Norman Mailer in the Light of Russian Literature

Authors

  • Victor Peppard University of South Florida Author

Keywords:

Russian literature, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Leo Tolstoy, comparative literature, moral inquiry, good and evil, intertextuality

Abstract

Norman Mailer, if not a Russian writer, is an author in the light of Russian literature. Mailer’s literary dialogue is most highly developed with Tolstoy and Dostoevsky, but he also has noteworthy connections with some twentieth-century writers, including Mikhail Bulgakov and Alexander Solzhenitsyn. On the broadest level, Mailer shares a passion with his Russian predecessors for engaged fiction that is morally, philosophically purposeful, and which tackles the large, eternal questions of life, often in striking, disarming, or blasphemous ways. Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, and Mailer each has his own distinctive concerns and techniques, yet all three of them examine questions such as the nature of good and evil, the nature of God and the Devil, and how we should live this life.

Author Biography

  • Victor Peppard, University of South Florida

    Victor Peppard received his PhD at the University of Michigan in Slavic Languages and Literatures with a specialization in twentieth-century Russian literature. He is Professor of Russian and Chair of World Languages at the University of South Florida and is the author of over two dozen articles and/or book chapters on Russian literature and culture, including work on the history of Russian and Soviet sport. His scholarship also includes a monograph on the Russian writer Yury Olesha and a co-authored book, with James Riordan, on Soviet Sport Diplomacy. He has translated and published Russian fiction and poetry, co-authored a text on the US for Russian students, and has published a handful of short stories.

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Published

2026-03-14

Issue

Vol. 3 No. 1 (2009): Beyond Fiction

Section

Articles