The Naked and the Dead: Lost Illusion and Pessimism in the Francophile Mailer

Authors

French realism, Honoré de Balzac, Franco Moretti, Bildungsroman, pessimism, The Naked and the Dead

An examination of historical influences, particularly early French Realists, on the work of Norman Mailer.

Alexander Hicks, Emory University

Alexander Hicks is Professor of Sociology and Adjunct Professor of Political Science and Film and Media Studies at Emory University. He is author or co-editor of books including Social Democracy and Welfare Capitalism, as well as of numerous papers in leading social science journals and was inaugural co-editor of the Socioeconomic Review. Social science vocation notwithstanding, he has long begun and ended his days reading fiction and has been a Mailer aficionado since first reading The Naked and the Dead in the eighth grade. He exchanged several dozen letters with Norman Mailer during the quarter century preceding Mailer’s death. Since 2009 he has published a handful of pieces in The Mailer Review.