Norman Mailer

Norman Mailer
Mailer in 1967
Born	Nachem Malech Mailer (1923-01-31)January 31, 1923 Long Branch, New Jersey, U.S.
Died	November 10, 2007(2007-11-10) (aged 84) New York City, U.S.
Occupation	Novelist essayist journalist columnist poet playwright
Education	Harvard University (BS)
Period	1941–2007
Notable works	The Naked and the Dead (1948) The Armies of the Night (1968) The Executioner's Song (1979)
Spouses	Beatrice Silverman ​ ​ (m. 1944; div. 1952)​ Adele Morales ​ ​ (m. 1954; div. 1962)​ Jeanne Campbell ​ ​ (m. 1962; div. 1963)​ Beverly Bentley ​ ​ (m. 1963; div. 1980)​ Carol Stevens ​ ​ (m. 1980; div. 1980)​ [a] Barbara Davis ​ (m. 1980)​
Children	9, including Susan, Kate, Michael, Stephen, and John
Signature

Nachem Malech Mailer (January 31, 1923 – November 10, 2007), known by his pen name Norman Kingsley Mailer, was an American writer and filmmaker. In a career spanning more than six decades, Mailer had 11 best-selling books, at least one in each of the seven decades after World War II.^[1]

His novel The Naked and the Dead was published in 1948 and brought him early renown. His 1968 nonfiction novel The Armies of the Night won the Pulitzer Prize for nonfiction as well as the National Book Award. Among his other well-known works are An American Dream (1965), The Fight (1975) and The Executioner's Song (1979), which won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction.

Mailer is considered an innovator of "creative nonfiction" or "New Journalism", along with Truman Capote, Joan Didion, Hunter S. Thompson, and Tom Wolfe, a genre that uses the style and devices of literary fiction in factual journalism. He was a prominent cultural commentator and critic, expressing his often controversial views through his novels, journalism, frequent press appearances, and essays, the most famous and reprinted of which is "The White Negro". In 1955, he and three others founded The Village Voice, an arts and politics-oriented weekly newspaper distributed in Greenwich Village.

In 1960, Mailer was convicted of assault and served a three-year probation after he stabbed his wife Adele Morales with a penknife, nearly killing her. In 1969, he ran an unsuccessful campaign to become the mayor of New York. Mailer was married six times and had nine children.

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