![]() Mailer became a celebrity at the age of twenty-five, with the publication, in 1948, of “The Naked and the Dead.” The experience of fame, in Mailer’s own view, transformed his sense of what constituted meaningful life experience. He was also something of a spoiled and fearful child-by his own account, a “physical coward.” Why did Mailer not want to write about the Brooklyn of his youth? Did he hesitate to reveal stories about his parents? (His father, a compulsive gambler, was often in debt, on the edge of legal trouble, and frequently unemployed.) Did he not want to write about his days of sheltered timidity? Was there some other aspect of his early years that he found unspeakable? Was he sparing his family-or himself? Or did he simply look at his background and find it wanting? The grandson of a rabbi who struggled in business, the son of a picaresque bookkeeper and an adoring mother, he was a brilliant student and precocious writer. ![]() ![]() ![]() Michael Lennon’s new biography, “ Norman Mailer: A Double Life” (which Louis Menand reviews in the magazine this week), offers a remarkable view of Mailer’s youth. ![]()
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