From Monroe to Picasso

Norman Mailer and the Life-Study

Abstract

Mailer found an authority of visual presentment in the Picasso’s work that gave a new imperative to his own culture-readings. In his relationship with the lives of Marilyn Monroe and Pablo Picasso, Mailer gives us an example of what he has sometimes referred to as “an imaginary memoir.” Readers will either find them legitimate, or will accept, even relish the prospect of encountering not just the memoir, but also the vitality of interaction between Mailer’s imagination and his subject.