Prophesying the News

Norman Mailer’s Journalism

Authors

  • Carolyn Yalkut Author

Keywords:

New Journalism, The Armies of the Night, literary journalism, prophetic rhetoric, oral tradition in American prose, journalism and subjectivity, political reportage

Abstract

Norman Mailer’s journalism has been justifiably lauded for its perspicacity, breadth of vision, and daring use of novelistic techniques. In the fracas surrounding the so-called “New Journalism” in the 1960s and 1970s, and the debates arguing the distinction between fiction and nonfiction, objectivity and subjectivity, what has been overlooked is Mailer’s accomplishment in the context of American journalism history. With the publication of the Pulitzer Prize- and National Book Award-winning The Armies of the Night in 1968, his account of the previous autumn’s March on the Pentagon, Mailer restored to American literature the tradition of personal journalism exemplified in the eighteenth-century pamphleteering.

Author Biography

  • Carolyn Yalkut

    Carolyn Yalkut, former Director of the Journalism Program at the University at Albany, is a writer of drama as well as criticism. Her book-in-progress, Egocentric and Invisible: Innovation and Tradition in American Journalism (University of Missouri Press), examines the synergy between journalism and literature. In April 2014 her new play Everywoman will premiere at the Performing Arts Center in Albany.

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Published

2026-10-09

Issue

Vol. 7 No. 1 (2013): A Double Life • Mind of an Outlaw

Section

Articles