A Transit to Narcissus
A facsimile edition of the typescript of Mailer's first novel, written in 1943 before The Naked and the Dead and previously unpublished; an 820-page limited edition of 1,000, with later revisions appended.
A Transit to Narcissus is the novel Mailer wrote in 1943, at twenty, before The Naked and the Dead — his earliest sustained fiction, drawn from a stint working at a Boston-area mental hospital. It went unpublished for thirty-five years until Howard Fertig issued it on 29 March 1978 as an 820-page facsimile of the typescript, in a limited edition of 1,000 at $100, with Appendices A–G containing later revisions. There is no dedication. Mailer’s introduction had appeared in advance in the New York Times Book Review (77.10); the title is unrelated to his 1973 Last Tango review of the same name (73.12).
Related pages
- Introduction to A Transit to Narcissus (77.10) | The Naked and the Dead (48.2)
- 1978
- A Transit to Narcissus (73.12) | A Transit to Narcissus (77.10)