Skip to main content Accessibility help

We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.

Close cookie message
×
  1. Home
  2. Search

Refine search

Refine search

Access:
Content type:
Publication date:
Apply   From and To filters
Subject: Show more
Journals Show more
Publishers: Show more
Societies Show more
Series: Show more
Collections: Show more

Actions for selected content:

Select all | Deselect all
  • View selected items
  • Export citations
  • Download PDF (zip)
  • Save to Kindle
  • Save to Dropbox
  • Save to Google Drive

Save Search

You can save your searches here and later view and run them again in "My saved searches".

Please provide a title, maximum of 40 characters.
Cancel
×

1 results

  • Chapter 29 - The Criminal Mind

  • from Part VI - Profiles and Literary Biographies
  • Edited by Maggie McKinley
  • Book:
    Norman Mailer in Context
    Published online:
    05 August 2021
    Print publication:
    26 August 2021, pp 322-332

  • Summary

    This chapter provides an overview of Mailer’s fixation on criminality, and the duality and complexity he often found in criminal figures. This fascination is most apparent in his treatments of Gary Gilmore and Lee Harvey Oswald, and in his support for Jack Abbott, the contexts for which are discussed here. In 1975, Mailer published his Pulitzer Prize-winning work The Executioner’s Song, which probed the depths of Gary Gilmore’s psyche, examined the individuals and environment that helped to shape him, and recounted the media circus that followed his much publicized trial. While working on the novel, Mailer began corresponding with convicted criminal Jack Abbott and, intrigued by Abbott’s intellectual and creative sides, vouched for Abbott’s parole request in 1981, which was granted with tragic consequences, when Abbott murdered a waiter shortly after his release. In the 1990s, Mailer published Oswald’s Tale, a literary biography that also reveals Mailer’s fixation on the psychology and dual eccentricities and banalities of the criminal.