Norman Mailer vs. the Big Empty
David Mikics's 2024 Tablet essay on Mailer's 'left conservative' politics and his anti-corporate critique of America's 'big empty,' occasioned by the 2023 collection A Mysterious Country. An about-Mailer clipping.
David Mikics. “Norman Mailer vs. the Big Empty.” Tablet, 21 October 2024. https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/arts-letters/articles/norman-mailer-vs-the-big-empty
Occasioned by A Mysterious Country (2023, ed. J. Michael Lennon and John Buffalo Mailer), Mikics surveys Mailer’s politics: the 1962 Buckley debate, his coinage of “left conservative” in The Armies of the Night, the anti-corporate “big empty,” and the convention reportage of Miami and the Siege of Chicago, arguing for Mailer’s continuing relevance to American political life.
Related pages
- The Armies of the Night: History as a Novel, The Novel as History | Miami and the Siege of Chicago: An Informal History of the Republican and Democratic Conventions of 1968
- David Mikics
- About this project