Norman Mailer and the experience of celebrity

Abstract

This article is a brief investigation into Norman Mailer’s experience as a celebrity figure in American letters, and how he struggled to deal with its effects. Mailer rose to fame quite early in his literary career. Subsequent failures with publishers made him adapt the strategies of the market place to promote himself, and thus he wrote his unusual autobiography, titled Advertisements for Myself. This book brought him back among the literary stars of the day, a position that he envisaged as a precondition for the fulfillment of his dream to create a revolution in the consciousness of his time. Such a revolution would be necessary in our times, too, yet nowadays, there are even more means to become famous than in the 20th century, and fame is even shorter-lived, to be able to act on the consciousness of a large public.