 Cover of first edition | |
| Author | Norman Mailer |
|---|---|
| Language | English |
| Genre | collection of various genres, autobiography |
| Published | 1959 |
| Publisher | Harvard University Press |
| Publication place | United States of America |
| ISBN | 0-674-00590-2 |
Advertisements for Myself is an omnibus collection of fiction, essays, verse, and fragments by Norman Mailer, with autobiographical commentaries that he calls "advertisements."[1] Advertisements was published by G.P. Putnam's Sons in 1959 after Mailer secured his reputation with The Naked and the Dead, then endured setbacks with the less-enthusiastic reception of Barbary Shore (1951) and The Deer Park (1955). Advertisements, though chaotic, unapologetically defiant, and often funny, marks the beginning of Mailer's mature style.[2]
Advertisements, with its new interest in counterculture, politics, and sexual liberation, is a key book among the dozens that Mailer produced and helped to create his persona as a swaggering, anti-establishment writer and explore "the web of relations between personal valor and virtue and literary growth and mastery"[3] and serving as Mailer's "announcement that he was king of the literary hill."[4] While initial sales were modest, Advertisements received many strong reviews, notably from Alfred Kazin and Irving Howe, and the New York Times Book Review, Partisan Review, and the Village Voice.[5]
- ^ Mailer, Norman (1959). Advertisements for Myself. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. ISBN 0-674-00590-2.
- ^ Dupee, F. W. (1972). "The American Norman Mailer". In Braudy, Leo (ed.). Norman Mailer: A Collection of Critical Essays. Prentice Hall. pp. 97. ISBN 0135455332.
- ^ Lennon, J. Michael (2014). Norman Mailer: A Double Life. New York: Simon and Schuster. p. 150. ISBN 978-1439150214.
- ^ Feeney, Mark (2007). "Norman Mailer, Self-titled King of the Literary Hill, dies at 84."
- ^ Lennon, Double Life, p. 256-57.