In 1959, Norman Mailer, in the midst of a gap between novels, published Advertisements for Myself, a book that was, even by his standards, an unusual departure. The book served as a collection of unpublished short fiction, a compendium of previously published works, and a series of “Advertisements” in which Mailer openly outlined his tastes, preferences, confessions, and prides. In a Note to the Reader, Mailer explained that these “Advertisements” surrounded his works, giving insight into his mindset and his creative process at the time.
While some of the fiction included in Advertisements for Myself, such as “The Time of Her Time,” which depicts a bizarrely achieved orgasm, may not resonate much with readers in 2025, and certain essays like The White Negro and The Homosexual as Villain are mostly of historical interest, the Advertisements themselves stand as an extraordinary artifact. They present an unvarnished declaration of the kind of ambition that was once characteristic of novelists—a kind of ambition rarely seen in contemporary writers.
As a novelist preparing to release my sixth book, I find Advertisements for Myself especially fascinating, particularly for how Mailer articulated the position of writers in an era when the novel held cultural significance.
One part of the book that particularly stood out to me was “Fourth Advertisement for Myself: The Last Draft of The Deer Park,” which chronicles the ordeal Mailer faced after submitting what he considered a finished draft of his third novel. Although the publisher, Rinehart & Co., had contracted the novel, it found a way to reject it, largely due to concerns about its sexual content. This led to Mailer being turned down by seven different publishers before landing at G.P. Putnam’s. By the time Putnam was ready to publish the book, Mailer had grown dissatisfied with his own work.
He had crafted a narrator who, despite having risen from an orphan asylum, spoke in a voice that Mailer likened to Nick Carraway from The Great Gatsby. In a summer-long effort to transform his narrator’s voice, Mailer plunged into drugs and sleeplessness, confronting his own psyche in the process. His reflection on that summer’s work—both as a writer and as a person—captures something now lost to most contemporary novelists: a deep sense of the importance of their craft.
In Mailer’s time, novelists faced a harsh yet dependable system of critique. Their prose became a mirror reflecting their strengths and weaknesses. Mailer’s writing about this struggle is profoundly existential. As he poured his reserves into his work, Mailer came to question whether he was willing to endure another “beating” from critics. He wrote with a vulnerability that is rare in today’s publishing world. He understood that writing solely to protect oneself from criticism could undermine the potential of a work and, by extension, the writer’s very identity.
What is striking, particularly in 2025, is the public dimension of Mailer’s process. He wrote as if he were preparing to face an army of critics from Time, Newsweek, Harper’s, The Atlantic, The New York Times, and The New Yorker. This certainty of public judgment has evolved today into a more fragmented and uncertain experience, where writers, regardless of their talent, often find themselves pleading for recognition in a crowded marketplace.
Rereading Advertisements for Myself led me to a troubling question: Has the diminished role of novelists in modern culture been partly our own doing? Have we, in our reluctance to emulate the boldness of writers like Mailer, contributed to our decline in prominence?
Charles Baxter, a fellow writer, offered his perspective: “Novelists like Mailer, who thought they commanded the big bow-wow orchestra, were supplanted by novelists and short story writers who ended up writing chamber music for a smaller audience.” Many of us, particularly those of us writing in the post-World War II tradition, adjusted our ambitions after witnessing the lasting influence of Chekhov and William Maxwell. But this shift in ambition does not erase the underlying envy that arises when reading Mailer’s work—a recognition of how much the struggle of writing a novel once mattered.
Today, it seems that Mailer’s experience continues to resonate, albeit in a different form. While he once awaited the judgment of established critics, today’s writers face the scrutiny of a new breed of voices—those on the internet, whose judgments may not come from institutions but are just as powerful. The threat of online “beatings” for controversial subject matter is a real one.
In my own work, Remember This, which spans the art market, the life of an Alice Neel-like artist, and contemporary theater, I delve into the story of a seventy-year-old man who travels to Haiti and falls in love with an eighteen-year-old Haitian boy. Though no sexual relationship occurs between them, my early readers cautioned me about stepping into volatile territory. Terms like “groomer,” “sexual tourist,” and “predator” were thrown around. These warnings reflected two concerns: that the material itself might alienate potential readers, and that I might be subject to a severe backlash upon publication for broaching such delicate subjects.
The warning, then, is twofold: be cautious of your own creative excesses and beware of the consequences that come with venturing into provocative or controversial themes. The struggle for writers, in the end, remains a fight for their own vision, and to protect that vision means risking everything.
