Böcker av Norman Mailer

"Dieses Buch sind eigentlich zwei Bücher: eine Biografie und eine Bilder-Retrospektive über eine Schauspielerin, deren größte Liebesaffäre jene mit der Kamera war." - Norman Mailer in seiner Biografie Marilyn, 1973TASCHEN nimmt Mailer beim Wort und veröffentlicht seinen Originaltext mit Bert Sterns intimen Fotografien aus dem Last Sitting. Als würdige Hommage an eine Frau, die zum Zeitpunkt ihres Todes am 5. August 1962 als Göttin auf Erden galt, Inkarnation von Glamour und Erotik für eine ganze Generation. Obwohl sie gefeiert und bewundert wurde, war ihr Privatleben das eines kleinen Mädchens, das sich verirrt hat und nun verzweifelt nach Liebe und Geborgenheit sucht. Mailers Marilyn ist schön, tragisch und komplex. In seinen Reflexionen über ihr Leben - von der trostlosen Kindheit bis zu den mysteriösen Umständen ihres Todes - erscheint Marilyn Monroe als Symbol des bizarren Jahrzehnts, in dem sie Hollywoods größter Star war.Dieses Buch nach einer Idee von Lawrence Schiller (der bei fünf Büchern Mailers mitwirkte) kombiniert Mailers Sprachgewalt mit Bert Sterns eindringlichen Bildern der 36-jährigen Monroe. Nie zuvor hatte sie einen Fotografen so nah an sich herangelassen wie bei diesem dreitägigen Vogue-Shooting im Bel-Air Hotel, und nie hatte sie verführerischer ausgesehen. Sechs Wochen später lebte sie nicht mehr.In einer gewagten Synthese aus literarischem Klassiker und Porträtgalerie lüften Mailer und Stern den Schleier über Marilyn Monroe - der Frau, dem Sexsymbol, dem zutiefst amerikanischen Weltstar - und bieten tiefe Einsichten in eine Ikone des 20. Jahrhunderts, deren wahre Persönlichkeit bis heute rätselhaft geblieben ist.

A landmark in the modern literature of war by a still-controversial literary icon Includes a selection of letters-nine never before published-that reveal the real life roots of one of the greatest American debut novels of the last centuryNearly universally praised upon publication as an achievement inviting comparison with Tolstoy and Hemingway, Norman Mailer's The Naked and the Dead is not just a monumental war novel but also a devastating antiwar novel, exposing the primal nature of power through the interplay of a platoon of soldiers on an impossible and ultimately pointless mission on an obscure island in the Pacific during World War II. Written just after the war ended, in the early days of the emerging Cold War, the novel daringly engages with the authoritarian impulses in the American character. To celebrate and commemorate the centennial of Mailer's birth and the 75th anniversary of the publication of his unforgettable debut novel, this expanded collector's edition includes a selection of 23 letters (all but four from Mailer to his first wife, Beatrice) chosen by Mailer biographer J. Michael Lennon that reveals the keen insight and powerful ambition of a brilliant young writer grappling with the challenge of converting the weight of experience into art.

"Ich sehe Alligatoren mit Posaunen!" - Muhammad Ali; Kinshasa, 1974Die Zutaten hätten dramatischer nicht sein können: Inszeniert von einem kriminellen Boxpromoter mit Sturmfrisur (Don King) im Reich eines Diktators mit Leopardenfellmütze (Mobutu), trafen am 30. Oktober 1974 in Kinshasa im damaligen Zaire zwei Boxer aufeinander, um sich einen epischen Kampf zu liefern. Der eine war Muhammad Ali, der seine besten Jahre hinter sich hatte, aber entschlossen war, den verlorenen Weltmeistertitel zurückzuerobern. Der andere war George Foreman, der so wortkarg war wie Ali wortgewaltig und als klarer Favorit gehandelt wurde. Millionen Fernsehzuschauer auf der ganzen Welt verfolgten diese spektakuläre Titanenschlacht mit überraschendem Ausgang, die als Rumble in the Jungle in die Geschichte einging.In Kinshasa mit dabei war auch das "Enfant terrible" der amerikanischen Literaturszene, der Starautor und Pulitzer-Preisträger Norman Mailer, der seine Eindrücke und Beobachtungen ein Jahr später unter dem Titel The Fight veröffentlichte, eine literarische Reportage von rund 250 Seiten.In unserer Hommage an das legendärste Boxereignis aller Zeiten erscheint Mailers Text in einer gekürzten Fassung, eingeleitet von einem Essay des Mailer-Experten J. Michael Lennon und erstmals bebildert mit Farb- und Schwarz-Weiß-Fotografien jener beiden Männer, die wie keine anderen Ali sowohl im Ring als auch im Privatleben im Bild festhielten: Howard L. Bingham und Neil Leifer.

Norman Mailer's The Fight focuses on the 1975 World Heavyweight Boxing Championship in Kinshasa, Zaire. Muhammad Ali met George Foreman in the ring. Foreman's genius employed silence, serenity and cunning. He had never been defeated. His hands were his instrument, and 'he kept them in his pockets the way a hunter lays his rifle back into its velvet case'. Together the two men made boxing history in an explosive meeting of two great minds, two iron wills and monumental egos.

“Spectacular . . . [Norman Mailer] makes every word count, like a master knife thrower zinging stilettos in a circle around your head.”—PeopleNorman Mailer peers into the recesses and buried virtues of the modern American male in a brilliant crime novel that transcends genre. When Tim Madden, an unsuccessful writer living on Cape Cod, awakes with a gruesome hangover, a painful tattoo on his upper arm, and a severed female head in his marijuana stash, he has almost no memory of the night before. As he reconstructs the missing hours, Madden runs afoul of retired prizefighters, sex addicts, mediums, former cons, a world-weary ex-girlfriend, and his own father, old now but still a Herculean figure. Stunningly conceived and vividly composed, Tough Guys Don’t Dance represents Mailer at the peak of his powers.   Praise for Tough Guys Don’t Dance   “As brash, brooding and ultimately mesmerizing as the author himself . . . [Mailer strikes a] dazzling balance between humor and horror.”—New York Daily News   “A first-rate page-turner of a murder mystery . . . full of great characters, littered with dead bodies and replete with plausible suspects.”—Chicago Tribune   “[Tough Guys Don’t Dance] has that charming Mailer bravado.”—The New York Times  

WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY ANDREW O'HAGANIn the summer of 1976 Gary Gilmore robbed two men.

"It is impossible to walk away from this novel without being sharply reminded of the fact that Norman Mailer is a writer of extraordinary ability."-Chicago TribuneFeaturing a new foreword by Mailer scholar Maggie McKinleyPublished nearly twenty years after Norman Mailer's fiction debut, The Naked and the Dead, this acclaimed novel further solidified the author's stature as one of the most important figures in contemporary American literature. Ranald "D. J." Jethroe, Texas's most precocious teenager, recounts a brutal hunting trip he took to Alaska-in a story of fathers and sons, myth and masculinity, character and corruption. Both entertaining and profound, Why Are We in Vietnam? is an exceptional, timeless work awaiting discovery by a new generation of readers.Praise for Why Are We in Vietnam? "A book of great integrity. All the old qualities are here: Mailer's remarkable feeling for the sensory event, the detail, 'the way it was,' his power and energy."-The New York Review of Books "A tour de force, a treatise on human nature."-The Dallas Morning News "A brilliant piece of writing."-Newsweek "Original, courageous, and provocative."-The New York Times

For many, the moon landing was the defining event of the twentieth century. So it seems only fitting that Norman Mailer—the literary provocateur who altered the landscape of American nonfiction—wrote the most wide-ranging, far-seeing chronicle of the Apollo 11 mission. A classic chronicle of America’s reach for greatness in the midst of the Cold War, Of a Fire on the Moon compiles the reportage Mailer published between 1969 and 1970 in Life magazine: gripping firsthand dispatches from inside NASA’s clandestine operations in Houston and Cape Kennedy; technical insights into the magnitude of their awe-inspiring feat; and prescient meditations that place the event in human context as only Mailer could.   Praise for Of a Fire on the Moon   “The gift of a genius . . . a twentieth-century American epic—a Moby Dick of space.”—New York   “Mailer’s account of Apollo 11 stands as a stunning image of human energy and purposefulness. . . . It is an act of revelation—the only verbal deed to be worthy of the dream and the reality it celebrates.”—Saturday Review   “A wild and dazzling book.”—The New York Times Book Review   “Still the most challenging and stimulating account of [the] mission to appear in print.”—The Washington Post   Praise for Norman Mailer  “[Norman Mailer] loomed over American letters longer and larger than any other writer of his generation.”—The New York Times   “A writer of the greatest and most reckless talent.”—The New Yorker   “Mailer is indispensable, an American treasure.”—The Washington Post   “A devastatingly alive and original creative mind.”—Life   “Mailer is fierce, courageous, and reckless and nearly everything he writes has sections of headlong brilliance.”—The New York Review of Books   “The largest mind and imagination [in modern] American literature . . . Unlike just about every American writer since Henry James, Mailer has managed to grow and become richer in wisdom with each new book.”—Chicago Tribune   “Mailer is a master of his craft. His language carries you through the story like a leaf on a stream.”—The Cincinnati Post

'Genius' The New York TimesIn 1973, Norman Mailer published Marilyn, his celebrated in-depth account of the life of Marilyn Monroe, as a glossy, fully illustrated coffee-table tome. His work was immediately acclaimed - and an enduring bestseller, rumoured to have sold more copies than any of his other works except The Naked and the Dead. Yet, until now, it has never been made available in an accessible mass-market paperback edition. This is one of America's greatest writers taking on the legend of one of Hollywood's greatest stars.

Mailer's superb account, written as it was happening, of the first attempt to land men on the moon'Houston, Tranquility Base here. The Eagle has landed.'A Fire on the Moon tells the scarcely credible story of the Apollo 11 mission. It is suffused with Mailer's obsession both with the astronauts themselves and with his own anxieties and terrors about the extremity of what they were trying to achieve. Mailer is both admiring and appalled and the result is a book which is both a gripping narrative and a brilliant depiction of the now-forgotten technical issues and uncertainties around the mission. A Fire on the Moon is also a matchless portrait of an America caught in a morass of introspection and misery, torn apart by the war in Vietnam. But for one, extraordinary week in the summer of 1969 all eyes were on the fates of three men in a rocket, travelling a quarter of a million miles away from Earth.With an introduction by Geoff Dyer.

The definitive Norman Mailer collection, as he writes on Marilyn Monroe, culture, ideology, boxing, Hemingway, politics, sex, celebrity and - of course - Norman MailerFrom his early 'A Credo for the Living', published in 1948, when the author was twenty-five, to his final writings in the year before his death, Mailer wrestled with the big themes of his times. He was one of the most astute cultural commentators of the postwar era, a swashbuckling intellectual provocateur who never pulled a punch and was rarely anything less than interesting. Mind of an Outlaw spans the full arc of Mailer's evolution as a writer, including such essential pieces as his acclaimed 1957 meditation on hipsters, 'The White Negro'; multiple selections from his wonderful Advertisements for Myself; and a never-before-published essay on Freud. The book is introduced by Jonathan Lethem.

Beginning with his debut masterpiece, The Naked and the Dead, Norman Mailer has repeatedly told the truth about war. Why Are We at War? returns Mailer to the gravity of the battlefield and the grand hubris of the politicians who send soldiers there to die. First published in the early days of the Iraq War, Why Are We at War? is an explosive argument about the American quest for empire that still carries weight today. Scrutinizing the Bush administration's words and actions, Mailer unleashes his trademark moral rigor: "Because democracy is noble, it is always endangered. . . . To assume blithely that we can export democracy into any country we choose can serve paradoxically to encourage more fascism at home and abroad." Praise for Why Are We at War? "We're overloaded with information these days, some of it possibly true. Mailer offers a provocative-and persuasive-cultural and intellectual frame."-Newsweek "[Mailer] still has the stamina to churn out hard-hitting criticism."-Los Angeles Times "Penetrating . . . There's plenty of irreverent wit and fresh thinking on display."-San Francisco Chronicle "Eloquent . . . thoughtful . . . Why Are We at War? pulls no punches."-Fort Worth Star-Telegram Praise for Norman Mailer "[Norman Mailer] loomed over American letters longer and larger than any other writer of his generation."-The New York Times "A writer of the greatest and most reckless talent."-The New Yorker "Mailer is indispensable, an American treasure."-The Washington Post "A devastatingly alive and original creative mind."-Life "Mailer is fierce, courageous, and reckless and nearly everything he writes has sections of headlong brilliance."-The New York Review of Books "The largest mind and imagination [in modern] American literature . . . Unlike just about every American writer since Henry James, Mailer has managed to grow and become richer in wisdom with each new book."-Chicago Tribune "Mailer is a master of his craft. His language carries you through the story like a leaf on a stream."-The Cincinnati Post

Norman Mailer's dazzlingly rich, deeply evocative novel of ancient Egypt breathes life into the figures of a lost era: the eighteenth-dynasty Pharaoh Rameses and his wife, Queen Nefertiti; Menenhetet, their creature, lover, and victim; and the gods and mortals that surround them in intimate and telepathic communion. Mailer's reincarnated protagonist is carried through the exquisite gardens of the royal harem, along the majestic flow of the Nile, and into the terrifying clash of battle. An extraordinary work of inventiveness, Ancient Evenings lives on in the mind long after the last page has been turned. Praise for Ancient Evenings "Astounding, beautifully written . . . a leap of imagination that crosses three millennia to Pharaonic Egypt."-USA Today "Mailer makes a miraculous present out of age-deep memories, bringing to life the rhythms, the images, the sensuousness of a lost time."-The New York Times "Mailer's Egypt is a haunting and magical place. . . . The reader wallows in the scope, depth, the sheer magnitude and-yes-the fertility of his imagination."-The Washington Post Book World "An enormous pyramid of a novel [reminiscent of] Thomas Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow and Carlos Fuentes's Terra Nostra."-Los Angeles Herald Examiner Praise for Norman Mailer "[Norman Mailer] loomed over American letters longer and larger than any other writer of his generation."-The New York Times "A writer of the greatest and most reckless talent."-The New Yorker "Mailer is indispensable, an American treasure."-The Washington Post "A devastatingly alive and original creative mind."-Life "Mailer is fierce, courageous, and reckless and nearly everything he writes has sections of headlong brilliance."-The New York Review of Books "The largest mind and imagination [in modern] American literature . . . Unlike just about every American writer since Henry James, Mailer has managed to grow and become richer in wisdom with each new book."-Chicago Tribune "Mailer is a master of his craft. His language carries you through the story like a leaf on a stream."-The Cincinnati Post

Fifty years after the turmoil of 1968, modern America's most turbulent decade comes to life though the collected writings of its greatest literary provocateurNo writer plunged more wholeheartedly into the chaotic energies of the 1960s than Norman Mailer, as he fearlessly revolutionized literary norms and genres to capture the political, social, and sexual explosions of an unsettled era. Here, in a deluxe two-volume Library of America boxed set, are two novels, two booklength masterpieces of new journalism, and thirty-three essays. Four Books of the 1960s presents An American Dream, Mailer's hallucinatory voyage through the dark night of an America awash in money, sex, and violence; Why Are We in Vietnam?, in which a motor-mouthed 18-year-old Texan on the eve of military service recounts with manic and obscene exuberance a grizzly bear hunt in Alaska that exposes the macho roots of the war; and the acclaimed "non-fiction novel" The Armies of the Night(winner of the Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award) and its follow-up Miami and the Siege of Chicago, on-the-scene/in-the-scene accounts of an antiwar march on the Pentagon and the party conventions of 1968. In these revolutionary books Mailer cast himself as a player in the drama he reports, bringing a sharp and merciless eye on the decade's political upheavals. In Collected Essays of the 1960s acclaimed Mailer biographer J. Michael Lennon gathers for the first time all the essential essays from the classic collections The Presidential Papers (1963), Cannibals and Christians (1966), and Existential Errands (1972), each a fascinating window on one of the most extraordinary and tumultuous decades in the nation's history. A self-appointed exorcist of the culture's demons and an unrestrained mythologizer of his own identity, Mailer contemplated and often skewered icons of politics and literature, charted psychosexual undercurrents and covert power plays, and gloried in the exercise of a pugnacious prose style that was all his own. Whether writing about Jackie Kennedy or Sonny Liston, the realist tradition in America or the internal culture wars of the Republican Party, the death of Ernest Hemingway or the battle against censorship, Mailer was always ready to intervene in what he called "the years of the plague."LIBRARY OF AMERICA is an independent nonprofit cultural organization founded in 1979 to preserve our nation's literary heritage by publishing, and keeping permanently in print, America's best and most significant writing. The Library of America series includes more than 300 volumes to date, authoritative editions that average 1,000 pages in length, feature cloth covers, sewn bindings, and ribbon markers, and are printed on premium acid-free paper that will last for centuries.

In this landmark work of journalism, Norman Mailer reports on the presidential conventions of 1968, the turbulent year from which today's bitterly divided country arose. The Vietnam War was raging; Martin Luther King, Jr., and Robert F. Kennedy had just been assassinated. In August, the Republican Party met in Miami and picked Richard Nixon as its candidate, to little fanfare. But when the Democrats backed Lyndon Johnson's ineffectual vice president, Hubert Humphrey, the city of Chicago erupted. Antiwar protesters filled the streets and the police ran amok, beating and arresting demonstrators and delegates alike, all broadcast on live television-and captured in these pages by one of America's fiercest intellects. Praise for Miami and the Siege of Chicago "For historians who wish for the presence of a world-class literary witness at crucial moments in history, Mailer in Miami and Chicago was heaven-sent."-Michael Beschloss, The Washington Post "Extraordinary . . . Mailer [predicted that] 'we will be fighting for forty years.' He got that right, among many other things."-Christopher Hitchens, The Atlantic "Often reads like a good, old-fashioned novel in which suspense, character, plot revelations, and pungently describable action abound."-The New York Review of Books "[A] masterful account . . . To understand 1968, you must read Mailer."-Chicago Tribune

Originally published in 1959, Advertisements for Myself is an inventive collection of stories, essays, polemic, meditations, and interviews. It is Mailer at his brilliant, provocative, outrageous best.

'A huge, sprawling, deeply intelligent epic' - Observer

Desert D'Or is the fashionable Californian resort where Hollywood's elite converge when they need a break. When Sergius O'Shaughnessy, recently discharged from the Air Force, arrives, he finds his burning ambition as a novelist is weakened by the depravity and recklessness of the resort.

Crossing three millennia to Pharaonic Egypt, this tale returns to that land's essences - the war, magic, gods, death and reincarnations, the lusts, ambitions, jealousies, and betrayals.