I know that some people must still read him, but it seems that of big American male authors, he doesn’t get the props of Hemingway, Steinbeck or even Updike, Tom Wolfe, etc.
You don’t really read him in high school (I didn’t), which is when I was exposed to a lot of those other people.
Is “The Naked and The Dead” as much a classic as say, “For Whom the Bell Tolls”?
Anyway, I picked up “TNATD” at the library the other day, as well as “Deer Park” which I started, and am enjoying.
What’s the deal with him? Is he a “lesser” author? Just dated? Or am I way off base in my opinion?
Any favorites by him?
I’ve always known him more as a personality than a writer.
I think he is indeed considered dated, and as someone who peaked or went into self-parody a long time ago. I did read The Naked and the Dead in 10 years ago, high school, but it was by choice. I had to choose a second book to compare with one we’d previously read, so I chose Naked as a contrast to Catch-22. Catch-22 has stayed with me, but Mailer’s book generally hasn’t.
TNATD made a big hit because it won the post-war typwriter derby to publication. You can imagine the thousands of guys who thought “hey, this would make a great story!” when they were in the war. Mailer’s was not the best big war novel, just the first (it saved time for him to borrow his style from John Dos Passos).