I get a big kick reading author biographies, and this book was no different. Outside of The Naked and the Dead, I knew little about Norman Mailer, except for his being attacked and defamed by the women’s groups during the seventies and eighties. Yet, Carl Rollyson’s pen enlightened and entertained me while I read this biography.

The book is written with attention to every detail about Mailer’s life, work, and personality. The biographer also analyzes the author's books, the characters in them, and the plot summaries.

Mailer’s personal life, five marriages and nine children, are given a good amount of space in the book, and rightfully so, because what he wanted the world to see him through was his exaggerated masculinity. It wasn’t because he hated women, but he hated not being without them as most of his wives were very strong women who fought with him without fear and all his children liked him. The black spot on Mailer’s treatment of a wife was when he knifed Adele and almost killed her. Still, Adele was with him all her life, even after their divorce, living in close proximity and relating to him and his other wives.

After reading this book, I don’t think Mailer was xenophobic or prejudiced against women, in the real sense. His personality was just different, as he was who he was, a bit narcissistic maybe. I had the feeling that, because he was a writer, he was writing even when he wasn’t writing, as he was making up scenes and situations in real life just to watch what he could get out of them. He could be charming or he could be extremely gruff as the circumstance dictated, a circumstance which he created most of the time.

It takes guts to explore the dark emotions, racism, or other negative isms. Because of The Naked and the Dead, Mailer reached an early fame which must have shocked him and must have hindered his growth as an author somewhat. Even so, he won two Pulitzers, and his work of thirty volumes is nothing to frown upon because he knew and understood his and everyone else’s shortcomings.

Since his idols were Hemingway and Dos Passos, he was also influenced by the image of a fighting macho male. Maybe for that reason, his picked his characters from among the lawless. After reading this biography, I think Norman Kingsley Mailer to be one of the most controversial and intriguing authors of his time.

I enjoyed this book a lot. As a fan of authors and the art of writing, reading it has been a delight; however, it can be too long and detailed for the devotees of lighter reading.

the biographer's attention to minute detail.

is Carl Rollyson, Professor of Journalism at Baruch College, The City University of New York. He has published more than forty books ranging in subject matter from biographies of Marilyn Monroe, Lillian Hellman, Martha Gellhorn, Norman Mailer, Rebecca West, Susan Sontag, and Jill Craigie to studies of American culture, genealogy, children's biography, film, and literary criticism. He has authored more than 500 articles on American and European literature and history.

I was awed by the research that must have gone into it and its biographer's expertise and insight.

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Created Jun 20, 2017 at 8:08pm • Submit your own review...