Advertisements for Myself

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Advertisements for Myself
Author Norman Mailer
Country United States of America
Language English
Genre collection of various genres, autobiography
Published 1959
Publisher Harvard University Press
ISBN 0-674-00590-2

Advertisements for Myself is an omnibus collection of short works and fragments by Norman Mailer, linked with commentaries supplied by the author himself. Throughout the collection, each piece is introduced with an "advertisement," written in italics, which presents Mailer's "tastes, preferences, apologies, prides, and occasional confessions."[1] The collection, which was published by G.P. Putnam's Sons in 1959, features stories from Mailer's days as a student at Harvard College as well as later works.[1]

Cover of first edition

A Note to the Reader

This section explains the book's two table of contents. The first lists the contents of the book in chronological order, while the second table of contents categorizes the pieces based on genre, such as fiction, essays, and interviews.[2] Mailer lists what he believes are his best pieces in the book, which are: The Man Who Studied Yoga, "The White Negro," The "Time of Her Time," "Dead Ends," and "Advertisements for Myself on the Way Out." After this section and before Part One is "First Advertisement for Myself," where Mailer describes the value of his work and his largest influence, Ernest Hemingway.[3]

Part One: Beginnings

The first section includes Mailer's earliest works that he wrote as a student at Harvard. Mailer admits that he is not particularly proud of the pieces in this section, but has included them for the readers who are interested in his early works.[4] The works included in this section are:

  • Advertisement for "A Calculus At Heaven"
  • A Calculus At Heaven (short novel)
  • Advertisement for "The Greatest Thing in the World"
  • "The Greatest Thing in the World" (short story)
  • Advertisement for "Maybe Next Year"
  • "Maybe Next Year" (short story)

Part Two: Middles

The second section features the short stories Mailer wrote hoping to keep up with the fame and notoriety that followed his best selling novel, The Naked and the Dead.[5]

  • Second Advertisement for myself
  • Excerpts from Barbary Shore
  • Third Advertisement for myself
  • Advertisement for "Three War Stories"
  • "The Paper House"
  • "The Language of Men"
  • "The Dead Gook"
  • Advertisement for "The Notebook"
  • "The Notebook"
  • Advertisement for "The Man Who Studied Yoga."
  • "The Man Who Studied Yoga" (A short novel which served the prologue for The Deer Park)
  • Advertisement for "Three Political Pieces"
  • "Our Country and Our Culture" (Partisan Review Symopsium)
  • "David Riesman Reconsidered"
  • "The Meaning of Western Defense.

Part Three: Births

The third section consists of Mailer's writings for Time, Newsweek, and One, ending with several columns written for The Village Voice. The primary features of this section are:

  • Advertisement for Part Three
  • Advertisement for "The Homosexual Villain"
  • "The Homosexual Villain"
  • Fourth Advertisement for myself: The Last Draft of The Deer Park
  • Three Excerpts From Rinehart and Putnam Versions of The Deer Park [6]
  • Two Reviews: Time and Newsweek
  • Postscript to the Fourth Advertisement for myself
  • Advertisement for Sixty-Nine Questions and Answers
  • "Sixty-Nine Questions and Answers" (an interview with Lyle Stuart)
  • Fifth Advertisement for myself: General Marijuana
  • The Village Voice: First Three Columns
  • Postscript to the first three columns
  • The Village Voice: Columns Four to Seventeen
  • Advertisement for the End of a Column and a Public Notice
  • A Public Notice on Waiting for Godot
  • Postscript to a Public Notice

Part Four: Hipsters

In the fourth section, Mailer criticizes the cultural movement of the Beat Generation and questions what exactly it means to be hip during the 1950s. Along with the highly controversial essay The White Negro, this section consists of a series of advertisements, exchanges, interviews, and essays, including:

  • Sixth Advertisement for myself
  • Note to "Reflections on Hip"
  • "Reflections on Hip"
  • "Hipster and Beatnik"
  • Advertisement for "Hip, Hell, and the Navigator"
  • "Hip, Hell, and the Navigator"

Part Five: Games and Ends

In Part Five's "advertisement," Mailer describes how he has structured the remainder of the book because, "it is small profit for me to ambush my readers needlessly" (390)[1]

  • Advertisement for “Games and Ends”- Mailer offers some remaining thoughts about the last section of the book.
  • Advertisement for “It"- Mailer gives the inspiration for writing his shortest short story.
  • "It"- Mailer's shortest story, "It" is just a few sentences long about someone dying.
  • Advertisement for “Great in the Hay”-Mailer says this story was the basis for The Deer Park.
  • Great in the Hay- This short story about two men, one a better lover than the other, brings about a sense of old Hollywood.
  • Advertisement for “The Patron Saint of Macdougal Alley"- Mailer says this story was sent to The New Yorker who would not publish it.
  • The Patron Saint of Macdougal Alley -A short story about Pierrot, a philosopher who does not know it.
  • Advertisement for A Letter to the New York Post-
  • A Letter to the New York Post
  • How to Commit Murder in the Mass Media—A
  • How to Commit Murder in the Mass Media—B
  • Advertisement for Buddies- One begins to write a play but becomes distracted by dark outside interferences.
  • Buddies, or The Hole in the Summit
  • Postscript to Buddies
  • Advertisement for “Notes Toward a Psychology of the Orgy”
  • The Hip and the Square
    • 1. The List- A composed list of words that creates a story in the form of a poem
    • 2. Catholic and Protestant
    • 3. T-Formation and Single Wing
  • A Note on Comparative Pornography
  • From Surplus Value to the Mass-Media
  • Sources—A Riddle in Psychical Economy
  • Lament of a Lady
  • I Got Two Kids and Another in the Oven
  • Advertisement for The Deer Park as a Play
  • The Deer Park (Scenes 2, 3, and 4)
  • An Eye on Picasso
  • Evaluations: Quick and Expensive Comments on the Talent in the Room
  • Last Advertisement for Myself before the Way Out
  • A Note for “The Time of Her Time”
  • The Time of Her Time
  • Advertisement for “Dead Ends”
  • Dead Ends (a long poem)
  • Advertisements for Myself on the Way Out

Reactions

The first edition from Putnam featured a photograph of Mailer wearing a yachting cap for which the author was criticized. Mailer defended the photo on the grounds the hat made him look "handsome."[7]

David Brooks of the New York Times cited the book as an example of a then-emergent and now-ubiquitous culture of self-exposure and self-love that stands in stark contrast to the humility that exemplified America at the close of World War II.[8]

Ernest Hemingway, in a letter to George Plimpton, characterized the book “as a sort of ragtag assembly of his rewrites, second thoughts and ramblings shot through with occasional brilliance."[9][citation needed]

Harry T. Moore, who was the founder of the first branch of the NAACP, describes Norman Mailer's stories as "vigorous and often amusing attacks on the society the Squares have built".[10] He would later go on to describe the collections as having interesting views on society.

Gore Vidal, a literary journalist, describes the collection as a "wide graveyard of still-born talents which contains so much of the brief ignoble history of American letters is a tribute to the power of a democracy to destroy its critics, brave fools and passionate men".[11] As he continued to view Mailer's collection, he would later believe them to have been revolutionary in the development of the literary world.

Cultural Influence

While not initially famous to the overall public, Advertisements for Myself appealed to a genre of people considered outcasts at their time in society. For those who enjoyed the collection, it was described as having "won the admiration of a younger generation seeking alternative styles of life and art."[12] It would, however, be considered the peak of Mailer's literary career, often being cited as his most remembered work. Altogether, most people would find creative inspiration in this new form of literary revolution, often being considered the reason the younger generation at the time were able to find it inspirational. Many also believed that this work "gave Mailer a new audience and set the stage for the sixties"[13] as it gave way to a new movement through the voices of the younger generation.

References

  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  2. ↑ Advertisements for Myself at Harvard University Press
  3. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  4. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  5. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  6. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  7. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  8. ↑ High-Five Nation, NY Times, Sept. 15, 2009
  9. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  10. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  11. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  12. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  13. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.

Reviews

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