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MIND OF AN OUTLAW

Name: MIND OF AN OUTLAW
Author: Norman Mailer
ISBN: 978-0-8129-9347-9

SELECTED ESSAYS

by Norman Mailer ; edited by Phillip Sipiora ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 15, 2013

As good an introduction to Mailer’s habits of mind as there’s ever been, though there’s also room for an anthology blending...

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Further advertisements for himself by the late and increasingly not-so-well-remembered bad boy of postwar American literature.

In Advertisements for Myself (1959), with which this collection has some overlap, Mailer famously (or infamously, depending on your point of view) wrote, “The only one of my contemporaries who I felt had more talent than myself was James Jones.” Even then, he took apart Jones’ From Here to Eternity (1951) for its “faults, ignorances, and a smudge of the sentimental,” naturally preferring his own novel The Naked and the Dead (1948). As for Jack Kerouac, no go; James Baldwin “is too charming a writer to be major”; and so forth. It has to be remembered, on reading such unguarded statements, that for all Mailer’s pugnacious self-regard, he had a point: He was the big dog in the yard, at least for a time, and what he wrote, plenty of people read and pondered and argued about. His 1957 essay “The White Negro,” included here, was one such occasion, bringing the word “hipster” to currency but, more seriously, giving voice to the existential angst that characterized the time. Mailer risked ostracism and worse by declaring that the United States was the heavy in the Cold War, and if he could be heavy-handed and lumbering and old-fashioned sounding (“Technological man in his terminal diseases, dying of air he can no longer breathe, of packaged foods he can just about digest, of plastic clothing his skin can hardly bear and of static before which his spirit has near expired”), very few did political outrage better. In fact, as this wide-ranging collection shows, which is political from start to finish, about his only rival in miffed political discourse was Gore Vidal.

As good an introduction to Mailer’s habits of mind as there’s ever been, though there’s also room for an anthology blending the greatest hits of his fiction as well as his sharp-edged essays.

Pub Date: Oct. 15, 2013

ISBN: 978-0-8129-9347-9

Page Count: 640

Publisher: Random House

Review Posted Online: Oct. 4, 2013

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2013

Categories:

GENERAL NONFICTION

- BOOK REVIEW
SELECTED LETTERS OF NORMAN MAILER
by Norman Mailer edited by J. Michael Lennon

- BOOK REVIEW
THE CASTLE IN THE FOREST
by Norman Mailer

- BOOK REVIEW
THE BIG EMPTY
by Norman Mailer & John Buffalo Mailer

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NUTCRACKER

by E.T.A. Hoffmann ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 28, 1996

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This is not the Nutcracker sweet, as passed on by Tchaikovsky and Marius Petipa. No, this is the original Hoffmann tale of 1816, in which the froth of Christmas revelry occasionally parts to let the dark underside of childhood fantasies and fears peek through. The boundaries between dream and reality fade, just as Godfather Drosselmeier, the Nutcracker's creator, is seen as alternately sinister and jolly. And Italian artist Roberto Innocenti gives an errily realistic air to Marie's dreams, in richly detailed illustrations touched by a mysterious light. A beautiful version of this classic tale, which will captivate adults and children alike. (Nutcracker; $35.00; Oct. 28, 1996; 136 pp.; 0-15-100227-4)

Pub Date: Oct. 28, 1996

ISBN: 0-15-100227-4

Page Count: 136

Publisher: Harcourt

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1996

Categories:

GENERAL NONFICTION

- BOOK REVIEW
THE NUTCRACKER AND THE MOUSE KING
by E.T.A. Hoffmann ; adapted by Natalie Andrewson ; illustrated by Natalie Andrewson

- BOOK REVIEW
THE NUTCRACKER
by E.T.A. Hoffmann & illustrated by Julie Paschkis

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TO THE ONE I LOVE THE BEST

EPISODES FROM THE LIFE OF LADY MENDL (ELSIE DE WOLFE)

by Ludwig Bemelmans ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 23, 1955

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An extravaganza in Bemelmans' inimitable vein, but written almost dead pan, with sly, amusing, sometimes biting undertones, breaking through. For Bemelmans was "the man who came to cocktails". And his hostess was Lady Mendl (Elsie de Wolfe), arbiter of American decorating taste over a generation. Lady Mendl was an incredible person,- self-made in proper American tradition on the one hand, for she had been haunted by the poverty of her childhood, and the years of struggle up from its ugliness,- until she became synonymous with the exotic, exquisite, worshipper at beauty's whrine. Bemelmans draws a portrait in extremes, through apt descriptions, through hilarious anecdote, through surprisingly sympathetic and understanding bits of appreciation. The scene shifts from Hollywood to the home she loved the best in Versailles. One meets in passing a vast roster of famous figures of the international and artistic set. And always one feels Bemelmans, slightly offstage, observing, recording, commenting, illustrated.