One of the best known and most controversial American novelists of the second half of the 20th century, Norman Mailer is also remembered for his significant contributions to the art of literary journalism (also called creative nonfiction). Armies of the Night, Mailer's narrative about the march on the Pentagon, won the National Book Award in 1968 and the Pulitzer Prize for nonfiction. Twelve years later, The Executioner's Song, his "true-life novel" about convict Gary Gilmore, was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in fiction.

"I will certainly be remembered as a journalist," he said to interviewer Gregory Kirschling (Entertainment Weekly, 2007). "In fact, I think the irony may be that I've had much more influence as a journalist than as a novelist."

In the more than 300 interviews given by Mailer over a long career, he freely expressed his views on a broad range of topics. Here we've extracted a few of his comments on writing: on the fear of writer's block (and how to overcome it), the nature of style, the relation between fiction and nonfiction, the value of writing classes, and two of his major literary influences.

"The Spooky Element in Writing"

I've written at times about the spooky element in writing. You go in each morning, and there's a blank page. Maybe it takes five minutes, maybe it takes an hour. Sooner or later you start writing, and then the words begin to flow. Where does that come from? You can't pinpoint it. You always wonder, "Will it all stop tomorrow?" In that sense it's spooky. In other words, you're relying on a phenomenon that's not necessarily dependable.
("Norman Mailer Interview," The Academy of Achievement, June 12, 2004)

One Simple Rule

Over the years, I’ve found one rule. It is the only one I give on those occasions when I talk about writing. A simple rule. If you tell yourself you are going to be at your desk tomorrow, you are by that declaration asking your unconscious to prepare the material. You are, in effect, contracting to pick up such valuables at a given time. Count on me, you are saying to a few forces below: I will be there to write.
(The Spooky Art: Some Thoughts on Writing, Random House, 2003)

Doing What's Necessary

You know, in movie-making, parenthetically, they have a wonderful phrase: "Do what is necessary." In other words, if you have to get a scene in before dark, the director will say, "Do what is necessary," and what that means is, we'll get the shot in whether it's good or it's bad. We'll have it by dark because otherwise we're lost. . . . Once you can only afford the task before you, you work quickly provided you've gotten yourself into a simple frame of mind. Most writing consists of getting into that simple frame of mind; it's very, very hard to do. You know there's so much to write about and you've chosen a little and that's always irksome, and one's always rebelling against how little there is to write about in the particular book you've chosen.
(Interviewed by Barry H. Leeds, 1987)

The Fiction of Nonfiction

But my feeling is that there's no such thing as nonfiction. Everything is fiction, because in the moment someone tries to relate an experience of what happened to them, it's gone. The reality that was felt at the moment is almost impossible to describe. It's one reason why there are writers, to come close to how it felt when it happened.
("Norman Mailer Interview," The Academy of Achievement, June 12, 2004)

The Value of Writing Classes

I learned a great deal from writing classes. I don't sneer at them. . . . [W]hat is good is you get a wonderful sense of audience. . . . And it also chops down that terribly unstable vanity that young writers have, you know, where they think, "I'm a great writer," and at the same time they can't take a single criticism, and writing courses are good for that. They weather you. It's a little bit like a kid who wants to play varsity football but never tries out for the team. So you go to that writing class and you get toughened up a little.
("Norman Mailer Interview," The Academy of Achievement, June 12, 2004)

Style

A really good style comes only when a man has become as good as he can be. Style is character. A good style cannot come from a bad, undisciplined character. . . . I think good style is a matter of rendering out of oneself all the cupidities, all the cripplings, all velleities. And then I think one has to develop one's physical grace.
(Interviewed by Steven Marcus, The Paris Review, Winter-Spring 1964)

The Influence of Ernest Hemingway and William Faulkner

I got a sense of the power of restraint from Hemingway, which is the smallest way to put it, because I got much more than that from him. I learned the power of simple language in English. He showed what a powerful instrument English is if you keep the language simple, if you don't use too many Latinate words. And from Faulkner I learned the exact opposite, that excess can be thrilling, that, "Don't hold yourself in. Don't rein yourself in. Go all the way. Go over the top. Overdo it." And between the two, it's almost as if you've now been given your parameters. This is the best of one extreme and this is the best of another. And somewhere between the two you may be able to find your style in time to come.
("Norman Mailer Interview," The Academy of Achievement, June 12, 2004)

Selected Works of Nonfiction by Norman Mailer:

• Advertisements for Myself (Putnam's, 1959)
• Armies of the Night (New American Library, 1968)
• Miami and the Siege of Chicago: An Informal History of the Republican and Democratic Conventions of 1968 (New American Library, 1968)
• The Fight (Little, Brown and Company, 1975)
• The Executioner's Song (Little, Brown and Company, 1979)
• Pieces and Pontifications (Little, Brown and Company, 1982)
• The Spooky Art: Some Thoughts on Writing (Random House, 2003)