Mind of an Outlaw contains 50 of Norman Mailer's best essays, selected by Philip Sipiora, the editor of The Mailer Review. At more than 600 pages, it's mighty impressive--and so are the essays. Many have argued about Mailer the novelist, but there's no arguing about Mailer the essayist--he was outstanding.
From the groundbreaking 1957 essay "The White Negro," about the birth of the hipster and the cultural influence of black Americans, to 2004's "Immodest Proposals," which presciently notes "Roe v. Wade probably repels more good conservatives than any other item in the liberal canon," Mailer repeatedly shows that he could write, think and be an outlaw--a witty, pen-wielding one--and a social nonconformist.
These essays are very readable. Mailer's sentences consist of clean, strong prose, generally eschewing the fussiness of the semicolon or colon. Although he found some fault with Hemingway's canon, he certainly imbibed the master's prose style. He could grab your ear immediately, make you laugh or snicker with a turn of phrase. Take, for example, the descriptions of his literary contemporaries in "Quick Evaluations on the Talent in the Room." Jack Kerouac was "pretentious as a rich whore"; J.D. Salinger the "greatest mind ever to stay in prep school"; and James Baldwin one of the "most tortured and magical nerves of our time."
These insightful essays educate, argue and persuade on everything from politics and literature to film, philosophy and the human condition. We could surely use an essayist or television pundit as witty, opinionated and smart as Mailer today. --Tom Lavoie, former publisher