Norman Mailer's achievement lies primarily in his treatment of the conflict between man's search for self-actualization and the strictures society places upon him. Mailer has rendered this theme with an energy of style, an ideational power, and a vivid drama that has earned him an international reputation. His books have been translated into more than twenty languages. They stir foreign audiences because, notes Anthony Burgess, they are "political, which is a great recommendation to all Europeans, and British fiction is just about unexportable manners. I mean `political,' of course, in the widest sense--the sense of protest or counterprotest."

Mailer presents a special problem to anyone trying to arrive at a clear understanding of his work, for he has gained notoriety as a public figure as well as a writer. His extra-literary activities--acts of civil disobedience, running for mayor of New York, five tempestuous marriages, contentious remarks on...