Pieces and Pontifications

"Norman Mailer's "Pieces and Pontifications," a collection of Mailer's ardent outspokenness during the 1960s and 1970s. He explores his evolving perceptions about everything from sex, the media, spies, and politics, to writers and writing, art and success, and his own books and career. The first section collects his most exciting essays from the last decade; essays that reflect his often surprising attitudes towards television, Watergate, and the CIA, among other phenomena, including a new look at the characters and styles of Ernest Hemingway and Henry Miller. The freewheeling second section assembles Mailer's most candid interviews of the last 20 years, probing the American psyche with wit, wickedness, and not infrequent flashes of the combatant of old. Taken together, these imaginative, erudite essays and interviews exemplify Mailer's written and conversational prowess. For at the same time that they detect seismic shifts both in the tenor of our times and in his own life, they reveal by the richness of his thought and expression the common denominator to his work: his splendid talent."


Genre: Thriller