Norman Mailer on James Baldwin

Abstract

This interview presents Norman Mailer’s retrospective reflections on his complex personal and intellectual relationship with James Baldwin, recorded in 1988 by biographer James Campbell during research for Talking at the Gates. Ranging across friendship, rivalry, race, sexuality, politics, and literary form, Mailer offers candid, often provocative assessments of Baldwin’s temperament, stylistic elegance, and artistic trajectory. The conversation revisits key moments of tension between the two writers, including Mailer’s criticism of Giovanni’s Room, Baldwin’s essay “The Black Boy Looks at the White Boy,” and their divergent responses to the cultural and political pressures of mid-twentieth-century America. Mailer’s remarks illuminate not only Baldwin’s position within American letters but also Mailer’s own assumptions about masculinity, race, and the demands of large-scale literary ambition. As a historical document, the interview provides valuable insight into the fraught solidarities and antagonisms that shaped postwar American literary culture, while also inviting critical scrutiny of Mailer’s judgments from a contemporary perspective.