Books, Arts & Manners: The Condition of Norman

Mailer: His Life and Times, by Peter Manso (Simon & Schuster, 720 pp., $19.95)

Norman Mailer, a fascinating subject, has had bad luck with his biographers. Hilary Mills’s book was superficial and obtuse; Manso’s (complete with tasteless dust-jacket) portrays the writer as celebrity and vulgarian, and epitomizes the corruption it describes. This undeveloped embryo is not a biography, but a crude compilation of extracts from two hundred interviews. There is no introduction to or transition between the entries, no coherent structure or narrative, no evaluation or interpretation of these egoistic and anecdotal fragments. This is not valuable oral history, like Ronald Fraser’s book on the Spanish Civil War, but a monstrous gossip column in which no detail is too trivial or disgusting to record.

About the Author

Jeffrey Meyers

Mr. Meyers is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and the author of John Huston: Courage and Art.

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Mailer: His Life and Times, by Peter Manso (Simon & Schuster, 720 pp., $19.95)

Norman Mailer, a fascinating subject, has had bad luck with his biographers. Hilary Mills’s book was superficial and obtuse; Manso’s (complete with tasteless dust-jacket) portrays the writer as celebrity and vulgarian, and epitomizes the corruption it describes. This undeveloped embryo is not a biography, but a crude compilation of extracts from two hundred interviews. There is no introduction to or transition between the entries, no coherent structure or narrative, no evaluation or interpretation of these egoistic and anecdotal fragments. This is not valuable oral history, like Ronald Fraser’s book on the Spanish Civil War, but a monstrous gossip column in which no detail is too trivial or disgusting to record.