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Mailer published The Naked and the Dead at twenty-five and spent the next sixty years trying to be the most important writer in America, in public, at volume. He co-founded the Village Voice, ran for mayor of New York, head-butted and heckled his way through television studios, and wrote more than thirty books. Two of them are indisputably major. The Armies of the Night (1968) covers the 1967 march on the Pentagon with Mailer himself as a third-person character, subtitled history as a novel, the novel as history, and won both the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award. The Executioner's Song (1979) is a thousand pages on Gary Gilmore, who murdered two men in Utah and then fought the courts for the right to be executed, and it is astonishing precisely because Mailer disappears from it entirely. He also stabbed his second wife, Adele Morales, at a party in 1960, nearly killing her. His reputation has fallen further and faster than almost any major American writer's: four of his best-known books sold under four thousand copies combined in 2021, and a centennial anthology was dropped by Random House and picked up by a smaller press. The ten below are what he was part of, and what answered him.
By Lisanne Swart · 10 authors · New Journalism · Two Pulitzer Prizes · More than thirty books · Updated September 2026
Quick answer
He is one of four writers who built the New Journalism, and the other three — Truman Capote, Tom Wolfe and Hunter S. Thompson — are the obvious next reading. Joan Didion and Gay Talese did it better and quieter. John Dos Passos invented the documentary novel he was working from. Three contemporaries wrote the American ego, the American conscience and American power. And one book took him apart in 1970.
Where to start if you loved Norman Mailer
If you want the rival book, read Truman Capote.
In Cold Blood. The same material, thirteen years earlier, with the author still visible.
If you want the method aged best, read Gay Talese.
“Frank Sinatra Has a Cold”. Three months of observation, no interview, twenty minutes to read.
If you want the same decade colder, read Joan Didion.
Slouching Towards Bethlehem. More from one detail than he got from a chapter.
If you want the best thing written about him, read James Baldwin.
“The Black Boy Looks at the White Boy”. Patient, personal and devastating.
If you want the argument against him, read Kate Millett.
Sexual Politics. Then watch Town Bloody Hall, where he takes her on in public.
If you want more non-fiction of this kind
My shelf of the best non-fiction has the rest.
10 authors like Norman Mailer
Frequently asked questions about authors like Norman Mailer
Who should I read if I love Norman Mailer?
The other New Journalists first: Truman Capote wrote the rival non-fiction novel, Tom Wolfe named and theorised the movement, Hunter S. Thompson pushed the writer-as-character further, and Gay Talese did it quietest and best. Joan Didion covered the same decade at a much lower temperature. John Dos Passos invented the documentary novel Mailer was working from. Philip Roth was the contemporary he was competing against, James Baldwin wrote the best essay about him, and Robert Caro shows what the ambition looks like without the ego. Kate Millett is the argument against.
Which Norman Mailer book should I start with?
The Executioner's Song (1979), which is his best book by a wide margin and the least like the rest of him: a thousand pages on Gary Gilmore, assembled from interviews, in flat unadorned prose with Mailer himself entirely absent. It won his second Pulitzer Prize. The Armies of the Night (1968) is the other major one and the opposite — Mailer as a third-person character at the march on the Pentagon — and won both the Pulitzer and the National Book Award. The Naked and the Dead (1948) is the famous debut and has dated most.
Why has his reputation collapsed?
Partly the work, partly the man. Of more than thirty books, two are still read seriously and a great deal of the rest is dated, self-regarding or both, and the public performance that made him famous now reads as the thing that ate the writing. His conduct is the larger part: he stabbed his second wife, Adele Morales, with a penknife at a party in 1960, nearly killing her, and served probation after she declined to press charges. The sales bear it out — four of his best-known titles sold under four thousand copies combined in 2021 — and a centennial anthology was dropped by Random House before a smaller publisher took it on.
What happened with Jack Henry Abbott?
While writing The Executioner's Song, Mailer began corresponding with Jack Henry Abbott, a prisoner who wrote him about life inside. Mailer thought him a real writer, helped publish his letters as In the Belly of the Beast (1981), and supported his parole. Six weeks after his release Abbott stabbed and killed a twenty-two-year-old waiter, Richard Adan, in New York. Mailer's response at the time — that culture was worth some risk — is among the things held most firmly against him, and he later called it a mistake.
What is Town Bloody Hall?
A documentary of a public debate at the Town Hall in New York in April 1971, in which Mailer chaired and argued against Germaine Greer, Jill Johnston, Diana Trilling and Jacqueline Ceballos in front of a packed and hostile audience, with Susan Sontag and others intervening from the floor. It was filmed by Chris Hegedus and D. A. Pennebaker and is the best surviving record of what Mailer was actually like in a room. It follows directly from Kate Millett's Sexual Politics and his reply, The Prisoner of Sex.
Is The Executioner's Song worth a thousand pages?
Yes, and it reads far faster than the length suggests. It is built almost entirely from interviews and court records, in short sections and plain sentences, and the first half — Gilmore out of prison, failing at ordinary life in Utah — is as good an account of American loneliness as anyone has written. Kirkus, reviewing it in 1979, noted what everyone noticed: the self-advertising Mailer of the previous two decades had simply vanished from the page. Lawrence Schiller filmed it in 1982 with Tommy Lee Jones, from Mailer's own screenplay.
What was The White Negro?
A 1957 essay in Dissent arguing that the American hipster was a kind of white Negro who had adopted what Mailer took to be Black experience — living with violence, danger and the present tense — as an existential stance against a conformist society. It was hugely influential and is now the piece most often cited as evidence of everything wrong with him. James Baldwin's reply, “The Black Boy Looks at the White Boy”, written as a friend rather than an enemy, is the essential companion.
What should I read after The Executioner's Song?
Capote's In Cold Blood, because the two books are in direct conversation and you can see exactly what Mailer chose to do differently. Then Robert Caro, for the same patience applied to power rather than to crime. Then Baldwin and Millett, who are the two writers who took him seriously enough to argue properly. The Armies of the Night last, once you can see the performance for what it is.
Footnotes
- The Executioner's Song — publisher description and author biography
- The Executioner's Song — Kirkus review, 1979
- Collection of Norman Mailer's writing finds a new publisher, with the BookScan sales figures — Associated Press
- Jack and Norman: a state-raised convict and the legacy of The Executioner's Song — Jerome Loving
- The Executioner's Song (1982 film) — Wikipedia
List last reviewed 23 September 2026.
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“History as a novel, the novel as history.”
— Norman Mailer, The Armies of the Night, 1968.
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