The Spooky Art
  • Published: 10 February 2004
  • ISBN: 9780812971286
  • Imprint: Random House US Group
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 352
  • RRP: $39.99

The Spooky Art

Thoughts on Writing

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Reissued in a gorgeous new Random House Trade Paperbacks edition.

“Writing is spooky,” according to Norman Mailer. “There is no routine of an office to keep you going, only the blank page each morning, and you never know where your words are coming from, those divine words.” In The Spooky Art, Mailer discusses with signature candor the rewards and trials of the writing life, and recommends the tools to navigate it. Addressing the reader in a conversational tone, he draws on the best of more than fifty years of his own criticism, advice, and detailed observations about the writer’s craft.
 
Praise for The Spooky Art
 
“The Spooky Art shows Mailer’s brave willingness to take on demanding forms and daunting issues. . . . He has been a thoughtful and stylish witness to the best and worst of the American century.”—The Boston Globe
 
“At his best—as artists should be judged—Mailer is indispensable, an American treasure. There is enough of his best in this book for it to be welcomed with gratitude.”—The Washington Post
 
“[The Spooky Art] should nourish and inform—as well as entertain—almost any serious reader of the novel.”—Baltimore Sun

“The richest book ever written about the writer’s subconscious.”—The Philadelphia Inquirer
 
“Striking . . . entrancingly frank.”—Entertainment Weekly
 
Praise for Norman Mailer
 
“[Norman Mailer] loomed over American letters longer and larger than any other writer of his generation.”—The New York Times
 
“A writer of the greatest and most reckless talent.”—The New Yorker
 
“A devastatingly alive and original creative mind.”—Life
 
“Mailer is fierce, courageous, and reckless and nearly everything he writes has sections of headlong brilliance.”—The New York Review of Books
 
“The largest mind and imagination [in modern] American literature . . . Unlike just about every American writer since Henry James, Mailer has managed to grow and become richer in wisdom with each new book.”—Chicago Tribune
 
“Mailer is a master of his craft. His language carries you through the story like a leaf on a stream.”—The Cincinnati Post
  • Published: 10 February 2004
  • ISBN: 9780812971286
  • Imprint: Random House US Group
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 352
  • RRP: $39.99
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About the author

Norman Mailer

Norman Mailer was born in New Jersey in January 1923 and after graduating from Harvard, served in the US army from 1944-1946. His first novel, The Naked and the Dead, was published to immediate critical acclaim in 1948 - and has been hailed as 'the best war novel to emerge from the United States' (Anthony Burgess).

He has subsequently published both fiction and non-fiction and his books include Barbary Shore (1951), Advertisements for Myself (1959), The Presidential Papers (1963), An American Dream (1964), Armies of the Night (1968), Ancient Evenings (1983), and Tough Guys Don't Dance (1983).

The Executioner's Song, first published in 1979, won the Pulitzer Prize in 1980 - an award which Mailer has won twice during his writing career.

Norman Mailer was born in 1923 and went to Harvard when he was sixteen. He majored in engineering, but it was while he was at university that he became interested in writing; he published his first story when he was eighteen. After graduating he served during the war in the Philippines with the Twelfth Armoured Cavalry regiment from Texas; those were the years that formed The Naked and the Dead (1948). His other books include Barbary Shore (1951), The Deer Park (1955), Advertisements for Myself (1959), Deaths for the Ladies, a volume of poetry (1962), The Presidential Papers (1963), An American Dream (1964), Why Are We in Vietnam? (1967), The Armies of the Night (1968), Miami and the Siege of Chicago (1968), A Fire on the Moon (1970), The Prisoner of Sex (1971), Marilyn (1973), Some Honourable Men (1976), Genius and Lust - A Journey Through the Writings of Henry Miller (1976), A Transit to Narcissus (1978), The Executioner's Song (1979) and Tough Guys Don't Dance (1983). The Deer Park has been adapted into a play and was successfully profuced off Broadway. He also directed four films.

In 1955 Norman Mailer co-founded the Village Voice, and he was the editor of Dissent from 1952 until 1963. For his part in demonstrations against the war in Vietnam he was gaoled in 1967. He was President of PEN (US chapter) from 1984 to 1986 and was winner of the National Book Award for Arts and Letters in 1969 and of the Pulitzer Prize twice, once in 1969 and again in 1980.

Norman Mailer was married six times and had nine children. He died in November 2007.

Also by Norman Mailer

Advertisements for Myself
The Armies of the Night
Miami and the Siege of Chicago
The Naked and the Dead
Norman Mailer: The Sixties
Why Are We in Vietnam?
Miami and the Siege of Chicago
See all

Praise for The Spooky Art

  • "The Spooky Art shows Mailer's brave willingness to take on demanding forms and daunting issues. . . . He has been a thoughtful and stylish witness to the best and worst of the American century."--The Boston Globe
  • "At his best--as artists should be judged--Mailer is indispensable, an American treasure. There is enough of his best in this book for it to be welcomed with gratitude."--The Washington Post
  • "The richest book ever written about the writer's subconscious."--The Philadelphia Inquirer
  • "Striking . . . entrancingly frank."--Entertainment Weekly

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