documentary evidence of his rising standing on the magazine in his junior year. Lennon 42.1 cites the volume as “LXXVI”; the printed issue masthead reads “CXXVIII, No. 5,” and our project citations follow the printed issue.
A Harvard Crimson editorial of 21 April 1941, responding to the Advocate’s publication of 41.1, was — according to Lennon — the first published critical (and favorable) comment on Mailer’s work; it is catalogued separately as a 1941 bibliography row.
“Maybe Next Year” was later collected in The Harvard Advocate Anthology, edited by Donald Hall (New York: Twayne, 1950), and reprinted again in Advertisements for Myself (59.13), 67.11, and 82.19.
Stub; to be expanded as later Mailer–Advocate material (letters, anniversary contributions, reprints) comes into scope.
Related pages
- 1941 | 1942 | Harvard University
- The Greatest Thing in the World | Right Shoe on Left Foot | Maybe Next Year
- Robert Gorham Davis | Story
- Advertisements for Myself (59.13) | The Short Fiction of Norman Mailer (67.11)