Norman mailer brief biography of joel

Norman Mailer

Throughout history, few authors have influenced a national fabric so greatly as Norman Mailer.  During the turbulent Sixties, he developed a form of journalism that combines real-life events such as autobiography and political commentary with the rich tableau of descriptive words endemic of the novel.  Mailer's works have aroused controversy because of both their stylish nonconformity and his controversial views of American life.  Poet Robert Lowell praised him as "the best journalist in America," although he was less lavish when evaluating the author's fiction.

Mailer was born on January 31, 1923, in Long Branch, New Jersey, of Jewish immigrant parents from Lithuania.  When he was still a child, the family moved to Brooklyn, New York, where Mailer grew up to become a tough kid in an even tougher neighborhood.  He soon learned how to fend for himself. 

At the age of nine, he wrote a 250-page story in notebooks, called In