Advertisements for Myself

Advertisements for Myself
Author Norman Mailer
Country United States of America
Language English
Genre collection of various genres, autobiography
Published 1959
Publisher Harvard University Press
ISBN 0-674-00590-2

Advertisements for Myself is an omnibus collection of fiction, essays, verse, and fragments by Norman Mailer, with interstitial autobiographical commentaries that he calls "advertisements." It was released after Mailer secured his place in the literary world in 1948 with the critically acclaimed novel The Naked and the Dead, then endured setbacks with the poorly received Barbary Shore (1951) and The Deer Park (1955). The collection, which was published by G.P. Putnam's Sons in 1959, features stories from Mailer's days as a student at Harvard College as well as later works.[1]

It is a key book among the dozens that Mailer produced and helped to create his persona as a swaggering, anti-establishment writer. It also “served as Mr. Mailer’s announcement that he was king of the literary hill.”[2]

A Note to the Reader

This section explains the book's two tables of contents. The first lists the contents of the book in chronological order, while the second table of contents categorizes the pieces based on genre, such as fiction, essays, and interviews.[1] Mailer lists what he believes are his best pieces in the book, which are: The Man Who Studied Yoga, "The White Negro", The "Time of Her Time", "Dead Ends", and "Advertisements for Myself on the Way Out".

First Advertisement for Myself

Mailer gives readers his perspective, at age 36, on his writing, other writers, and the state of the nation. He believes his work, present and future, will be a key influence on those practicing his craft. In pulling together this collection of short novels, short stories, essays and advertisements, he’s making his case and showing how he’s matured as a writer over the years. Though at times in his career he was influenced by Ernest Hemingway, he points to the author as a writer who didn’t grow. “Hemingway has always been afraid to think, afraid of losing even a little popularity… and his words excite no thought in the best of my rebel generation.” It’s a generation that he believes has grown up in a world “more in decay than the worst of the Roman Empire.” Still, he gives Hemingway credit for knowing the value of his own work and fighting to make his personality enrich his books. A writer’s personality, Mailer observes, can determine how much attention readers give his work. “The way to save your work and reach more readers is to advertise yourself.”

Part One: Beginnings

This section includes Mailer's earliest works, written when he was a student at Harvard. Mailer admits that he is not particularly proud of the pieces in this section, but has included them for the readers who are interested in his early works.[1] The pieces in this section are:

Part Two: Middles

The second section features the short stories Mailer wrote hoping to keep up with the fame and notoriety that followed his best selling novel, The Naked and the Dead.[1]

Part Three: Births

The third section consists of Mailer's writings for Time, Newsweek, and One, ending with several columns written for The Village Voice. The primary features of this section are:

Part Four: Hipsters

In the fourth section, Mailer criticizes the cultural movement of the Beat Generation and questions what exactly it means to be hip between the 1920s and 1950s. Along with the highly controversial essay The White Negro, this section consists of a series of advertisements, exchanges, interviews, and essays, including:

Part Five: Games and Ends

In this section, Mailer explains how he structures the last three sections of his book after his World War II patrol. He patterns these sections in such a way as to avoid “ambush[ing] my readers needlessly,” just as he and his fellow-patrolmen had sought to avoid ambush.[1]

Reactions

Initial reactions to this book were widely negative because of its controversial content. But many changed their views over time and came to value and appreciate the perspective of Norman Mailer, whose book gave a voice to the younger generation.

The first edition from Putnam featured a photograph of Mailer wearing a yachting cap, for which the author was criticized. Mailer's publisher, Walter Minton, thought the photograph of Mailer was a little silly. But Mailer thought it made him look handsome, and he argued Minton down. [6]

Norman Mailer`s said “So Advertisements became the book in which I tried to separate my legitimate spiritual bile from my self-pity and maybe it was the hardest continuing task I had yet set myself. What aggravated every problem was that I was also trying to give up smoking, and the advertisements in this book, printed in italics, are testimony to the different way I was now obliged to use language.”[7]

Ernest Hemingway, in a letter to George Plimpton, characterized the book “as a sort of ragtag assembly of his rewrites, second thoughts and ramblings shot through with occasional brilliance."[8]

Harry T. Moore, who founded the first branch of the NAACP, describes Norman Mailer's stories as "vigorous and often amusing attacks on the society the Squares have built."[9] He would later go on to describe the collections as having interesting views on society.

Charles I. Glicksberg, a literary critic, wrote in ″Norman Mailer: The Angry Young Novelist In America,″ “Norman Mailer’s latest production, Advertisements for Myself, is a painful book to read not because the author is so grimly determined to unburden himself of all his grievances and resentments but because he reveals an aspect of himself as a writer that is not pleasant to contemplate.”[10]

Gore Vidal, a literary journalist, describes the collection as a "wide graveyard of still-born talents which contains so much of the brief ignoble history of American letters, (the book) is a tribute to the power of a democracy to destroy its critics, brave fools and passionate men".[11] As he continued to view Mailer's collection, he would later believe them to have been revolutionary in the development of the literary world.

David Brooks of the New York Times cited the book as an example of a then-emergent and now-ubiquitous culture of self-exposure and self-love that stands in stark contrast to the humility that exemplified America at the close of World War II.[12]

Cultural Influence

While not initially famous to the overall public, Advertisements for Myself appealed to a genre of people who were considered outcasts in society. For those who enjoyed the collection, it was described as having "won the admiration of a younger generation seeking alternative styles of life and art."[13] The younger generation, at the time, found it inspirational. Many also believed that this work "gave Mailer a new audience and set the stage for the sixties"[14] as it gave way to a new movement through the voices of the younger generation. It would later be considered the peak of Mailer's literary career, often being cited as his most remembered work.

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 Mailer, Norman (1959). Advertisements for Myself. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. ISBN 0-674-00590-2.
  2. Feeney, Mark (2007). "Norman Mailer, Self-titled King of the Literary Hill, dies at 84."
  3. Yates, S. L. (1952-01-01). "The Homosexual in America: By Donald Webster Cory. (Greenberg, New York. Price $4.00.)". (Greenberg New York. Price $4.00.). Int. J. Psycho-Anal.,. 33: 501.
  4. Thomson, David (2014-06-11). "Norman Mailer's Hollywood". New Republic. Retrieved 2016-04-04.
  5. Gelder, Lawrence Van (1996-04-12). "Dan Wolf, 80, a Village Voice Founder, Dies". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2016-07-13.
  6. Dearborn, Mary (1999), Mailer: A biography, New York: Houghton Mifflin Company, p. 147, ISBN 0-395-73655-2
  7. Mailer, Norman (1959). "Norman Mailer: Works & Days: A Publication of Project Mailer". Retrieved July 11, 2016.
  8. Bloomer, Harold. "Norman Mailer (Bloom's Modern Critical Views)". Chelsea House Publications. Retrieved July 13, 2016.
  9. Moore, Harry T. (1959). "The Targets are Square". The New York Times. Retrieved April 12, 2016.
  10. Glicksberg, Charles I. (1960). "Norman Mailer: The Angry Young Novelist In America". Wisconsin Studies in Contemporary Literature. 1 (1): 25–34. JSTOR 1207137.
  11. Vidal, Gore (1960). "The Norman Mailer Syndrome". lareviewofbooks.org. LA Review of Books. Retrieved April 12, 2016.
  12. Brooks, David (September 15, 2009). "High-Five Nation". Retrieved July 11, 2016.
  13. "Norman Mailer, American author". Brittannica.com. Brittanica Online. 8 August 2015. Retrieved 12 April 2016.
  14. "A Brief History of Norman Mailer". Pbs.org. Pbs.org. 19 October 2001. Retrieved 12 April 2016.

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