Norman Mailer
Norman Mailer is generally considered the representative author
of recent decades, able to change his style and subject many
times. In his appetite for experience, vigorous style, and
dramatic public persona, he follows in the tradition of
Ernest
Hemingway. His ideas are bold and innovative. He is the reverse
of a writer like Barth, for whom the subject is not as important
as the way it is handled. Unlike the invisible
Pynchon, Mailer
constantly courts and demands attention. A novelist, essayist,
sometime politician, literary activist, and occasional actor, he
is always on the scene. From such "New Journalism" exercises as
Miami and the Siege of Chicago (1968), an analysis of the
1968
U.S. presidential conventions, and his compelling study about the
execution of a condemned murderer,
The Executioner's Song
(1979),
he has turned to writing such ambitious, heavyweight novels as
Ancient Evenings (1983), set in the Egypt of antiquity,
and
Harlot's Ghost (1992), revolving around the U.S. Central
Intelligence Agency.
