In this past summer’s literary issue of Esquire, the editors provided a who’s who of writers in belles lettres, and at the top of the heap — above Walker Percy, Phillip Roth, and Isaac Bashevis Singer — sat Norman Mailer. Mailer, most often described as a novelist, has actually written few novels. His first, the critically acclaimed The Naked and the Dead, brought the New Jersey boy instant fame and controversy, way back in 1948.
Since then Mailer seems to have spent more time publicizing his macho-to-the-nth-degree life style than on creating literature. He’s run unsuccessfully for the office of mayor of New York City, been divorced with some regularity, fought publicly with Gore Vidal, and published wordy studies on graffiti and on Marilyn Monroe. Mailer was also instrumental in having our “American Genet,” Jack Abbott, released from prison. The denouement of this well-publicized association was Abbot’s book The Belly of the Beast and his subsequent brutal murder of an innocent young man.