Timeline
The life and the books on one spine, 1923–2024: 34 events, 43 works
A selection, not the record. Each card is a page of the edition — a year of the chronology or a book among the Works — and the full account is on that page. life works
1920s
1930s
life 1932
The family moves to 555 Crown Street in Crown Heights, Brooklyn — home for the rest of his boyhood.
life 1939
Graduates from Boys' High School and enters Harvard in September to study aeronautical engineering.
1940s
life 1941
First published story, "The Greatest Thing in the World," in the Harvard Advocate; it wins Story magazine's college contest. Meets Beatrice Silverman in December.
life 1943
Graduates from Harvard with an S.B. in engineering sciences; first visit to Provincetown with Bea.
life 1944
Marries Bea Silverman on 7 January; drafted, inducted at Camp Upton in March, and shipped to the Philippines in December.
life 1945
Serves with the 112th Cavalry on Leyte and Luzon as a clerk and wire lineman, then volunteers for a reconnaissance platoon — the raw material of The Naked and the Dead.
life 1946
Discharged in May; begins The Naked and the Dead at North Truro that summer.
life 1947
Finishes The Naked and the Dead in September and sails with Bea for Paris to study at the Sorbonne.
life 1948
Famous at twenty-five. The Sorbonne year ends; he returns to campaign for Henry Wallace.
works 6 May 1948
The Naked and the Dead
Mailer's debut novel, a 721-page Pacific-theater war novel published by Rinehart on 6 May 1948, 62 weeks on the New York Times bestseller list, Pulitzer-nominated, and the book that made him a literary sensation at twenty-five.
life 1949
The Waldorf Conference speech in March; a Hollywood summer; daughter Susan born 28 August.
1950s
works 24 May 1951
Barbary Shore
Mailer's second novel — a short, claustrophobic political allegory set in a Brooklyn Heights boarding house, drafted across New York, Provincetown, Hollywood, and Putney, Vermont over 1949–1950, and published by Rinehart on 24 May 1951.
life 1954
Marries Adele Morales on 19 April; joins the editorial board of Dissent; Rinehart suppresses The Deer Park in November.
life 1955
Co-founds and names The Village Voice with Daniel Wolf and Edwin Fancher; the first issue appears 26 October.
works 14 October 1955
The Deer Park
Mailer's third novel — a story of Hollywood and the blacklist set in the desert resort of "Desert D'Or," modeled on Palm Springs — published by G. P. Putnam's Sons on 14 October 1955.
life 1957
Daughter Danielle born 16 March; "The White Negro" appears in Dissent that summer.
works 1957
The White Negro
"The White Negro: Superficial Reflections on the Hipster" — Mailer's most celebrated and most castigated essay, and one of the most anthologized American essays since World War II.
works 6 November 1959
Advertisements for Myself
Mailer's great omnibus — a 532-page miscellany gathering his stories, essays, columns, interviews, poems, and fragments, stitched together by the italicized first-person "advertisements" that give the book its title and its self-mythologizing method.
1960s
life 1960
In the early morning of 20 November, after a party meant to launch a mayoral run, he stabs his wife Adele and is committed to Bellevue for seventeen days.
works November 1960
Superman Comes to the Supermarket
Mailer's portrait of John F. Kennedy and the 1960 Democratic National Convention in Los Angeles — the first of his political-convention narratives and an early, important precursor to the New Journalism.
life 1962
Divorces Adele; marries Lady Jeanne Campbell on 4 May; moves into 142 Columbia Heights, Brooklyn; daughter Kate born 18 August.
works 30 March 1962
Deaths for the Ladies (and Other Disasters)
His first book of poems, and his first book from Putnam's.
life 1963
Divorces Lady Jeanne in December and marries the actress Beverly Bentley on 29 December.
works 8 November 1963
The Presidential Papers
Mailer's second miscellany — published by Putnam's on 8 November 1963, two weeks before the Kennedy assassination.15) after the 22 November assassination. Discarded titles: 'The Devil Revisited'; 'Frankie and Johnny, Or, The Murder of Good Ideas.'
works 15 March 1965
An American Dream
Mailer's fourth novel and his first in nine years: the story of Stephen Rojack, who murders his wife and spends 32 hours evading consequence and confronting the Devil.
life 1966
Son Stephen born 10 March; buys 565 Commercial Street in Provincetown; speaks at anti-war rallies with Robert Lowell.
works 29 August 1966
Cannibals and Christians
Mailer's third miscellany (after Advertisements for Myself and The Presidential Papers): essays, poems, interviews, and criticism gathered under the figure of a world divided between Cannibals and Christians.
life 1967
Joins the March on the Pentagon on 21 October and is arrested — the experience that becomes The Armies of the Night.
works 11 May 1967
The Short Fiction of Norman Mailer
A Dell paperback gathering nineteen of Mailer's short stories with a new, self-deprecating introduction ("Hunger for Method, Greed for Gold"). Published 11 May 1967; eighteen of the stories had appeared earlier in Mailer's miscellanies.
works 7 August 1967
The Deer Park: A Play
Mailer's stage adaptation of his 1955 novel The Deer Park, published by Dial on 7 August 1967 after a New York run at the Theatre de Lys (31 January-21 May 1967, 127 performances).
works 15 September 1967
Why Are We in Vietnam?
, a Dallas teenager, recounting an Alaskan bear hunt on the eve of his shipment to Vietnam. Written in roughly five months (June-November 1966); published by Putnam's on 15 September 1967.
works 6 May 1968
The Armies of the Night: History as a Novel, The Novel as History
Mailer's nonfiction narrative of the October 1967 March on the Pentagon, told in the third person as the comic-heroic adventures of 'Mailer.'
works 24 October 1968
Miami and the Siege of Chicago: An Informal History of the Republican and Democratic Conventions of 1968
Mailer's nonfiction narrative of the 1968 Republican (Miami Beach) and Democratic (Chicago) national conventions, the latter convulsed by police violence against antiwar demonstrators. Published 24 October 1968; a National Book Award nominee.
life 1969
The Armies of the Night wins the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award; runs for mayor of New York with Jimmy Breslin, finishing fourth in the June primary.
1970s
life 1971
Moderates the Town Hall "Dialogue on Women's Liberation" on 30 April; daughter Maggie born to Carol Stevens in March.
works 11 January 1971
Of a Fire on the Moon
Mailer's book on the Apollo 11 moon landing, expanding his three 1969 Life installments. Little, Brown, 11 January 1971; the London edition (Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 3 September) was retitled A Fire on the Moon.
works 27 May 1971
The Prisoner of Sex
Mailer's book-length reply to Women's Liberation and to Kate Millett, expanded from the March Harper's essay and closing on a defense of D. H. Lawrence. Little, Brown, 27 May 1971; dedicated to Carol Stevens.
works 17 April 1972
Existential Errands
Mailer's fourth miscellany, gathering essays on film, theatre, and politics from the previous five years, including his negative review of Norman Podhoretz's Making It. Little, Brown, 17 April 1972.
works October 1972
St. George and the Godfather
Mailer's narrative of the 1972 Republican and Democratic conventions, narrated again through the Aquarius persona; the pendant to Miami and the Siege of Chicago. New American Library, late October 1972; dedicated to his father, Isaac Barnett Mailer.
life 1973
Turns fifty on 5 February and announces "The Fifth Estate" at a Four Seasons party.
works 1 August 1973
Marilyn: A Biography
Mailer's picture-biography of Marilyn Monroe, produced by Lawrence Schiller - a 95,000-word 'novel biography' grown from a planned photo preface.
works 7 May 1974
The Faith of Graffiti
Mailer's book-length essay on New York graffiti writers, with photographs by Mervyn Kurlansky and Jon Naar, prepared by Lawrence Schiller; published by Praeger (UK title: Watching My Name Go By). 96 pages, mostly photographs.
life 1975
Meets Barbara Norris — the future Norris Church Mailer — in Arkansas in March; moves to Brooklyn with her in December.
works 21 July 1975
The Fight
Mailer's account of the Ali-Foreman 'Rumble in the Jungle' in Zaire, 30 October 1974 - Ali's knockout to reclaim the title. The last of his eight consecutive third-person ('illeism') books. Little, Brown, 21 July 1975.
works 1 April 1976
Some Honorable Men: Political Conventions, 1960-1972
A collection of Mailer's four convention narratives (1960-1972) with a new preface; dedicated to the memory of his father. Little, Brown, 1 April 1976.
works October 1976
Genius and Lust: A Journey through the Major Writings of Henry Miller
Mailer's anthology of Henry Miller's writing with 88 pages of his own commentary - his lengthiest piece of literary criticism. Grove, October 1976; jacket drawing of Miller by Norris Church Mailer.
works 15 October 1979
The Executioner's Song
Mailer's 1,056-page 'true life novel' of the Utah murderer Gary Gilmore, built from over 15,000 pages of interviews assembled by Lawrence Schiller; Little, Brown, 15 October 1979.
1980s
life 1980
The Executioner's Song wins the Pulitzer Prize in April; in November he divorces Beverly Bentley, marries and divorces Carol Stevens, and marries Norris Church.
works 26 November 1980
Of Women and Their Elegance
Mailer's 'imaginary memoir' of Marilyn Monroe - a fantasy autobiography in Monroe's voice - illustrated with 124 photographs, 34 of them Milton Greene's of Monroe. Simon and Schuster, 26 November 1980.
life 1981
Helps win Jack Henry Abbott's parole and the publication of In the Belly of the Beast; six weeks after his release Abbott kills Richard Adan.
works 21 June 1982
Pieces and Pontifications
Mailer's fifth miscellany, in two halves: Pieces, a gathering of short essays of the 1970s, and Pontifications, a selection of interviews edited with an introduction by J. Michael Lennon.
life 1983
Turns sixty; leaves Little, Brown for Random House; buys 627 Commercial Street, his year-round Provincetown home.
works 4 April 1983
Ancient Evenings
Mailer's vast novel of ancient Egypt, eleven years in the writing (1972-1982), narrated across the seven parts of the Egyptian soul and centered on the four lives of Menenhetet.
works 20 August 1984
Tough Guys Don't Dance
Mailer's Provincetown murder mystery, written in sixty-one days to clear a contract debt and published by Random House on 20 August 1984 — his first novel for the house.
life 1986
As president of PEN American Center he hosts the 48th International PEN Congress in New York, convulsed by his invitation to George Shultz and a women writers' protest.
life 1987
His film of Tough Guys Don't Dance is screened at Cannes, where he sits on the jury, and released in September.
1990s
works 2 October 1991
Harlot's Ghost
Mailer's vast novel of the CIA, published by Random House on 2 October 1991 — 1,310 pages, his longest book, ending on the words 'TO BE CONTINUED.'
works 12 May 1995
Oswald's Tale: An American Mystery
Mailer's 828-page nonfiction narrative of Lee Harvey Oswald, published by Random House on 12 May 1995 — built with Lawrence Schiller from KGB files and interviews in Minsk and Dallas.
works 15 October 1995
Portrait of Picasso as a Young Man: An Interpretive Biography
Mailer's interpretive biography of the young Pablo Picasso (Atlantic Monthly Press, 1995) — 400 pages, 284 illustrations — drawing heavily on John Richardson's and other sources to read Picasso's early years through Mailer's own preoccupations with sex, ego, and the daring of God.
works 2 May 1997
The Gospel According to the Son
Mailer's novel narrated in the first person by Jesus, published by Random House on 2 May 1997 — a spare retelling of the Gospels meant to correct what Mailer saw as their 'committee prose.'
works 6 May 1998
The Time of Our Time
Mailer's vast retrospective anthology (Random House, 1998), published for his 75th birthday and the 50th anniversary of The Naked and the Dead.
2000s
works 2003
Modest Gifts: Poems and Drawings
Mailer's gathering of his verse and line drawings (Random House, 2003) — most of the poems (some revised) from Deaths for the Ladies (1962) and Cannibals and Christians (1966), a new 'Hemingway Revisited' suite, and about 100 captioned drawings.
works 31 January 2003
The Spooky Art: Some Thoughts on Writing
Mailer's book on the craft of writing (Random House, 2003), published on his 80th birthday — about 190 previously published passages and interview answers woven together with some 50 new pieces, most of the old interviewers' questions absorbed into his replies.
works 7 April 2003
Why Are We at War?
Mailer's short polemic against the Iraq War (Random House, 2003), assembled from two 2002 interviews and a February 2003 speech — arguing that the war served a failing empire's need to bolster American (and white-male) self-regard.
life 2005
Sells his archive to the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas at Austin.
works February 2006
The Big Empty: Dialogues on Politics, Sex, God, Boxing, Morality, Myth, Poker and Bad Conscience in America
A book of dialogues between Mailer and his son John Buffalo Mailer on politics, sex, God, boxing, morality, myth, poker, and bad conscience in America.2, and a 2004 Nieman Fellows speech.
life 2007
Makes his last public appearance on 22 July and dies in New York on 10 November, aged 84.
works 23 January 2007
The Castle in the Forest
Mailer's last completed novel: the boyhood of Adolf Hitler, narrated by Dieter, a minion of the Devil. Dedicated to his grandchildren.30).
works 16 October 2007
On God: An Uncommon Conversation
Edited transcripts of ten conversations on God between Mailer and Michael Lennon, recorded in Provincetown from June 2003 to June 2006. Mailer: "I have spent the last fifty years trying to contemplate the nature of God."
life 2008
More than 2,000 people gather at Carnegie Hall on 9 April for the memorial "The Time of His Time."
2010s
works 15 October 2013
The Mind of an Outlaw: Selected Essays of Norman Mailer
The only comprehensive collection of Mailer's essays — forty-nine of the most important, 1948–2006, edited by Phillip Sipiora with an introduction by Jonathan Lethem — including one previously unpublished piece, "Freud," a four-page reflection from the mid-1950s.
works 2 December 2014
Selected Letters of Norman Mailer
Edited by J. Michael Lennon: 714 letters, 1940–2007, selected from the roughly 50,000 Mailer wrote over his lifetime, with an introduction, ninety pages of notes, a select secondary bibliography, a list of Mailer's books, and an index.
2020s
life 2023
The centenary of his birth, marked by the Norman Mailer Society's Reflections: Norman Mailer at 100 and the Library of America's pairing of The Naked and the Dead with his 1945–46 letters.
works 25 June 2024
Lipton's, A Marijuana Journal
The first publication of Mailer's "Lipton's" — the introspective marijuana journal he kept from December 1954 to March 1955 — edited by J. Michael Lennon, Gerald R. Lucas, and Susan Mailer (Arcade, 2024).