How to sum up 50 years of writing? Mailer's 31 books since 1948‘some great, some infuriating or silly, but none of them safe‘have held him a consistently high place among postwar American writers; in between his novels, his charismatic accounts of political conventions, prize fights, demonstrations, and moon landings effected a sea-change in magazine journalism, launching a thousand self-referential copycats. No subject ever seemed outside Mailer's swaggering intelligence as he evolved from young war-novelist to Existential essayist riffing above the cultural storms. Mailer doesn't need to stake his claim as a novelist or social critic: This sprawling reader does both, following Mailer's two careers by presenting novel excerpts set chronologically and thematically among his most memorable nonfiction, right up to his account of the 1996 campaign. In another half-century, will he be remembered as a great novelist or a gifted man of letters who divided his talent? Readers who don't balk at this collection's heft (1279 pages) may decide for themselves. This compilation is an ego indulgence, but even Mailer's indulgences are lucid and surprising. Recommended, but not essential.‘Nathan Ward, "Library Journal" (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

Issued as a commemoration of the fiftieth anniversary of the publication of Mailer's first novel, The Naked and the Dead, and weighing in at about the size of the Manhattan phone book, this retrospective anthology contains excerpts of exemplary works, personally selected by the great writer himself. The compilation is creatively organized; in looking back over his oeuvre, Mailer, as he posits in his, not surprisingly, brilliant introduction, realized its thematic thread is his abiding interest in writing about America. Consequently, he has positioned the pieces in this collection so that each one "appears in accordance with the year it refers to rather than the year in which it was written." Thus, as we read excerpts from Mailer's fiction and nonfiction, things are purposefully out of chronological order of composition but ultimately in perfect order in terms of overall effect; the reader witnesses Mailer's reactions to almost every step of America's evolving political and social conditions over the past 50 years. Excerpts range from a portrait of Dorothy Parker that every reader will enjoy to a segment of his novel Ancient Evenings, which many did not enjoy. A brain, a talent, a rascal, and an observer: Mailer is all these, and the mix of these elements results here in a monument, not to his ego, but to his high place in American letters. (Reviewed April 1, 1998)0375500979Brad Hooper