Mailer, Norman (Kingsley)

Mailer, Norman (Kingsley) (1923– ), American novelist and essayist, educated at Harvard, whose naturalistic first novel The Naked and the Dead (1948) was based on his experiences with the army in the Pacific. Most of his work is of a more unorthodox genre, mixing journalism, autobiography, political commentary, and fictional passages in a wide range of styles. The Executioner's Song (1979), a lengthy non-fiction account of a murderer, bears some resemblance to In Cold Blood by Capote. (See also faction.) His lengthy and ambitious novel Ancient Evenings (1983; described by A. Burgess as possibly ‘one of the great works of contemporary mythopoesis’) is set in ancient Egypt (1290–1100 bc). His other novels include Barbary Shore (1951), The Deer Park (1955), Advertisements for Myself (1959), The Presidential Papers (1963), An American Dream (1965), The Armies of the Night (1968), Tough Guys Don't Dance (1984, a thriller), Harlot's Ghost (1991, an analysis of the CIA), and The Gospel According to the Son (1997). He has also written biographies, including studies of Lee Harvey Oswald (1995) and Picasso (1995).