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. Written in Provincetown that July–August and published in the November Esquire (appearing 18 October, three weeks before the election), it casts Kennedy as a new kind of "existential hero" and argues that the nation's underground life, not its politics, would decide the campaign.

“Superman Comes to the Supermarket.” Esquire, November 1960, 119–27. Nonfiction narrative.

The essay was written in July–August 1960 in Provincetown, just after Mailer covered the Los Angeles convention, and appeared on 18 October, before the 1960 election. It is the first of Mailer’s reports on American political conventions — he would go on to cover 1964 (64.20), 1968 (68.25), 1972 (72.17), 1992 (92.9), and 1996 (96.8) — and his portrait of Kennedy is the first of a long series of profiles of American politicians, athletes, movie stars, and writers. It is routinely cited as a founding text of the New Journalism.

The title controversy

Esquire changed Mailer’s title from “Superman Comes to the Supermarket” to “Superman Comes to the Supermart,” supplied the brief italic headlines that precede each section, and ran an old, unflattering photograph — changes Mailer protested in a letter to the editor, “A Farewell to His Honor” (61.1, Esquire, January 1961). Every subsequent reprint restores Mailer’s “Supermarket”; the page is titled accordingly, with the magazine’s “Supermart” recorded as the first-printing variant. His feeling about the change is preserved in the hand-corrected, signed copy of the first printing shown above, where “Supermart” is struck through and his title restored.

Reprints

Rpt: under Mailer’s original title in 63.37 (The Presidential Papers), 68.11, 76.5, and 14.4, with some trimming of the editorial headlines. Esquire itself used “supermarket” when it reprinted the piece in Smiling through the Apocalypse: Esquire’s History of the Sixties, edited by Harold Hayes (New York: McCall, 1970); an excerpt in the magazine’s fiftieth-anniversary collection Esquire: How We Lived, 1933–1983 (June 1983) appeared as “Enter Prince Jack.” Partial reprints in 98.7 and 13.1.

Related pages

• 1960 | Esquire | Provincetown, Massachusetts
• A Program for the Nation | The Shiny Enemies
• Norman Mailer's "American Dream": Superman Returns (65.3)
• In the Red Light: A History of the Republican Convention in 1964 (64.20) | Miami and the Siege of Chicago: An Informal History of the Republican and Democratic Conventions of 1968 (68.25) | St. George and the Godfather (72.17) | Preface to The JFK Assassination: The Facts and the Theories (92.9) | War of the Oxymorons (96.8) | A Farewell to His Honor (61.1) | The Presidential Papers (63.37) | The Idol and the Octopus: Political Writings by Norman Mailer on the Kennedy and Johnson Administrations (68.11) | Some Honorable Men: Political Conventions, 1960-1972 (76.5) | Norman Mailer: JFK, Superman Comes to the Supermarket (14.4) | The Time of Our Time (98.7)

First published: 1960-11
Form: nonfiction-narrative
Lennon & Lennon: 60.9
Cite as: /works/1960-11-superman-comes-to-the-supermarket
Last updated: 2026-05-25