Pieces

by Norman Mailer

Genres: Nonfiction

208 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1982

About the author

Norman Kingsley Mailer was an American novelist, journalist, essayist, poet, playwright, screenwriter, and film director.

Along with Truman Capote, Joan Didion, and Tom Wolfe, Mailer is considered an innovator of creative nonfiction, a genre sometimes called New Journalism, but which covers the essay to the nonfiction novel. He was awarded the Pulitzer Prize twice and the National Book Award once. In 1955, Mailer, together with Ed Fancher and Dan Wolf, first published The Village Voice, which began as an arts- and politics-oriented weekly newspaper initially distributed in Greenwich Village. In 2005, he won the Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters from The National Book Foundation.

Reviews

[Unbridled · Rating 3 out of 5]

True to form Mailer exasperates and delights, a most unusual combination – at times he misses so badly you pity the swing, but at others, he swings so hard and connects so completely you watch with awe as the stone careens into space to take its place among the stars. As this mixed sports metaphor suggests, reading him has its osmotic influence. Pieces consists of essays, which, contrary to most, I think is where both Mailer, and his redoubtable former enemy, Gore Vidal, do their best work – his essay on television, 'Of a Small and Modest Malignancy,' part of which recounts his legendary Dick Cavett showdown with Vidal, is worth the price of admission alone. Some of Mailer's arguments can become tiresome, overly mystical and sloppy, but even then I admire his sincerity and ambition – where his stone settles at the bottom of the immortals' stream remains to be seen, but it's unfortunate that his dense and baroque style of writing has disappeared from the contemporary scene. Where is the ambition in writers today? Who dares greatness at the risk of being perceived the fool?