The Heart of the Nation

Jewish Values in the Fiction of Norman Mailer

Authors

  • Mashey Bernstein University of California, Santa Barbara Author

Keywords:

Jewish identity, Judaism and literature, prophetic tradition, good and evil, American Jewish writers, religious philosophy in fiction

Abstract

In the past year or so, as a result of the publication of The Castle in the Forest, Mailer has tackled his “Jewish question” in a way that brings him, if not back to the “nice” Jewish boy image he eschewed many years ago, at least to an acknowledgement of that past in a way that embraces it with new warmth and understanding. Mailer’s ideology, as an American writer and social commentator, stems from both the intellectual ideas of Judaism and how these ideas make themselves manifest in our daily lives.

Author Biography

  • Mashey Bernstein, University of California, Santa Barbara

    Mashey Bernstein teaches in the Writing Program and the Film and Media Studies Department at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He holds a PhD on Mailer from the same institution. He has written on various aspects of Mailer’s work for Studies in American-Jewish Literature, the London Jewish Chronicle, the Kansas City Jewish Chronicle and San Francisco Review of Books. He maintained close ties with Mailer since 1975 when they first met in a bar in New York City.

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Published

2026-02-10

Issue

Vol. 2 No. 1 (2008): In Memorium

Section

Articles

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