“A Series of Tragicomedies”

Mailer’s Letters on The Deer Park, 1954–55

Authors

  • Norman Mailer Author
  • J. Michael Lennon Wilkes University Author

Keywords:

The Deer Park, letters, publishing history, censorship, William Styron, Robert Lindner, Mickey Knox, Eiichi Yamanishi, One: The Homosexual Magazine, Putnam’s

Abstract

These 16 letters chronicle Mailer’s extraordinary effort to complete and publish his third novel, The Deer Park. The novel was published by Putnam’s and appeared on October 14, 1955. It became a bestseller and has sold over 50,000 copies.

Author Biographies

  • Norman Mailer

    Norman Mailer (1923–2007) was one of the most influential and contentious American writers of the postwar period. A novelist, journalist, essayist, filmmaker, and public intellectual, Mailer emerged with The Naked and the Dead (1948), a landmark World War II novel, and went on to produce a body of work that consistently tested the boundaries between fiction, history, and reportage. Central to the development of what came to be called New Journalism, his nonfiction works include The Armies of the Night (1968), which won the Pulitzer Prize, and The Executioner’s Song (1979), which earned a second Pulitzer. Across genres, Mailer’s writing confronts power, violence, masculinity, politics, and the American imagination with sustained ambition and formal experimentation.

  • J. Michael Lennon, Wilkes University

    J. Michael Lennon is Emeritus Professor of English at Wilkes University, where he continues to teach in the graduate creative writing program. He has published widely on Mailer’s work, including Norman Mailer: Works and Days (2000), and is currently editing Mailer’s letters for Random House, due to be published in early 2008. He serves as Mr. Mailer’s archivist and has recently been appointed as his authorized biographer.

Downloads

Published

2007-09-15

Issue

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

Section

Works by Norman Mailer

How to Cite

Mailer, Norman, and J. Michael Lennon. “‘A Series of Tragicomedies’: Mailer’s Letters on The Deer Park, 1954–55”. The Mailer Review, vol. 1, no. 1, Sept. 2007, pp. 44–76, https://mailerreview.org/journal/article/view/772.