Content area
Full text
Norman Mailer, the legendary American novelist who died in November 2007, was part of that generation of ambitious writers who came of age in the postwar era, a time when the literary culture was heavily influenced by the towering legacy of Thomas Wolfe.
Wolfe, along with Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, John Dos Passos, William Faulkner, James T. Farrell, and John Steinbeck, made a huge impact on the young Mailer. His first novel, The Naked and the Dead (1948), had Wolfean overtones in both the title (think of "The Quick and the Dead" chapter in The Hills Beyond1) and the work itself. In fact, Mailer long noted that two books-Tolstoy's Anna Karenina, and Wolfe's Of Time and the River-were on his desk whenever he needed inspiration during the writing of that hugely successful novel.2
Over the years, Mailer's sentiments changed. But only slightly. In a 1966 essay he singled out Wolfe and Theodore Drei - ser as the two novelists most capable of capturing the enormity of American life, which itself had become a phenomenon "never before visible in the record of history." Mailer praised Wolfe for laboring at the great task "like a titan," but still falling short. Wolfe described American society "like the greatest fifteen-year old alive," and this effort, whatever its shortcomings, was an "invaluable achievement."3 Condescending language aside, Mailer admired Wolfe's innocence and enthusiasm. Wolfe was not as large an influence on Mailer's writing or public persona as was Hemingway, but Wolfe lingered long on Mailer's mind. In 1999 Mailer listed Look Homeward, Angel as not only one of his six favorite books, but as one of his top ten American novels, along with, among others, Huckleberry Finn, Moby Dick, The Sun Also Rises, The Grapes ofWrath, The Great Gatsby, and Studs Lonigan.4
Comparing...