Advertisements for Myself

Cover of first edition

Advertisements for Myself is an omnibus collection of short works and fragments by Norman Mailer, linked with commentaries supplied by the author himself. The collection, which was published by G.P. Putnam's Sons in 1959, features stories from Mailer's days as a student at Harvard College as well as later works, including his essay "The White Negro" and the short story "The Time of Her Time".

Table of contents

Advertisements for Myself contains two Table of Contents. The first lists the contents of the book in sequential order, while the second Table of Contents groups the works into different categories, such as fiction, essays, and interviews.[1]

Reactions

The first edition from Putnam featured a photograph of Mailer wearing a yachting cap for which the author was criticized. Mailer defended the photo on the grounds the hat made him look "handsome."[2]

David Brooks of the New York Times cited the book as an example of a then-emergent and now-ubiquitous culture of self-exposure and self-love that stands in stark contrast to the humility that exemplified America at the close of World War II.[3]

Ernest Hemingway, in a letter to George Plimpton, characterized the book “as a sort of ragtag assembly of his rewrites, second thoughts and ramblings shot through with occasional brilliance."[4]

References

  1. ↑ Advertisements for Myself at Harvard University Press
  2. ↑ Dearborn, Mary (1999), Mailer: A biography, New York: Houghton Mifflin Company, p. 147, ISBN 0-395-73655-2, [Mailer's publisher, Walter] Minton thought the photograph Mailer wanted for the cover — of him in a yachting cap — was a little silly, but Mailer thought it made him look handsome, and he argued Minton down.
  3. ↑ High-Five Nation, NY Times, Sept. 15, 2009
  4. ↑ Phelan, James. "Blogs and Me". MySpace. Retrieved 16 May 2012.

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