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own phrase) in negotiating thechaotic, oceanic world with thebright rigging of language.Norman Mailer (1923- )Norman Mailer made himself themost visible novelist of the l960sand l970s. Co-founder of the antiestablishmentNew York Cityweekly The Village Voice, Mailerpublicized himself along with hispolitical views. In his appetite forexperience, vigorous style, and adramatic public persona, Mailer followsin the tradition of ErnestHemingway. To gain a vantage pointon the assassination of PresidentJohn F. Kennedy, Vietnam Warprotests, black liberation, and thewomen’s movement, he constructedhip, existentialist, macho malepersonae (in her book SexualPolitics, Kate Millett identifiedMailer as an archetypal male chauvinist).The irrepressible Mailerwent on to marry six times and runfor mayor of New York.Mailer is the reverse of a writerlike John Barth, for whom the subjectis not as important as the way itis handled. Unlike the invisibleThomas Pynchon, Mailer constantlycourts and demands attention.A novelist, essayist, sometimepolitician, literary activist, andoccasional actor, Mailer is alwayson the scene. From such NewJournalism exercises as Miami andthe Siege of Chicago (1968),an analysis of the 1968 U.S. presidentialconventions, and hiscompelling study about the executionof a condemned murderer, TheNORMAN MAILERPhoto © Nancy CramptonExecutioner’s Song (1979), Mailerhas turned to writing such ambitious,if flawed, novels as AncientEvenings (1983), set in the Egypt ofantiquity, and Harlot’s Ghost (1991),revolving around the U.S. CentralIntelligence Agency.Philip Roth (1933- )Like Norman Mailer, Philip Rothhas provoked controversy by mininghis life for fiction. In Roth’scase, his treatments of sexualthemes and ironic analysis ofJewish life have drawn popular andcritical attention, as well as criticism.Roth’s first book, Goodbye,Columbus (1959), satirized provincialJewish suburbanites. In hisbest-known novel, the outrageous,best-selling Portnoy’s Complaint(1969), a New York City administratorregales his taciturn psychoanalystwith off-color stories of hisboyhood.Although The Great AmericanNovel (1973) delves into baseballlore, most of Roth’s novels remainresolutely, even defiantly, autobiographical.In My Life As a Man(1974), under the stress of divorce,a man resorts to creating an alterego,Nathan Zuckerman, whose storiesconstitute one pole of the narrative,the other pole being the differentkinds of readers’ responses.Zuckerman seemingly takes over ina series of subsequent novels. Themost successful is probably thefirst, The Ghost Writer (1979). It istold by Zuckerman as a young writercriticized by Jewish elders for fan-110