The Mailerian Dynamic

Narrative in a Structural Poetics of Mailer’s Fiction

Authors

  • Alexander Hicks Emory University Author

Keywords:

narrative structure, Mailerian poetics, dominance and transcendence, anxiety and courage, The Naked and the Dead, Ancient Evenings, The Executioner's Song

Abstract

In Norman Mailer’s fiction, the underlying poetics, although simplifying, is complex in its basic elements, which are five: the physiological, psychic, social, cultural and transcendental. The poetics is also plural in its underlying statics and in the narrative dynamics that these statics help constitute.

Author Biography

  • Alexander Hicks, Emory University

    Alexander Hicks is Winship Distinguished Research Professor of Sociology, Emory University, and author or co-editor of books including Social Democracy and Welfare Capitalism, as well as of numerous papers in leading social science journals. He mimicked Mailer’s “Time Machine” format for a ninth grade “short autobiography” assignment, reads a lot of fiction, and has written a paper on Poetics.

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Published

2026-03-14

Issue

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

Section

Articles