Norman Mailer

Of Vitality and Morality

Authors

  • Christopher Busa Provincetown Arts Press Author

Keywords:

vitality and morality, marriage, Friedrich Nietzsche, violence, The Castle in the Forest, masculinity

Abstract

An essay on the bond between vitality and morality in Mailer’s life and work, moving from his six marriages and his idea of the novel as a kind of marriage to Nietzsche’s genealogy of morals and “The White Negro.” It traces the role of risk, alter egos, and creative versus destructive violence across Tough Guys Don’t Dance, The Castle in the Forest, and The Prisoner of Sex, drawing on Maggie McKinley’s work on masculinity and violence.

Author Biography

  • Christopher Busa, Provincetown Arts Press

    Christopher Busa is founding editor of Provincetown Arts Press, a nonprofit publisher of the annual journal Provincetown Arts, monographs on distinguished older artists, and first books of poetry by new poets. He was born in New York City and grew up exposed to the art world as the son of a painter who participated in the formative years of Abstract Expressionism. After graduation from the University of Minnesota, he studied for a year in Paris at the Sorbonne, and then pursued a PhD for ten years while teaching English at Rutgers University. His interviews and profiles of artists and writers have appeared in Arts, Garden Design, Paris Review, Partisan Review, The Mailer Review, and other journals. Two pieces were reprinted in Interviews and Encounters with Stanley Kunitz, edited by Stanley Moss (Sheep Meadow Press, 1993); “Being a Great Man is a Thesis Invented by Others” appeared in Such Desperate Joy: Imagining Jackson Pollock (Thunder’s Mouth Press, 2001). He has curated exhibitions and written catalog introductions for many artists. He co-edited and introduced the Erotic Works of D.H. Lawrence (Crown, 1989), the subject of his dissertation. He is the author of The Provincetown Artists Cookbook, with Written Sketches.

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Published

2018-10-25

Issue

Vol. 12 No. 1 (2018)

Section

Articles

How to Cite

Busa, Christopher. “Norman Mailer: Of Vitality and Morality”. The Mailer Review, vol. 12, no. 1, Oct. 2018, pp. 165–171, https://mailerreview.org/journal/article/view/653.