- Feb 5, 2002
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Penguin has pulled the plug on a collection of his essays. This should chill us all.
Norman Mailer (1923-2007) was a giant of 20th-century American literature. He was a Pulitzer Prize-winning author, responsible for such classics as The Naked and the Dead. And he pioneered a new style of journalism, which revelled in and foregrounded the subjective experience and feelings of the writer. Yet none of that seems to matter to his long-time publisher, Penguin Random House, which has effectively just cancelled him.
Mailer was no stranger to controversy and criticism when alive, of course. The great historian and social critic, Christopher Lasch, saw an archetypally modern narcissism at work in Mailer’s self-revelatory prose. And feminists damned him for his opposition to contraception and his posturing machismo, a charge that acquired a darker resonance after he stabbed his wife Adele Morales with a penknife for mocking his masculinity. (Morales survived and Mailer served three years on probation.)
Yet none of his contemporaries would have dreamed of calling for Mailer’s cancellation. For good or ill, he was a truly significant cultural figure. He was a writer who not only bore witness to his age but helped shape it, too, co-founding the Village Voice in 1955, and capturing the ‘hip’, ‘beat’ and aggressively countercultural spirit of his time. He may have irked some, and he may have inspired others. But both his critics and his champions were united in recognising his importance.
Continued below.
If Norman Mailer can be cancelled, no one is safe
Penguin has pulled the plug on a collection of his essays. This should chill us all.
Norman Mailer (1923-2007) was a giant of 20th-century American literature. He was a Pulitzer Prize-winning author, responsible for such classics as The Naked and the Dead. And he pioneered a new style of journalism, which revelled in and foregrounded the subjective experience and feelings of the writer. Yet none of that seems to matter to his long-time publisher, Penguin Random House, which has effectively just cancelled him.
Mailer was no stranger to controversy and criticism when alive, of course. The great historian and social critic, Christopher Lasch, saw an archetypally modern narcissism at work in Mailer’s self-revelatory prose. And feminists damned him for his opposition to contraception and his posturing machismo, a charge that acquired a darker resonance after he stabbed his wife Adele Morales with a penknife for mocking his masculinity. (Morales survived and Mailer served three years on probation.)
Yet none of his contemporaries would have dreamed of calling for Mailer’s cancellation. For good or ill, he was a truly significant cultural figure. He was a writer who not only bore witness to his age but helped shape it, too, co-founding the Village Voice in 1955, and capturing the ‘hip’, ‘beat’ and aggressively countercultural spirit of his time. He may have irked some, and he may have inspired others. But both his critics and his champions were united in recognising his importance.
Continued below.
If Norman Mailer can be cancelled, no one is safe
