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“It Might Not Be Unpleasant to Live”

The Transitional Short Fiction of Norman Mailer

Authors

Keywords:

short fiction, transitional period, masculinity, American existentialism, sociostasis, homeodynamism, World War II, gender and power, literary self-fashioning, mid-twentieth-century American literature, violence, identity formation, conformity and rebellion

Abstract

Mailer’s conviction to become a “psychic outlaw” has its genesis in his negative experience publishing The Deer Park, but his thoughts were leaning in this direction even before: specifically in his transitional short fiction that acts as a proving ground for ideas he workshopped in Lipton’s Journal and published in Advertisements for Myself—specifically in “The White Negro.” The group of short stories dating from the winter of 1951–52 allowed Mailer a space to explore the subversive ideas that would characterize his work after Advertisements for Myself.

Author Biography

  • Gerald R. Lucas, Middle Georgia State University

    Gerald R. Lucas is Professor of English at Middle Georgia State University and the editor of Project Mailer. He serves as Vice-President of the Norman Mailer Society, the Digital Editor of The Mailer Review, and the Society’s webmaster. Recently, Lucas acted as the editor for J. Michael Lennon and Donna Pedro Lennon’s expanded and updated Norman Mailer: Works and Days, and he created and maintains the Digital Humanities project based on the same.

Published

2026-01-04

Versions

Issue

Vol. 15 No. 1 (2021): 15th Anniversary Issue

Section

Articles