Selected Letters of Norman Mailer

Description: "Mailer wrote almost 50,000 letters over the course of his life, keeping a copy of almost every one of them. He corresponded with presidents and politicians, artists and athletes, writers and editors, students, antagonists, fans, friends, his children, [and] his loves, including his beloved sixth wife, Norris Church Mailer. Here are the letters of a precocious sixteen-year-old arriving from Brooklyn at Harvard. Here are the letters depicting the horrors of the war in the Pacific from a soldier's point of view. Here are the letters describing a young writer's struggle with his first novel ... And here are the many, many letters of a man who spent sixty years in the spotlight"--

Review Quotes: "Extraordinary."--Vanity Fair

"As massive as the life they document . . . In reading Mailer's correspondence as the autobiography he never wrote, these [letters] provide a kind of map, from the hills and rice paddies of the Philippines through every victory and defeat for the rest of the century and beyond."--Esquire

"The shards and winks at Mailer's own past that are scattered throughout the letters--the stories of friendships and of family, of his identity-forming relationship with his mother and his 'Victorian childhood' surrounded by loving women, of his street-corner adolescence and his erotic and literary awakening . . . are so tantalizing. They glitter throughout like unrefined jewels that Mailer took to the grave."--The New Yorker

"[Selected Letters of Norman Mailer has] umpteen pleasures to pluck out and roll between your teeth, like seeds from a pomegranate."--The New York Times

"Indispensable . . . a subtle document of an unsubtle man's wit and erudition, even (or especially) when it's wielded as a weapon."--New York

"A thrilling and revealing collection of correspondence . . . With their unguarded directness, the letters allow us access to [Mailer's] naked thought. . . . providing the asides and stage whispers that shape the life and career into a compelling theatre of the creative self."--The Guardian (U.K.)

"Mailer's correspondence offers an intimate look at the author in all his variety: filial, pugnacious, collegial, spiteful, affectionate, defiant and generous by turn."--BBC

"[A] meticulously edited collection of letters . . . It's hard to imagine any American novelist today living as large, varied, and morally complex a life as Mailer's. And among the emotions these letters may evoke in readers is nostalgia for a time when an American writer could imagine--somewhat innocently perhaps--that his words were an essential part of the national conversation."--The Daily Beast

"[Norman Mailer] contained multitudes. . . . The preponderant majority of letters here are by the private Mailer who could be remarkably tender, courtly, generous, sensitive, eloquent and brilliant and, for good measure, equally block-headed, arrogant, naive and blinded by self-delusion. . . . It's what makes this, far and away, the most important and compelling book by or about Norman Mailer in decades."--The Buffalo News

"Norman Mailer lived large. So it's no surprise his correspondents included just about everyone who was anyone in twentieth-century America, and why Selected Letters of Norman Mailer is such a scintillating read."--WBUR

"Mailer's ambition to be the greatest writer of his generation is made clear in his stylish, sophisticated letters. . . . A list of Mailer's correspondents reads like a guide to twentieth-century history and literature. . . . [Michael J.] Lennon proves an ideal guide, expertly assembling a tidal wave of letters into a tidy, chronological selection. In the end, Mailer's letters stand as the best autobiography available for such a complicated and extraordinary life."--Publishers Weekly (starred review)

"Offers the fascinating complexities of a deeply intelligent individual."--Booklist

"An intriguing look at a particularly influential life of letters and a treat for Mailer fans."--Kirkus Reviews

"Mailer's letters reinforce the idea that Mailer himself was his most complex creation: the blithely gargantuan demands of his imagination shaped his life was well as his fiction and journalism."--The Arts Fuse