Random House was reported to have decided to throw out a new collection Norman Mailer essays due to objections to the 1957 essay “White Negro”.
Random House has cancelled the publication of Norman Mailer essays in a compilation to commemorate the centennial of Norman Mailer’s birth. According to reports, a junior staffer opposed the title of Mailer’s 1957 essay, ‘White Negro.
According to controversial author Michael Wolff, the project was assigned an editor and had the agreement from Mailer Estate.
“With slow-mo predictability and hammer-dropping predictability Norman Mailer’s longtime publisher recently informed the Mailer families that plans to cancel a collection his political writings in celebration of the centennial anniversary of his birth, 2023,” confirms Michael Mailer, Michael Wolff’s best-selling author.
Mailer biographer J. Michael Lennon was tapped to chose the Mailer works for the collection and editor David Ebershoff had been picked to edit it, Wolff wrote in The Ankler, a new online publication by celebrity editor Janice Min.
Ebershoff, Lennon and Ebershoff did not reply to comments requests.
DailyMail.com did not receive a response from Penguin Random House.
Wolff claims that the publisher stated there was no final contract signed and the book could therefore not be cancelled.
‘You hardly have to look hard in Mailer’s work to find offenses against contemporary doctrine and respectability,’ Wolff writes, calling the author’s work ‘a psycho-sexual-druggie precursor and model for much of the psycho-sexual-druggie literature that became popular in the 1960s.’
Mailer’s essay on the cusp the Beatnik era in America calls for rejection of conformity, and for the’rebellious imperatives to the self’
According to the essay’s title, the “white negro” is a 50s-era hipster who seeks immediate satisfaction or what he refers to as the ‘burning consciousness in the present’.
Mailer compares his philosophy to the life of Black Americans.
He invites us to a “time of violence, new hyperstimulia, confusion, and rebellion” that will soon replace our time of conformity.
James Baldwin, the writer of this essay, protested against it because he felt that it relied on stereotypical views about black people as being sexually or violent.
Mailer, a World War II soldier, will be 100 next January. Even though his views were influential back then, many of them would still be controversial today.
James Baldwin, a writer at that time, was critical of the essay for promoting stereotypes about black men as being driven by base instincts to sex or violence.
Mailer was 100 years old in the year following his birth on January 31, 1923. Mailer is a left-leaning, influential literary voice post World War II. However, he was often controversial and his views on masculinity and homosexuality were at odds with modern thinking.
Although he was in World War II’s Pacific Theater, he did not see combat. The Modern Library’s Top 100 English Language Novels in the 20th century ranked 51 his first book, “The Naked and the Dead”, about his experiences with the Army.
The author went on to write 11 bestsellers, which included nonfiction, such as the account of the antiwar movement, ‘Armies of the Night’, for which he won a Pulitzer Prize.
He was a culture critic and public intellectual. His political essays were published in major publications, such as Esquire.
His 1955 founding of the Village Voice (a left-leaning weekly newspaper) was a major milestone. The paper is still online.
He attempted filmmaking, but with no success.
Mailer was known for his tendency to resort to violence and to cause controversy. Mailer once attacked his wife Adele Morales with a penknife. She lived.
Mailer is known for engaging in fights, and even headbutted Gore Vidal once in the green room of Dick Cavett’s talk show. His wife Adele Morales was also injured when he stabbed her with a penknife. He was almost fatally wounded, but he survived.
In 1969 he ran for mayor of New York City with the slogan, ‘No more bullsh**’
Mailer stated to reporters that Mailer was not good enough and could prove it.
Random House still publishes Mailer’s work including “Why are we there in Vietnam”, “Miami and The Siege of Chicago” and “Deer Park.”
Best-selling author Michael Wolff, who broke the story, wrote that the essay was the ‘model for much of the psycho-sexual-druggie literature of the 1960s’
Random House started an ambitious project in 2013 to publish his writings again for younger generations. This included a selection of essays, titled “Mind of an Outlaw”.
Gina Centrello, president of the publishing company said that Norman was an American pioneer on both the page and in real life. “It’s wonderful to relaunch these novels for a different generation.
After a string of prominent publishing cancellations over the years including the biography of Philip Roth and Blake Bailey, the Mailer collection was finally canceled.
WW Norton decided not to continue publication of the book after Bailey was accused of sexual assault. Skyhorse Publishing picked up the book, and it is now available in the UK as Penguin Random House.
Wolff claims that it should be alarming to cancel the Mailer Project because Penguin Random House controls a significant portion of the publishing market.
He wrote that there is less competition between gatekeepers, which leads to less choices and more limitations, a reduction in risk and taste, sensibility and sensibility and, when it’s harsh, more shelter for the cowardly. ‘A world without Norman Mailer—this new intellectual nanny-state—surely harms the literary consumer.’
Penguin Random House was sued by the Justice Department in November to block its purchase of Simon & Schuster, a rival publishing house.
‘If the world’s largest book publisher is permitted to acquire one of its biggest rivals, it will have unprecedented control over this important industry,’ Attorney General Merrick Garland said in a statement. ‘American authors and consumers will pay the price of this anticompetitive merger – lower advances for authors and ultimately fewer books and less variety for consumers.’