A Mysterious Country
The Grace and Fragility of American Democracy
Published on 31. January 2023
312 pages
978-1-956763-59-1 (ISBN)
Description
Published on the centenary of Norman Mailer's birth, a timely and urgent call to preserve our democracy
From his bestselling first novel, The Naked and the Dead, to his last work, American democracy was a lifelong project for Norman Mailer. It was his grand theme. Nearly all of his books touched on the pros and cons, the strengths and weaknesses, the grace (to use his word) and fragility of the American experiment as well as the threats to it-from autocratic leaders and a complacent citizenry, from violent protest and radical conservative assaults on it, from "soft fascism" and the ills of racism and poverty. In the sharp and impassioned language of a political Cassandra and with the eye of a novelist and journalist, he explored the underlying psychological, social, and economic causes of the country's fragile polity and offered urgent prescriptions for its reinvigoration.
A Mysterious Country is a carefully selected collection of Mailer's most incisive-and sometimes remarkably prophetic-commentary on American democracy and what must be done to safeguard it. The anthology draws on both published and unpublished sources, from Mailer's great works of narrative nonfiction and novels as well as essays, interviews, letters, speeches, and talk show appearances. It includes pungent remarks on every president from FDR through George W. Bush, as well as correspondence with several. Throughout, what shines through is Mailer's passion for our democratic project-as well as the freedom that comes with it-and a keen awareness of its potential for failure, its virtues, and what is required of us to keep it intact.
From his bestselling first novel, The Naked and the Dead, to his last work, American democracy was a lifelong project for Norman Mailer. It was his grand theme. Nearly all of his books touched on the pros and cons, the strengths and weaknesses, the grace (to use his word) and fragility of the American experiment as well as the threats to it-from autocratic leaders and a complacent citizenry, from violent protest and radical conservative assaults on it, from "soft fascism" and the ills of racism and poverty. In the sharp and impassioned language of a political Cassandra and with the eye of a novelist and journalist, he explored the underlying psychological, social, and economic causes of the country's fragile polity and offered urgent prescriptions for its reinvigoration.
A Mysterious Country is a carefully selected collection of Mailer's most incisive-and sometimes remarkably prophetic-commentary on American democracy and what must be done to safeguard it. The anthology draws on both published and unpublished sources, from Mailer's great works of narrative nonfiction and novels as well as essays, interviews, letters, speeches, and talk show appearances. It includes pungent remarks on every president from FDR through George W. Bush, as well as correspondence with several. Throughout, what shines through is Mailer's passion for our democratic project-as well as the freedom that comes with it-and a keen awareness of its potential for failure, its virtues, and what is required of us to keep it intact.
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Persons
Norman Mailer was a giant of American letters and one of our most consequential public intellectuals of the postwar period. A two-time winner of the Pulitzer Prize and winner of the National Book Award, he was an originator of new journalism and cofounder of the Village Voice. He was the author of twelve novels, among them The Naked and the Dead and Harlot's Ghost, and numerous works of nonfiction, many probing American politics and society, including The Armies of the Night, Miami and the Siege of Chicago, and TheExecutioner's Song, as well as several plays and screenplays. He was also a lifelong activist who ran for mayor of New York City in 1969. He died in 2007.
J. Michael Lennon, emeritus professor of English at Wilkes University and chair of the editorial board of the Mailer Review, is the author or editor of several books about Norman Mailer, including his monumental authorized biography, Norman Mailer: A Double Life; Selected Letters of Norman Mailer; and On God: An Uncommon Conversation, coauthored with Mailer. His work has appeared in The New Yorker, the Paris Review, New York Review of Books, New York, Washington Post, Chicago Tribune, Times Literary Supplement, Provincetown Arts, Hippocampus, and Mailer Review. He teaches in the Maslow Family Graduate Creative Writing Program at Wilkes University, which he cofounded in 2005. He lives in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania.
John Buffalo Mailer is an award-winning screenwriter, journalist, playwright, actor, and producer. He is currently creative director for the development and production company Mailer Tuchman Media and is executive-producing a feature Showtime documentary about the life of his father, directed by Emmy Award-winner Jeff Zimbalist. He is also creating a dramatic scripted series of his father's life directed by James Gray and based on J. Michael Lennon's Norman Mailer: A Double Life. He has appeared on Fox News, Air America, Democracy Now, WNYC, TheBigThink.com, CSPAN's Book TV, WPIX New York, and HuffPost Live,among others. As a journalist, he has freelanced for Playboy, New York Magazine, ESPN Books, The Norman Mailer Review, The American Conservative, Vector, and Inked Magazine, among others. He lives with his wife, actress Claudia Maree Mailer, in Brooklyn, New York.
J. Michael Lennon, emeritus professor of English at Wilkes University and chair of the editorial board of the Mailer Review, is the author or editor of several books about Norman Mailer, including his monumental authorized biography, Norman Mailer: A Double Life; Selected Letters of Norman Mailer; and On God: An Uncommon Conversation, coauthored with Mailer. His work has appeared in The New Yorker, the Paris Review, New York Review of Books, New York, Washington Post, Chicago Tribune, Times Literary Supplement, Provincetown Arts, Hippocampus, and Mailer Review. He teaches in the Maslow Family Graduate Creative Writing Program at Wilkes University, which he cofounded in 2005. He lives in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania.
John Buffalo Mailer is an award-winning screenwriter, journalist, playwright, actor, and producer. He is currently creative director for the development and production company Mailer Tuchman Media and is executive-producing a feature Showtime documentary about the life of his father, directed by Emmy Award-winner Jeff Zimbalist. He is also creating a dramatic scripted series of his father's life directed by James Gray and based on J. Michael Lennon's Norman Mailer: A Double Life. He has appeared on Fox News, Air America, Democracy Now, WNYC, TheBigThink.com, CSPAN's Book TV, WPIX New York, and HuffPost Live,among others. As a journalist, he has freelanced for Playboy, New York Magazine, ESPN Books, The Norman Mailer Review, The American Conservative, Vector, and Inked Magazine, among others. He lives with his wife, actress Claudia Maree Mailer, in Brooklyn, New York.
