Norman Mailer: Works and Days

Norman Mailer Speaks to America From Beyond the Grave

Abby Margulies's Tablet review-essay pegged to the simultaneous publication of Lennon's A Double Life and Mailer's Mind of an Outlaw, framed by Matthew Barney's River of Fundament; argues that Mailer's enduring legacy is his vision of America.

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Abby Margulies’s Tablet review-essay, written to mark the same-day publication of J. Michael Lennon‘s Norman Mailer: A Double Life and The Mind of an Outlaw, and framed by her summer watching Matthew Barney film River of Fundament (based on Ancient Evenings) in a reconstruction of Mailer’s Brooklyn Heights home. Drawing on phone interviews with Lennon and John Buffalo Mailer, Margulies reads the biography and the essays together to argue that Mailer’s “damn theme” was finally America itself, and that the vision of the country he left is the core of his legacy.

First published: 2013-10-15
Form: criticism
Cite as: /works/2013-10-15-speaks-from-beyond-grave
Last updated: 2026-06-18