Norman Mailer: Works and Days

Hip, Hell, and the Navigator

One of Mailer's most important interviews — conducted by Richard G. Stern and Robert F. Lucid — containing his first extended statement of his belief in an embattled, limited God.

“Hip, Hell, and the Navigator: An Interview with Norman Mailer.” By Richard G. Stern and Robert F. Lucid. Western Review 23 (winter 1959), 101–9.

Mailer’s first extended comment on his belief in an embattled God, in one of his most important interviews. His discussion of the “Navigator” — the ego’s agent in the unconscious — is taken up again in “The Psychology of Machines” in Of a Fire on the Moon (71.1).

Rpt: Advertisements for Myself (59.13); 82.16 (partial); 88.6; 98.7 (partial).

First published: 1959
Form: interview
Lennon & Lennon: 59.2
Cite as: /works/1959-hip-hell-and-the-navigator
Last updated: 2026-05-23