To Mailer, a Good Soldier Puts War on Paper
Bob Minzesheimer's USA Today piece (10 April 2003) surveying war novelists on how soldiers will write about Iraq; Mailer recalls the 'luckiest timing of my career' — The Naked and the Dead arriving in 1948 just as readers were ready.
Read an excerpt (rights pending)
Bob Minzesheimer’s USA Today piece (10 April 2003) asked war novelists, including Mailer and Tim O’Brien, how soldiers would write about the Iraq war. Mailer recalls being discouraged from a war novel in 1946 — readers had “lost interest in war” — only for The Naked and the Dead to land perfectly in 1948: “It was the luckiest timing of my career.”
A full transcription, held in the working archive pending rights clearance, is at full text.