Mailer and Breslin

Politics, Literature, and Big Ideas

Authors

  • Victor Peppard University of South Florida Author

Keywords:

Jimmy Breslin, 1969 mayoral campaign, New York City politics, Left Conservatism, statehood for New York City, humor

Abstract

In the 1969 campaign for the leadership of New York City, Norman Mailer ran for Mayor and Jimmy Breslin ran for President of the City Council. Although they lost by a large margin, they brought not just a lively, sometimes raw or ribald sense of humor, but also a wealth of ideas to the city’s politics of the day that was bereft of both. These “big ideas” were, in fact, the centerpiece of their campaign, which are recounted in this analysis as well as an insightful exploration into the respective personalities of the candidates.

Author Biography

  • Victor Peppard, University of South Florida

    Victor Peppard is Professor of Russian at the University of South Florida in Tampa, where he has taught since 1975 and was chair of World Languages from 2000 to 2011. He received a PhD in Slavic Languages and Literatures from the University of Michigan in 1974 and taught Russian at the University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia in 1973 and 1974. He has published on Russian language pedagogy and on such writers as Isaak Babel’, Gogol’, Dostoevsky, Norman Mailer, Nabokov, Solzhenitsyn, Yury Olesha, and Vladimir Voinovich, as well as on the history of Russian and Soviet sport and he has also published several short stories.

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Published

2018-10-25

Issue

Vol. 12 No. 1 (2018)

Section

Articles

How to Cite

Peppard, Victor. “Mailer and Breslin: Politics, Literature, and Big Ideas”. The Mailer Review, vol. 12, no. 1, Oct. 2018, pp. 108–120, https://mailerreview.org/journal/article/view/647.