Norman, Norman, Norman - all that swagger, all that bluster, all that ego, paranoia, vanity and, above all, hectic ambition directed at becoming the "great American writer." Well, as this 1,281-page cross-section spanning 50 years of his dappled oeuvre (as selected by him) suggests, the great literary pugilist may not be quite as great as he, for one, has always maintained. With the death of Hemingway, America needed another writer as public man complete with messily public private life. Enter Norman "Nobody calls my dog a queer" Mailer. Of that immediate post-second World War generation of Mailer, Capote and Gore Vidal, the bitchy little Truman was probably the most gifted. If Norman is the loudest, Vidal is certainly the smartest. Neither are inspired fiction writers and Vidal, king of the one-liner, and Mailer, the chat-show host's guest from Hell(as is also reported in this book), are deadly rivals as well as social opposites, the Southern mandarin versus the Brooklyn street fighter. It is true that Mailer's powerful debut, The Naked and the Dead (1948), deserves its place as an angry anti-war novel written by a participant. But otherwise, aside from The Fight, and his obvious interest in the history of the American century, as well as his complex love-hate relationship with his country, Mailer is not a unique commentator, and his prose, for all its bombast, is at best laboured. Read this hefty collection at one go and wonder at his reputation. Should you enjoy journalists writing about themselves in the third person, it may well be for you, but it is heavy-handed, irritating and testifies to his undying fascination with one Norman Mailer. There is some light, though - Tough Guys Don't Dance still amuses, while The Gospel According To The Son is unexpectedly graceful.
Eileen Battersby