Norman Mailer as Occasional Commentator in a Self-Interview and Memoir

Authors

  • William Kennedy State University of New York at Albany Author

Keywords:

William Kennedy, authorial influence, keynote, John Dos Passos, self-interview, metafiction, literary journalism, American novel, public intellectual, film and fiction

Abstract

I decided Mailer didn’t have a style. He had a huge brain, which I couldn’t imitate. In those early days I didn’t have a brain, only a hunger. I was reading Mailer and Dos Passos as if they were contemporaries of each other until I discovered Mailer owed a debt to Dos Passos, as did I, and that it was visible in The Naked and the Dead through his use of the Time Machine, and the Chorus, which seemed inspired by the Camera Eye and the Profiles in USA.

Author Biography

  • William Kennedy, State University of New York at Albany

    William Kennedy was born and raised in Albany, New York. He brought his native city to literary life in many of his works, particularly the acclaimed Albany cycle, which includes Legs, Billy Phelan’s Greatest Game, and the Pulitzer Prize–winning Ironweed. The versatile Kennedy wrote the screenplay for Ironweed, the play Grand View, and co-wrote the screenplay for The Cotton Club with Francis Ford Coppola. Kennedy is a professor in the English department at the State University of New York at Albany and, in 1993, was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Kennedy was also named Commander of the Order of Arts and Letters in France.

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Published

2026-01-25

Issue

Vol. 1 No. 1 (2007): Inaugural Issue

Section

Articles