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Norman Mailer collection ‘cancelled’ by publisher over controversial 1957 essay title
Random House drops the book amid concerns over an essay titled The White Negro
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Plans for a collection of essays by Norman Mailer have been “cancelled” by Random House over fears it would cause controversy, it has been claimed.
The book of writings by one of the leading figures of 20th century American literature was set to mark what would have been Mailer’s 100th birthday.
However, the publisher has informed the novelist’s family that this will no longer go ahead, according to Michael Wolff, the the US journalist.
Wolff, best known for his books on the Trump White House, claims that Random House cancelled the release in part because of concerns regarding the title of Mailer’s 1957 essay The White Negro and wider fears of a potentially hostile response from public figures.
‘Controversy kills’
Rather than objecting to the context of Mailer’s essays, many of which are available freely online, Random House was acting out of fear of causing controversy, Mr Wolff wrote in an online newsletter, warning that it had become a widespread problem in publishing.
“You live only until an objection scares the people whose job is more and more to avoid objections,” he wrote, adding, “Controversy kills. Or, anyway, life is too short, the times too weird, and profit too fleeting, to suffer for it.”
While Random House reportedly had not agreed a final contract for the book, an editor had been selected and J Michael Lennon, Mailer’s biographer, had been signed up to select the essays.
Mailer, who died in 2007 and is perhaps best known for his Second World War novel The Naked and the Dead, was a controversial figure throughout his life. He regularly engaged in public debates and spats with high-profile feminists such as Germaine Greer and has often been accused of homophobia in his writing.
Accusations of homophobia and womanising
Indeed, in 1955 he admitted that “I have been as guilty as any contemporary novelist in attributing unpleasant, ridiculous, or sinister connotations to the homosexual (or more accurately, bisexual) characters in my novels.”
He was also well known for his womanising ways and having had six wives.
In 1960, he drunkenly stabbed Adele Morales, his second wife, leaving her hospitalised. He was charged with felony assault, but pled guilty to a lesser offence and received only a suspended sentence.
Despite this, Mailer’s works of fiction, and in particular The Naked and the Dead, are regularly ranked among the most significant novels in modern literature.
In The White Negro, Mailer argued for “hipsters” to rebel against the post-war consensus by emulating the liberated attitudes that he associated with marginalised black communities.
Mr Wolff called the work “a psycho-sexual-druggie precursor and model for much of the psycho-sexual-druggie literature that became popular in the 1960s”.
Writing for The Ankler, Mr Wolff warned that with the publishing industry heavily consolidated into a few giant publishing houses there would be few alternative places the Mailer family would be able to get the work published.
Random House was approached for comment.