Norman Mailer was born in Long Branch, New Jersey, and grew up in Brooklyn, New York in what he calls a “typical middle-class Jewish family.” His father was an accountant, his mother assisted an uncle in running a small trucking company. As a boy, he reveled in romantic adventure fiction, and at the age of nine composed a 250-page science fiction story called “Invasion from Mars.” An ambitious and competitive student, he graduated from Brooklyn’s Boys High School in 1939 and won admission to Harvard at age 16. While still an undergraduate, he won a student fiction contest sponsored by Story magazine, and, although he earned a degree in aeronautical engineering, he had already resolved to make a career as a professional writer.
1940s: Norman Mailer, soon would be known for his contributions to literature, is shown here as a younger man.