[This entry was updated by J. Michael Lennon (Wilkes University) from his update in the Concise Dictionary of American Literary Biography, volume 6, pp. 162-183, of the entries by Philip H. Bufithis (Shepherd College) in DLB 2: American Novelists Since World War II and DLB Yearbook 1983; Joseph Wenke (University of Connecticut) in DLB 16: The Beats: Literary Bohemians in Postwar America; and Alden Whitman in DLB Yearbook 1980.]

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...