The Paper House
Mailer's first published short story — set in occupied Japan and drawn from his 1946 Army experience there — appearing in the second New World Writing paperback anthology. Dedicated to Vance Bourjaily, "who told me the anecdote on which the story is based."
“The Paper House.” In New World Writing: Second Mentor Collection, 58–69. New York: New American Library, November 1952, softcover.
Story set in occupied Japan. Dedicated to Vance Bourjaily, “who told me the anecdote on which the story is based.”
Rpt: Lilliput’s Extra Holiday Reading (London), August 1953; Advertisements for Myself (59.13); 67.11; 68.32; 82.19; and Stag, February 1975.
The Shohakusha edition
Mailer collected this story along with 52.3 and 53.2 in a small paperback, in English but with notes in Japanese: A Selection from the Short Fiction of Norman Mailer, ed. Iwao Iwamoto (Tokyo: Shohakusha, 1967). Lennon notes: “It is perhaps the rarest of all Mailer’s books in English”.
Mailer on the story
In the prefatory “advertisement” to 52.2, 52.3, and 53.2 in Advertisements for Myself (59.13), Mailer notes he has “no great pride in them, because they are respectable. They make no attempt to raise the house an inch or two.”
Related pages
- 1952 | Vance Bourjaily
- The Dead Gook | The Language of Men
- Advertisements for Myself (59.13) | The Short Fiction of Norman Mailer (67.11) | A Selection from the Short Fiction of Norman Mailer (68.32) | The Essential Mailer (82.19) | The Paper House (52.2)