An absorbing and well written piece. It’s so refreshing when an article refuses to simplify inherently rich and complex subjects. More please!
John Gleeson
3 years ago
Very well written. Drew me in when I had no interest in the subject at large. I found it a fascinating bit of writing in that on any mainstream media platform it would have been tinged with overwhelming bias, usually to the extreme, with the author not being able to hide their deep contempt for Mailer for not towing the cultural marxist feminist line.
Clay Trowbridge
3 years ago
Thank you for clearing the rear view mirror in my brain so that I can better see what began in the sixties. Perhaps brought about in large measure by the birth control pill (originally intended for fertility,) we entered a new land of contradictions and confusions. And look at us today! Where are we headed, what will happen, and why?
Me too. I find Mailer and Amis to be colossally boring for the most part. The Trillings (Lionel and Diana) were good people, and quite interesting. I am one of perhaps only six or seven people to have read one of Trilling’s novels, or his only novel. His book The Liberal Imagination is much more widely known.
Germaine Greer has always been very interesting. I have her book on female artists – The Obstacle Race – sitting unread on my shelves. I really must get around to it.
I find Martin Amis, as opposed to his father, almost unreadable with the exception of Experience. I remember an enormous anthology of literature edited by Lionel Trilling but have never read him.
I would just like to mention my favourite Mailer work: the Deer Park is the Great American novel of the HUAC era, a Gatsbyesque roman-a-clef retelling of the downfall of Elia Kazan.
Katy Hibbert
1 year ago
The only feminist name I recognised in the article was Germaine Greer. I haven’t always agreed with her, but she writes well, and can be very down to earth and funny. You don’t get the jargon that academic feminists come up with. And she rightly has no truck with trans-twaddle.
Stewart Ware
3 years ago
I’m now very interested in female antimony. I didn’t realise that a dull grey metalloid was gendered.
Christopher Hilton
3 years ago
Well-written article. The main thing that one remembers from the stupid fuss, 4 against 1, and having read all Mailer’s books, is that Mailer was a better writer than the 4 others, and almost anybody else that century or this.
Martin Amis seems to have given Norman Mailer a lot of thought over the years. I once read something by him where he was proposing to make Norman Mailer’s name a verb for an unnatural act. “You know that woman I’ve been seeing? I normanmailered her last night.”
CHARLES STANHOPE
3 years ago
Were Norman Mailer and Philip Roth related does anyone know?
You know, the similarities between them are easily exaggerated.Roth insisted on not having children. Mailer, for all his lamentable womanizing, had a sense of awe about women. The article includes that quote about how useless and purposeless men would be; women are closer to the “creation of existence”.
Simon Baseley
3 years ago
A truly excellent article. No bias, just a fair presentation of the time and the people who lived it. Sandwiched between the brilliance of TheNaked and the Dead and the forensic journalism of The Executioner’s Song, Mailer managed to produce some rather poor stuff, but as another correspondent has noted, he was a far better writer than any of the others featured.
Joanna Tegnerowicz
1 year ago
Mr Owolade writes very warmly about Mailer and devotes only one sentence to the stabbing of Adele Morales. Mailer almost killed Morales. When someone tried to help her, he kicked her and said “Let the b***h die”. The Norman Invasion | The New Yorker
I find it very disappointing that Mr Owolade portrays Mailer in such a positive light. Much too often male violence against women continues to be dismissed when a man happens to be famous. Mailer’s fame and talent for writing don’t make his attack on his wife any less horrifying.
An absorbing and well written piece. It’s so refreshing when an article refuses to simplify inherently rich and complex subjects. More please!
Very well written. Drew me in when I had no interest in the subject at large. I found it a fascinating bit of writing in that on any mainstream media platform it would have been tinged with overwhelming bias, usually to the extreme, with the author not being able to hide their deep contempt for Mailer for not towing the cultural marxist feminist line.
Thank you for clearing the rear view mirror in my brain so that I can better see what began in the sixties. Perhaps brought about in large measure by the birth control pill (originally intended for fertility,) we entered a new land of contradictions and confusions. And look at us today! Where are we headed, what will happen, and why?
Glad I missed this “debate”
Me too. I find Mailer and Amis to be colossally boring for the most part. The Trillings (Lionel and Diana) were good people, and quite interesting. I am one of perhaps only six or seven people to have read one of Trilling’s novels, or his only novel. His book The Liberal Imagination is much more widely known.
Germaine Greer has always been very interesting. I have her book on female artists – The Obstacle Race – sitting unread on my shelves. I really must get around to it.
I find Martin Amis, as opposed to his father, almost unreadable with the exception of Experience. I remember an enormous anthology of literature edited by Lionel Trilling but have never read him.
“Money” is pretty good.
I would just like to mention my favourite Mailer work: the Deer Park is the Great American novel of the HUAC era, a Gatsbyesque roman-a-clef retelling of the downfall of Elia Kazan.
The only feminist name I recognised in the article was Germaine Greer. I haven’t always agreed with her, but she writes well, and can be very down to earth and funny. You don’t get the jargon that academic feminists come up with. And she rightly has no truck with trans-twaddle.
I’m now very interested in female antimony. I didn’t realise that a dull grey metalloid was gendered.
Well-written article. The main thing that one remembers from the stupid fuss, 4 against 1, and having read all Mailer’s books, is that Mailer was a better writer than the 4 others, and almost anybody else that century or this.
His novel The Deer Park really is superb.
Martin Amis seems to have given Norman Mailer a lot of thought over the years. I once read something by him where he was proposing to make Norman Mailer’s name a verb for an unnatural act. “You know that woman I’ve been seeing? I normanmailered her last night.”
Were Norman Mailer and Philip Roth related does anyone know?
You know, the similarities between them are easily exaggerated.Roth insisted on not having children. Mailer, for all his lamentable womanizing, had a sense of awe about women. The article includes that quote about how useless and purposeless men would be; women are closer to the “creation of existence”.
A truly excellent article. No bias, just a fair presentation of the time and the people who lived it. Sandwiched between the brilliance of The Naked and the Dead and the forensic journalism of The Executioner’s Song, Mailer managed to produce some rather poor stuff, but as another correspondent has noted, he was a far better writer than any of the others featured.
Mr Owolade writes very warmly about Mailer and devotes only one sentence to the stabbing of Adele Morales. Mailer almost killed Morales. When someone tried to help her, he kicked her and said “Let the b***h die”. The Norman Invasion | The New Yorker
I find it very disappointing that Mr Owolade portrays Mailer in such a positive light. Much too often male violence against women continues to be dismissed when a man happens to be famous. Mailer’s fame and talent for writing don’t make his attack on his wife any less horrifying.