The Time of Our Time
978-0-375-50097-8
The Time of Our Time is an anthology of Norman Mailer's various literary works, published by Modern Library in 1998. The work was designed to commemorate both the fiftieth anniversary of The Naked and the Dead (1948), and Mailer's seventy-fifth birthday. Norman Mailer edited the anthology himself, choosing to organize the content not by the chronology in which the pieces are written, but the chronology of the events that the works describe; some of the excerpts are written in the midst of the action, while others may come upon forty years of reflection. Selected texts that deal with the ancient world, however, appear out of sequence at the end of the volume. (Mailer's explanation: "Nobody is perfect.") Excerpts from Mailer's most notable works, including The Naked and the Dead, Advertisements for Myself (1959), "Superman Comes to the Supermarket" (1960), The Armies of the Night (1968), Miami and the Siege of Chicago (1968), Of a Fire on the Moon (1970), and The Executioner's Song (1979), as well as several works in their entirety, including "The White Negro: Superficial Reflections on the Hipster" (1957), "The Time of Her Time" (1959), and various transcribed and annotated interviews with the likes of William F. Buckley, Gore Vidal, Kate Millett, and John Ehrlichman.[1]
Mailer endeavored to produce not an anthology, but a book that offers "some hint at a social and cultural history over these last fifty years." The compendium he produced reflects the way his sense of the character shifted each decade, and many of the works derive from his sense of the value of fiction. "There is little in this book even when it comes under the formal category of non-fiction or argument," he writes, "that has not derived, then, from my understanding of how one writes fiction."[2]
The New York Times review of The Time of Our Time characterizes the work as a "neatly interwoven" collection that tells a story of its own, a "social history of postwar America, at the heart of which is Mailer's own tangled love affair with this country." And while "Mailer's technical skills may not have declined in the ensuing decades, his cultural authority has, and The Time of Our Time offers some clues as to why."[3] Meanwhile, The Hudson Review admitted that despite "all its weaknesses," The Time of Our Time "does add up to a relatively coherent subjective account of our times," covering such topics as the Cold War, the Kennedy assassination, the civil rights and antiwar movements, the Moon landing, women's lib, and Watergate, among others.[4]
Notes
- ^ Mailer, Norman (1998). Preface to The Time of Our Time. New York: Random House Inc., 1998.
- ^ Mailer, Norman (1998). Preface to The Time of Our Time. New York: Random House Inc., 1998.
- ^ "Advertisements for Himself". archive.nytimes.com. Retrieved January 31, 2023.
- ^ Bawer, Bruce. "Time's Up". The Hudson Review, Winter, 1999. http://www.brucebawer.com/mailer.htm
References
- Mailer, Norman. The Time of Our Time. New York: Random House Inc., 1998.
- https://www.nytimes.com/books/98/05/10/reviews/980510.10shapirt.html
- http://www.brucebawer.com/mailer.htm
- v
- t
- e
- The Naked and the Dead
- Barbary Shore
- The Deer Park
- An American Dream
- The Short Fiction of Norman Mailer
- Why Are We in Vietnam?
- A Transit to Narcissus
- The Executioner's Song
- Of Women and Their Elegance
- Ancient Evenings
- Tough Guys Don't Dance
- Harlot's Ghost
- The Gospel According to the Son
- The Castle in the Forest
- The White Negro
- Advertisements for Myself
- "Superman Comes to the Supermarket"
- "In the Red Light"
- The Presidential Papers
- Cannibals and Christians
- The Bullfight
- The Armies of the Night
- The Idol and the Octopus
- Miami and the Siege of Chicago
- Of a Fire on the Moon
- King of the Hill
- The Prisoner of Sex
- Existential Errands
- St. George and The Godfather
- The Faith of Graffiti
- The Fight
- Genius and Lust
- Of a Small and Modest Malignancy, Wicked and Bristling with Dots
- Pieces and Pontifications
- The Spooky Art
- Why Are We At War?
- Marilyn: A Biography
- Oswald's Tale
- Portrait of Picasso as a Young Man
- Norman Mailer's Letters on An American Dream, 1963-1969
- The Selected Letters of Norman Mailer
- Beyond the Law
- Wild 90
- Maidstone
- Town Bloody Hall
- Tough Guys Don't Dance
- The Executioner's Song
- American Tragedy
- Master Spy: The Robert Hanssen Story
- Strawhead (play)
- The Deer Park (play)
- Deaths for the Ladies (and Other Disasters) (poetry)
- Some Honorable Men (anthology)
- The Time of Our Time (anthology)
- Modest Gifts (poems and drawings)
- The Big Empty (conversations)
- On God (conversations)
- Lipton’s: A Marijuana Journal (journal)
adaptations
- The Naked and the Dead
- An American Dream
- Marilyn: The Untold Story
- Adele Morales (second wife)
- Jeanne Campbell (third wife)
- Beverly Bentley (fourth wife)
- Norris Church Mailer (wife)
- Kate Mailer (daughter)
- Michael Mailer (son)
- Stephen Mailer (son)
- John Buffalo Mailer (son)
- Norman Mailer Prize
- Stabbing of Adele Morales by Norman Mailer
- New York City: the 51st State
- In the Belly of the Beast
- J. Michael Lennon (biographer)
- The Norman Mailer Society
- Norman Mailer bibliography
- The Mailer Review
- River of Fundament