English language
Published Sept. 15, 1992
Advertisements for Myself
4 stars
(2 reviews)
Advertisements for Myself is an omnibus collection of fiction, essays, verse, and fragments by Norman Mailer, with autobiographical commentaries that he calls "advertisements." 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.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" and serving as Mailer's "announcement that he was king of the literary hill." While initial sales were modest, Advertisements received many strong reviews, notably from Alfred Kazin and Irving …
Advertisements for Myself is an omnibus collection of fiction, essays, verse, and fragments by Norman Mailer, with autobiographical commentaries that he calls "advertisements." 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.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" and serving as Mailer's "announcement that he was king of the literary hill." 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.
