Norman Mailer
2023 is Norman Mailer’s Centennial Year. Born January 31, 1923, in Long Branch, New Jersy, Mailer packed much eventful and tempestuous living before dying November 10, 2007, age 84. Raised in Brooklyn, Mailer was precociously bright, entering Harvard at 16 and graduating at 20. He published his first short story when he was 18. He was drafted into the US Army in 1944, despite being married (the first of many) and despite trying to get a deferral by arguing that he had a great literary work underway. It turned out that his combat experience in the Pacific was, in his words, “the worst experience of my life, and also the most important.” This scuffle with destiny is characteristic of Mailer: he exasperates with his talent, his obnoxiousness, and by often being right in his egotistic self-assessment.
His novel of combat, The Naked and the Dead (1948) remains one of the most significant novels of WWII. He was, fortunately and overwhelmingly, incapable of resting on his laurels. He published over a dozen novels, short stories, many books of essays, cultural commentaries, political journalism, plays and screenplays, poetry, and opinions in all formats and forums. He collected awards right and left: two Pulitzer Prizes for fiction, a National Book Award for fiction, and a lifetime achievement National Book Award, among many others. He sought, enjoyed, and suffered a high profile in American letters. He engaged with almost all writers of 20th Century literature - friendships, rivalries, feuds, generosities, always talking and writing and getting involved, He extended influences that he felt, and he in turn shaped decades (to the present) of writers in almost all fields of endeavor.
Of a Fire on the Moon
Of a Fire on the Moon
For many, the moon landing was the defining event of the twentieth century. So it seems only fitting that Norman Mailer—the literary provocateur who altered the landscape of American nonfiction—wrote the most wide-ranging, far-seeing chronicle of the Apollo 11 mission. A classic chronicle of America’s reach for greatness in the midst of the Cold War, Of a Fire on the Moon compiles the reportage Mailer published between 1969 and 1970 in Life magazine: gripping firsthand dispatches from inside NASA’s clandestine operations in Houston and Cape Kennedy; technical insights into the magnitude of their awe-inspiring feat; and prescient meditations that place the event in human context as only Mailer could.
Praise for Of a Fire on the Moon
“The gift of a genius . . . a twentieth-century American epic—a Moby Dick of space.”—New York
“Mailer’s account of Apollo 11 stands as a stunning image of human energy and purposefulness. . . . It is an act of revelation—the only verbal deed to be worthy of the dream and the reality it celebrates.”—Saturday Review
“A wild and dazzling book.”—The New York Times Book Review
“Still the most challenging and stimulating account of [the] mission to appear in print.”—The Washington Post