Norman Mailer and the Modernist Turn

This study is a comprehensive scholarly treatment of Norman Mailers entire uvre, including not only his fiction and non-fiction, but also his correspondence, his early journal articles and his interviews. It outlines Mailers Entwicklungsgeschichte, illuminating the lines of continuity and discontinuity in his literary achievement and shows Mailers work to be firmly ensconced in the tradition of Modernism and inspired by the Pound-Eliot axis. It argues that Mailers literary opus is intertwined with his worldview, which, despite its inconsistencies and contradictions, contains a systematic structure.