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Conversations with Norman Mailer
Conversations with the genre-bending creator of The Naked and the Dead , Executioner's Song , and Armies of the Night
420 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1988
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June 30, 2022
In this book of interviews, the most recent of which was made after the publication of his mystery novel, Tough Guys Don't Dance, Norman Mailer discusses his work and experience as writer, journalist, filmmaker and social critic. In many of the early interviews, Mailer talks about his first novel, The Naked and the Dead, describing how he wrote it, where he got his ideas from, and his response to the novel’s critical and popular success. In later interviews, he discusses his other works, which range from the very good (The Armies of the Night) to the questionable (Why Are We in Vietnam?) to the controversial (The Prisoner of Sex).
Experienced both as a journalist and as a celebrity, Mailer was a student of media and had a good understanding of its limitations and capabilities from both sides of the lens. Perhaps that is why he is a good interview subject, giving the press what it wanted at the same time that he was using it to construct his own public persona. In a way, Mailer’s self-presentation in the media (and the media’s distortion of that) parallels Mailer’s own approach to non-fiction writing: as one of the “New Journalists” (of which Tom Wolfe and Truman Capote were also examples), Mailer frequently employed fictional techniques in his reporting of factual events (see, for instance, his National Book Award winning Armies of the Night, in which the March on the Pentagon in October 1967 is retold with Mailer as protagonist; or his novelization of the Gary Gilmore story in The Executioner's Song; see, too, Mailer’s “biography” Marilyn). The unforeseen consequence of Mailer’s blurring fact and fiction in his public self-presentation, however, was that the media in turn became more interested in Mailer as media star than in Mailer as writer. And to a certain extent Mailer plays along, frequently discussing his work not in terms of its ideas or themes, but in terms of what it represents for his career as a writer.
Even so, these interviews show Mailer as a writer and a thinker. He is talkative, able to express rather complex ideas, and with clarity. His answers to interviewers’ questions are frequently long, but well-structured, like little essays. He has, for instance, useful things to say about existentialism and about Marxism. As well, these interviews show how exacting Mailer can be with regards to the use of language: frequently, there are moments during which he and the interviewer will get into a discussion of the words they are using, defining their terms for one another (and for the reader) and clarifying their meanings (and for those who are interested, Mailer is credited with coining the term “factoid,” but he meant something different by it than is typically meant in its contemporary use). Perhaps only in his interview with William F. Buckley Jr. does Mailer seem a little bit sloppy in his thought and expression (but who wouldn’t in that particular situation?).
There are interviews in which Mailer discusses his filmmaking, and while he has interesting things to say about them, I suppose few will have seen these films; I have not myself, so found these particular interviews of less interest than those in which Mailer discusses his writing (and I have not read everything he’s written, but I am more interested in Mailer as writer than as filmmaker—so I suppose that if I found the interviews on this latter subject less interesting, that’s partly my own bias).
Acquired July 8, 2010
Vintage Books, Vancouver WA
Experienced both as a journalist and as a celebrity, Mailer was a student of media and had a good understanding of its limitations and capabilities from both sides of the lens. Perhaps that is why he is a good interview subject, giving the press what it wanted at the same time that he was using it to construct his own public persona. In a way, Mailer’s self-presentation in the media (and the media’s distortion of that) parallels Mailer’s own approach to non-fiction writing: as one of the “New Journalists” (of which Tom Wolfe and Truman Capote were also examples), Mailer frequently employed fictional techniques in his reporting of factual events (see, for instance, his National Book Award winning Armies of the Night, in which the March on the Pentagon in October 1967 is retold with Mailer as protagonist; or his novelization of the Gary Gilmore story in The Executioner's Song; see, too, Mailer’s “biography” Marilyn). The unforeseen consequence of Mailer’s blurring fact and fiction in his public self-presentation, however, was that the media in turn became more interested in Mailer as media star than in Mailer as writer. And to a certain extent Mailer plays along, frequently discussing his work not in terms of its ideas or themes, but in terms of what it represents for his career as a writer.
Even so, these interviews show Mailer as a writer and a thinker. He is talkative, able to express rather complex ideas, and with clarity. His answers to interviewers’ questions are frequently long, but well-structured, like little essays. He has, for instance, useful things to say about existentialism and about Marxism. As well, these interviews show how exacting Mailer can be with regards to the use of language: frequently, there are moments during which he and the interviewer will get into a discussion of the words they are using, defining their terms for one another (and for the reader) and clarifying their meanings (and for those who are interested, Mailer is credited with coining the term “factoid,” but he meant something different by it than is typically meant in its contemporary use). Perhaps only in his interview with William F. Buckley Jr. does Mailer seem a little bit sloppy in his thought and expression (but who wouldn’t in that particular situation?).
There are interviews in which Mailer discusses his filmmaking, and while he has interesting things to say about them, I suppose few will have seen these films; I have not myself, so found these particular interviews of less interest than those in which Mailer discusses his writing (and I have not read everything he’s written, but I am more interested in Mailer as writer than as filmmaker—so I suppose that if I found the interviews on this latter subject less interesting, that’s partly my own bias).
Acquired July 8, 2010
Vintage Books, Vancouver WA
Displaying 1 of 1 review