Norman Redux

Abstract

Michael Shuman reviews the reissue of Joe Wenke’s Mailer’s America and asks whether an older study still matters amid the current surge in Mailer scholarship. Wenke argues that Mailer spent his career examining the gap between the promise of America and its reality. In Mailer’s view, individual risk-taking and a “left conservative” politics are the best answers to the threat of totalitarianism. Shuman follows that argument from The Naked and the Dead through Ancient Evenings and concludes that the book is still illuminating.