Advertisements for Myself

[URL not allowed] Things were going pretty swell for me reading what the old coot had to say and absorbing his endless rants of wisdom, enjoying all the advertisements and side notes regarding people, places, and things. By the time I got to The White Negro I was moving fast an......more

When I think of Norman Mailer I think of a figure like the one William Vollmann seems to cut in more contemporary times. Both men have distinct interests in sexuality (for Mailer an obsession with anal sex; for Vollmann a predilection for prostitutes), in large working projects (the many Great Ameri......more

In full disclosure, I only read this book because I am trying to finish up the Barthelme Syllabus. I mostly think that Norman Mailer represents the worst kind of entitled white dude author - racist, super misogynist, both self-aggrandizing and self-deprecating (including pieces of his work that he e......more

Mailer seems like an important transitional figure for the American zeitgeist. He's a champion of the look-at-me attitude that after decades of growth has found a new level on the internet. However, he balances this solipsism with intellectual rigor, or more precisely, the appearance of intellectual......more

482 ratings, take THAT, Norman Mailer! So much for advertising for yourself. Let me tell you buddy, if I know anything about the upcoming generation of writers (and I don't), they are going to HATE your work, way to masculine, but you believed in a form greatness that simply doesn't exist any more.......more