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 short works and fragments by Norman Mailer, linked with commentaries supplied by the author himself. Throughout the collection, each piece is introduced with an "advertisement," written in italics, which presents Mailer's "tastes, preferences, apologies, prides, and occasional confessions."[1] 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]

A Note to the Reader

This section explains the book's two table 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.[2] 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." After this section and before Part One is "First Advertisement for Myself," where Mailer describes the value of his work and his largest influence, Ernest Hemingway.[3]

Part One: Beginnings

The first section includes Mailer's earliest works that he wrote as 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.[4] The works included 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.[5]

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 during the 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 Part Five's "advertisement," Mailer describes how he has structured the remainder of the book because, "it is small profit for me to ambush my readers needlessly" (390)[1]

Reactions

The first edition from Putnam featured a photograph of Mailer wearing a yachting cap for which the author was criticized. Mailer defended the photo on the grounds the hat made him look "handsome."[7]

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.[8]

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."[9]

Harry T. Moore, who was the founder of the first branch of the NAACP, describes Norman Mailer's stories as "vigorous and often amusing attacks on the society the Squares have built".[10] He would later go on to describe the collections as having interesting views on society.

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 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.

Cultural Influence

While not initially famous to the overall public, Advertisements for Myself appealed to a genre of people considered outcasts at their time 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."[12] It would, however, be considered the peak of Mailer's literary career, often being cited as his most remembered work. Altogether, most people would find creative inspiration in this new form of literary revolution, often being considered the reason the younger generation at the time were able to find it inspirational. Many also believed that this work "gave Mailer a new audience and set the stage for the sixties"[13] as it gave way to a new movement through the voices of the younger generation.

References

  1. 1 2 3 "Advertisements for Myself — Norman Mailer | Harvard University Press". www.hup.harvard.edu. Retrieved 2016-03-31.
  2. ↑ Advertisements for Myself at Harvard University Press
  3. ↑ Mailer, Norman (1959). Advertisements for Myself. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. ISBN 0674005902.
  4. ↑ Mailer, Norman (1959). Advertisements for Myself. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. ISBN 0-674-00590-2.
  5. ↑ Mailer, Norman (1992). Advertisements For Myself. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press. p. 91. ISBN 0-674-00590-2.
  6. ↑ Thomson, David (2014-06-11). "Norman Mailer's Hollywood". New Republic. Retrieved 2016-04-04.
  7. ↑ Dearborn, Mary (1999), Mailer: A biography, New York: Houghton Mifflin Company, p. 147, ISBN 0-395-73655-2, [Mailer's publisher, Walter] Minton thought the photograph Mailer wanted for the cover — of him in a yachting cap — was a little silly, but Mailer thought it made him look handsome, and he argued Minton down.
  8. ↑ High-Five Nation, NY Times, Sept. 15, 2009
  9. ↑ Plimpton, George. "Interviews". The Paris Review.
  10. ↑ Moore, Harry T. (1959). "The Targets are Square". The New York Times. Retrieved April 12, 2016.
  11. ↑ Vidal, Gore (3 August 2012). "The Norman Mailer Syndrome". lareviewofbooks.org. LA Review of Books. Retrieved 12 April 2016.
  12. ↑ "Bilbiography of Norman Mailer". Brittannica.com. Brittanica Online. 8 August 2015. Retrieved 12 April 2016.
  13. ↑ "A Brief History of Norman Mailer". Pbs.org. Pbs.org. 19 October 2001. Retrieved 12 April 2016.

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