The Time of Our Time

Mailer's vast retrospective anthology (Random House, 1998), published for his 75th birthday and the 50th anniversary of The Naked and the Dead. Its 139 excerpts from 26 books are arranged by the dates of the events described rather than by composition; the one new piece reflects on the 1960 stabbing of his wife Adele.

The Time of Our Time, Mailer’s retrospective anthology, published by Random House on 6 May 1998 (1,286 pp., $39.50; London: Little, Brown, November) — timed to his 75th birthday and the 50th anniversary of The Naked and the Dead. It is dedicated “To Robert F. Lucid and J. Michael Lennon.” Gathering 139 excerpts from 26 of his books and from uncollected periodical pieces, it is organized not by date of composition but by the dates of the events described — a deliberate refusal of autobiography. In the “Acknowledgments and Appreciations” Mailer admits to “improving old sentences” throughout, “not to alter an idea … but to improve the prose an agreeable bit.”

The only wholly new piece is “The Shadow of the Crime: A Word from the Author,” a one-page reflection on the 1960 stabbing of his second wife Adele and its effect on his family — and on a delayed November 1960 letter to Fidel Castro (later in The Presidential Papers, 63.37). Mailer signed 25,000 copies as a “Signed First Edition.” Of the whole, he wrote: “one theme came to predominate — … most of my writing was about America. How much I loved my country … and how much I didn’t love it at all!” (98.7).

Reception

The reviews were strongly favorable. Harold Bloom (“Norman Mailer’s Testament,” Washington Post), David Denby (“The Contender,” New Yorker, 98.3), James Shapiro (New York Times Book Review), Louis Menand (“Beat the Devil,” New York Review of Books), Christopher Hitchens (“Fighting Talk,” Observer), and Steven Kellman praised it; James Campbell and Michael Greenberg were mixed; Daniel J. Silver (Wall Street Journal) and John Sutherland (Sunday Times) dissented. The publication party at the Rainbow Room drew Muhammad Ali and much of literary New York (98.9b, 98.10).

Related pages

• Random House | Robert F. Lucid | J. Michael Lennon | The Naked and the Dead
• 1998
• Birdland Head Drops Charge against Mailer (60.11) | Norman Mailer: 'The Time of Her Time' (74.19)
• The Presidential Papers (63.37) | The Time of Our Time (98.7) | Life and Letters: The Contender (98.3)

First published: 1998-05-06
Form: collection
Lennon & Lennon: 98.7
Cite as: /works/1998-05-06-time-of-our-time
Last updated: 2026-06-06