Book giant ‘cancels’ Norman Mailer

NoRmAN mailer’s publisher was accused of posthumously ‘cancelling’ the American author after axing plans for a collection of his essays due to the title of one.

The writer’s son said a book to mark the centenary of his father’s birth was ditched when a junior staff member at Random House objected to the title of the 1957 essay The White Negro.

mailer, who died in 2007 at the age of 84, was famous for championing the US literary style known as New Journalism. His 9,000-word essay is an analysis of the ‘hipster’, whose main goal, mailer said at the time, ‘is to keep out of a society which, he thinks, is trying to make everyone over in its own image’. He urged conformist white

Americans to rise up and embrace the unfettered sexuality and violence he saw in oppressed African-American men. But journalist michael Wolff said: ‘A world without Norman mailer − this new intellectual nanny state − surely harms the literary consumer.’

Frank Furedi, sociology professor at the University of Kent, told the mail: ‘of course just about anything that mailer wrote is likely to offend grievance archaeologists. Great writers who capture our imagination often infuriate and offend some of their readers. They assume they are writing for a mature audience which understands the context within which their work is written.’

mailer won a Pulitzer Prize for his 1968 book The Armies of the Night, based on Washington peace demonstrations during which he was jailed for civil disobedience.

Random House did not reply to a request by the mail for comment.