Norman Mailer's acclaimed biography of Hollywood's iconic leading lady, available for the first time in mass-market paperback on the 50th anniversary of her death
Norman Mailer was born in New Jersey in January 1923 and after
graduating from Harvard, served in the US army from 1944-1946. His
first novel, The Naked and the Dead, was published to immediate
critical acclaim in 1948 - and has been hailed as 'the best war
novel to emerge from the United States' (Anthony Burgess).
He has subsequently published both fiction and non-fiction and his
books include Barbary Shore (1951), Advertisements for Myself
(1959), The Presidential Papers (1963), An American Dream (1964),
Armies of the Night (1968), Ancient Evenings (1983), and Tough Guys
Don't Dance (1983).
The Executioner's Song, first published in 1979, won the Pulitzer
Prize in 1980 - an award which Mailer has won twice during his
writing career.
Norman Mailer was born in 1923 and went to Harvard when he was
sixteen. He majored in engineering, but it was while he was at
university that he became interested in writing; he published his
first story when he was eighteen. After graduating he served during
the war in the Philippines with the Twelfth Armoured Cavalry
regiment from Texas; those were the years that formed The Naked and
the Dead (1948). His other books include Barbary Shore (1951), The
Deer Park (1955), Advertisements for Myself (1959), Deaths for the
Ladies, a volume of poetry (1962), The Presidential Papers (1963),
An American Dream (1964), Why Are We in Vietnam? (1967), The Armies
of the Night (1968), Miami and the Siege of Chicago (1968), A Fire
on the Moon (1970), The Prisoner of Sex (1971), Marilyn (1973),
Some Honourable Men (1976), Genius and Lust - A Journey Through the
Writings of Henry Miller (1976), A Transit to Narcissus (1978), The
Executioner's Song (1979) and Tough Guys Don't Dance (1983). The
Deer Park has been adapted into a play and was successfully
profuced off Broadway. He also directed four films.
In 1955 Norman Mailer co-founded the Village Voice, and he was the
editor of Dissent from 1952 until 1963. For his part in
demonstrations against the war in Vietnam he was gaoled in 1967. He
was President of PEN (US chapter) from 1984 to 1986 and was winner
of the National Book Award for Arts and Letters in 1969 and of the
Pulitzer Prize twice, once in 1969 and again in 1980.
Norman Mailer was married six times and had nine children. He died
in November 2007.
Marilyn is … genius. Up to now we’ve had mostly contradictory views
of Monroe. With his fox’s ingenuity, Mailer puts her together and
shows how she might have been torn apart ...
Marilyn is great as only a great writer using his brains and
feelers could make it ... a runaway string of perceptions ... You
read him with a heightened consciousness because his performance
has zing. It’s the star system in literature; you can feel him
bucking for the big time, and when he starts flying it’s so
exhilarating you want to applaud ...
This brilliant book ... a feat.
*The New York Times*
Fascinating … inspired
*The Sunday Telegraph*
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