诺曼·梅勒

奖项

1968年第一次入围普利策奖，作品：夜晚军队（The Armies of the Night）。

1980年第二次荣获普利策奖，作品：刽子手之歌（The Executioner's Song）。

Nachem Malech Mailer (January 31, 1923 – November 10, 2007), known by his pen name Norman Kingsley Mailer, was an American writer, journalist, and filmmaker. In a career spanning more than six decades, Mailer had 11 best-selling books, at least one in each of the seven decades after World War II.

His novel The Naked and the Dead was published in 1948 and brought him early renown. His 1968 nonfiction novel The Armies of the Night won the Pulitzer Prize for nonfiction as well as the National Book Award. Among his other well-known works are An American Dream (1965), The Fight (1975) and The Executioner's Song (1979), which won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction.

Mailer is considered an innovator of "creative nonfiction" or "New Journalism", along with Gay Talese, Truman Capote, Hunter S. Thompson, Joan Didion and Tom Wolfe, a genre that uses the style and devices of literary fiction in factual journalism. He was a prominent cultural commentator and critic, expressing his often controversial views through his novels, journalism, frequent press appearances, and essays, the most famous and reprinted of which is "The White Negro". In 1955, he and three others founded The Village Voice, an arts and politics-oriented weekly newspaper distributed in Greenwich Village.

In 1960, Mailer was convicted of assault and served a three-year probation after he stabbed his wife Adele Morales with a penknife, nearly killing her. In 1969, he ran an unsuccessful campaign to become the mayor of New York, finishing fourth in the Democratic primaries. Mailer was married six times and had nine children.

Early life

Nachem "Norman" Malech ("King") Mailer was born to a Jewish family in Long Branch, New Jersey, on January 31, 1923. His father, Isaac Barnett Mailer, popularly known as "Barney", was an accountant born in South Africa. His mother, Fanny (née Schneider), ran a housekeeping and nursing agency.……

Novelist

Mailer wrote 12 novels in 59 years. After completing courses in French language and culture at the University of Paris in 1947–48, he returned to the U.S. shortly after The Naked and the Dead was published in May 1948.……

Journalist

From the mid-1950s, Mailer became known for his countercultural essays. In 1955, he co-founded The Village Voice and was initially an investor and silent partner, but later he wrote a column called "Quickly: A Column for Slow Readers" from January to April 1956.……

Filmmaker

In addition to his experimental fiction and nonfiction novels, Mailer produced a play version of The Deer Park (staged at the Theatre De Lys in Greenwich Village in 1967), which had a four-month run and generally good reviews.……

Biographer

Mailer's approach to biography came from his interest in the ego of the artist as an "exemplary type". His own biographer, J.……

Activist

A number of Mailer's nonfiction works, such as The Armies of the Night and The Presidential Papers, are political.……

Politician

In 1969, at the suggestion of feminist Gloria Steinem, his friend the political essayist Noel Parmentel, and others, Mailer ran unsuccessfully in the Democratic Party primary for mayor of New York City, allied with columnist Jimmy Breslin (who ran for city council president), proposing the creation of a 51st state through New York City secession.……

Artist

Mailer enjoyed drawing and drew prolifically, particularly toward the end of his life.……

Recurring themes

Norman Mailer's career is characterized by several recurring themes and concerns that illustrate his philosophical, social, and psychological preoccupations.……

Existential violence and masculinity

Mailer believed that violence, while brutal, was a path to existential authenticity and a rejection of societal repression.……

The individual vs. society

Many of Mailer's protagonists are outsiders who seek to assert their individual wills in a conformist society, embodying his critique of modern institutions.……

Personal life

Marriages and children

Mailer was married six times and had nine children. He fathered eight children by his wives.

Mailer's first marriage was to Beatrice Silverman. They eloped in January 1944 because neither family would likely have approved.……

Death

Mailer died of acute renal failure on November 10, 2007, a month after undergoing lung surgery at Mount Sinai Hospital in Manhattan, aged 84. He is buried in Provincetown Cemetery, Provincetown, Massachusetts.

Legacy

Mailer was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature several times, and on the Nobel committee's shortlist at least once, in 1974.

Mailer was referenced in the lyrics to the song "Vlad the Impaler" by American shock-rock heavy metal band GWAR on their 1990 album Scumdogs of the Universe.

Decorations and awards

1969: Pulitzer Prize, George Polk Award, and National Book Award for The Armies of the Night; Honorary Doctor of Letters from Rutgers University

1970: Harvard University's Signet Society Medal for Achievement in the Arts

• 1973: Edward MacDowell Medal
• 1975: Playboy's Best Nonfiction Award for The Fight