"The Naked and the Dead" (advance excerpt)
Advance excerpt from The Naked and the Dead, published a month before the novel in Edwin Seaver's anthology Cross-Section — Mailer's first book appearance.
“The Naked and the Dead.” In Cross-Section: A Collection of New American Writing, edited by Edwin Seaver, 392–420. New York: Simon and Schuster, March 1948.
The excerpt, with minor variations, is the greater part of chapter 5, part 1, of the novel — the description of dragging the anti-tank guns through the jungle and the following firefight at the river — “an excerpt reprinted countless times in anthologies of war writing”. It is noted as “work in progress” on the dustwrapper.
Seaver’s own recollections of Cross-Section and of Mailer appear in his memoir So Far So Good: Recollections of a Life in Publishing (Westport, Conn.: Lawrence Hill, 1986). Mailer’s comments on Seaver appear in Advertisements for Myself (59.13), 28–29.
Related pages
- The Naked and the Dead | 1948
- Edwin Seaver | Simon and Schuster
- Rpt: 98.7 (partial, in The Time of Our Time).
- Advertisements for Myself (59.13)