Norman Mailer: Works and Days

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. It appeared only after Rinehart suppressed it in late 1954 and six further publishers rejected it; it climbed to number six on the New York Times bestseller list. Dedicated "To Adele my wife and to Daniel Wolf my friend."

The Deer Park, first-edition cover (Putnam, 1955)

The Deer Park. New York: Putnam’s, 14 October 1955; London: Wingate, 1957. Novel, 375 pp., $4. Dedication: “To Adele my wife and to Daniel Wolf my friend.” The discarded working title was The Idol and the Octopus.

Suppression and the move to Putnam

Mailer completed The Deer Park in the spring of 1954. Rinehart, publisher of his first two novels, had it set for publication on 14 February 1955 but stopped it in November 1954 over six lines describing a sexual act. Six other publishers rejected the novel before Walter Minton of G. P. Putnam’s Sons accepted it. Mailer would later tell the story of the suppression and rewriting in “The Mind of an Outlaw” and the “Fourth Advertisement for Myself: The Last Draft of The Deer Park” in Advertisements for Myself (59.13). Thomas L. Bonn’s Heavy Traffic and High Culture: New American Library as Literary Gatekeeper in the Cultural Revolution (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1989) documents the legal anxiety at New American Library over the later softcover edition.

Reception and the “Raves” advertisement

The novel (first printing 20,000) spent fifteen weeks on the New York Times bestseller list, climbing to number six on 20 November 1955. Stung by the mixed and hostile notices, Mailer composed a paid advertisement for the Village Voice (16 November 1955) — “All over America The Deer Park is Getting Nothing but Raves” (55.5) — quoting sixteen negative appraisals, and wrote to book-review editors (55.7) disputing claims that he had “cleaned up” the book for Putnam.

Mailer on the writing

Looking back (64.1), Mailer judged the Hollywood setting both the hardest and the best of his work to that point:

It is truly difficult to trap Hollywood in a novel. Only in the last draft did I finally get the setting the way I wanted it. … I would judge that the first fifty pages of The Deer Park are the best writing I have ever done in fiction. But they were the hardest fifty pages of the book to write and certainly took the longest time.

Reprints and afterlife

Rpt: Advertisements for Myself (59.13, three brief excerpts); republished with a Mailer preface and the “Fourth Advertisement for Myself” (New York: Berkley, November 1976 = 76.14); 98.7 (partial). See also 55.5, 55.7, 56.17, 59.14, 67.13, 68.11, 89.6. Mailer’s later stage version, The Deer Park: A Play, opens in New York in 1967 (67.13).

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First published: 1955-10-14
Form: novel
Lennon & Lennon: 55.4
Cite as: /works/1955-deer-park
Last updated: 2026-06-18