Bøger af 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.

In perhaps his most important literary feat, Norman Mailer fashions an unprecedented portrait of one of the great villains-and enigmas-in United States history. Here is Lee Harvey Oswald-his family background, troubled marriage, controversial journey to Russia, and return to an "America [waiting] for him like an angry relative whose eyes glare in the heat." Based on KGB and FBI transcripts, government reports, letters and diaries, and Mailer's own international research, this is an epic account of a man whose cunning, duplicity, and self-invention were both at home in and at odds with the country he forever altered. Praise for Oswald's Tale "America's largest mystery has found its greatest interpreter."-The Washington Post Book World "Mailer is fierce, courageous, and reckless and nearly everything he writes has sections of headlong brilliance. . . . From the American master conjurer of dark and swirling purpose, a moving reflection."-Robert Stone, The New York Review of Books "A narrative of tremendous energy and panache; the author at the top of his form."-Christopher Hitchens, Financial Times "The performance of an author relishing the force and reach of his own acuity."-Martin Amis, The Sunday Times (London) 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

It has been called the single most historic event of the 20th century: On July 20, 1969, after a decade of tests and training, supported by a staff of 400,000 engineers and scientists, and with a budget of billions, the most powerful rocket ever launched brought Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin, and Michael Collins to the moon. Nobody captured the men, the mood, and the machinery like Norman Mailer, hired by LIFE magazine to cover the mission in a dazzling reportage he later enhanced into the brilliantly crafted book, Of a Fire on the Moon. Rediscover this epoch-making event with TASCHEN's adaptation of Mailer's account, now in our popular Reader's Edition so you can really curl up and travel not just back in time, but into outer space. The text is accompanied by hundreds of photographs from the NASA vaults, the archives of LIFE, and other leading magazines of the day, documenting the development of the agency and the mission, life inside the command module and on the moon's surface, as well as the world's jubilant reaction to the landing.Captions by leading Apollo 11 experts explain the history and science behind the images, citing the mission log, publications of the day, and postflight astronaut interviews, while an evocative introduction by Colum McCann celebrates Mailer's incomparable skill at transforming "the science of space...the weight of history...the breadth of mythology" into prose.

"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

A novel that "follows the short, blighted life of Gary Gilmore, who became famous after he robbed two men in 1976 and killed them in cold blood. After being tried and convicted, he immediately insisted on being executed for his crime, so he fought a system that seemed intent on keeping him alive long after it had sentenced him to death. And that fight for the right to die is what made him famous"--Amazon.com.

"From his bestselling first novel, The Naked and the Dead, to his last work, American democracy was a lifelong project for Norman Mailer. It was his grand theme. Nearly all of his books touched on the pros and cons, the strengths and weaknesses, the grace (to use his word) and fragility of the American experiment as well as the threats to it--from autocratic leaders and a complacent citizenry, from violent protest and radical conservative assaults on it, from 'soft fascism' and the ills of racism and poverty. In the sharp and impassioned language of a political Cassandra and with the eye of a novelist and journalist, he explored the underlying psychological, social, and economic causes of the country's fragile polity and offered urgent prescriptions for its reinvigoration. A Mysterious Country is a carefully selected collection of Mailer's most incisive--and sometimes remarkably prophetic--commentary on American democracy and what must be done to safeguard it. The anthology draws on both published and unpublished sources, from Mailer's great works of narrative nonfiction and novels as well as essays, interviews, letters, speeches, and talk show appearances. It includes pungent remarks on every president from FDR through George W. Bush, as well as correspondence with several. Throughout, what shines through is Mailer's passion for our democratic project--as well as the freedom that comes with it--and a keen awareness of its potential for failure, its virtues, and what is required of us to keep it intact"--

"The Faith is the bible of graffiti. It forever captures the place, the time, and the writings of those of us who made it happen." ?Snake IIn 1973, author Norman Mailer teamed with photographer Jon Naar to produce The Faith of Graffiti, a fearless exploration of the birth of the street art movement in New York City. The book coupled Mailer's essay on the origins and importance of graffiti in modern urban culture with Naar's radiant, arresting photographs of the young graffiti writers' work. The result was a powerful, impressionistic account of artistic ferment on the streets of a troubled and changing city?and an iconic documentary record of a critical body of work now largely lost to history.This new edition of The Faith of Graffiti, the first in more than three decades, brings this vibrant work?the seminal document on the origins of street art?to contemporary readers. Photographer Jon Naar has enhanced the original with thirty-two pages of additional photographs that are new to this edition, along with an afterword in which he reflects on the project and the meaning it has taken on in the intervening decades. It stands now, as it did then, as a rich survey of a group of outsider artists and the body of work they created?and a provocative defense of a generation that questioned the bounds of authority over aesthetics.

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.

Hailed as one of the finest novels to come out of the Second World War, The Naked and the Dead received unprecedented critical acclaim upon its publication and has since become part of the American canon. This fiftieth anniversary edition features a new introduction created especially for the occasion by Norman Mailer.Written in gritty, journalistic detail, the story follows an army platoon of foot soldiers who are fighting for the possession of the Japanese-held island of Anopopei. Composed in 1948, The Naked and the Dead is representative of the best in twentieth-century American writing.

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