The Prescience of Mailer’s Marxism

Socialism or Barbary Shore?

Authors

  • David Anshen University of Texas-Pan American Author

Keywords:

Marxism and existentialism, political alienation, revolutionary socialism, Cold War ideology, capitalist critique, Barbary Shore

Abstract

This essay considers Barbary Shore in light of the post-Cold war political realities and argues that this largely forgotten early novel provides insight into Mailer’s career-long political and artistic hostility to capitalism as well as the standardizing dehumanizing tendencies of modern society. Rather than viewing the novel, as many critics have, as a failure, the essay aims to demonstrate that Barbary Shore shows surprising prescience and presents real political and social deadlocks that influenced the course of the second half of the 20th century.

Author Biography

  • David Anshen, University of Texas-Pan American

    David Anshen is an Associate Professor of English at University of T exas-Pan American. He has written on Norman Mailer, William Faulkner, film studies, and literary theory with a specialization in Marxism. He is working on a book that will trace the political and philosophic contours of Norman Mailer’s worldview across the breadth of his oeuvre.

Downloads

Published

2026-10-09

Issue

Vol. 6 No. 1 (2012): Why Mailer Matters

Section

Articles