The Essay: Controversies: American Writing of the 1960s

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The Essay: Controversies: American Writing of the 1960s: Norman Mailer

Norman Mailer

Controversies: American Writing of the 1960s

BBC Radio 3 - The Essay, Controversies: American Writing of the 1960s, Norman Mailer

Michael Goldfarb looks at how Norman Mailer's misogyny eventually caught up with him.

A look at authors on the receiving end of cancel culture in 1960s liberal America. In this essay, Norman Mailer, who courted controversy with his misogyny and homophobia.

Michael Goldfarb looks at five authors and their books on the receiving end of cancel culture in liberal America of the 1960s. Each author and the work being discussed was the subject of a controversy that altered their lives and deeply affected their careers.

In this essay, he focuses on Norman Mailer. His reputation as a novelist had gone down the toilet before he reinvented himself with the non-fiction novel. But there was a cost. Writers should be read and not heard was the ethos of the profession. But mass media provided authors with many different platforms to reach the public. Mailer was on all of them, courting controversy - too successfully. Mailer was a monstrous misogynist before Harvey Weinstein and #metoo. For a while his talent gave him a pass, and then it didn't.

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Michael Goldfarb looks at five US authors whose books were the subject of controversy.

In this series of essays, Michael Goldfarb looks at five authors who wrote books which were the subject of a controversy that altered their lives and deeply affected their careers.

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