BARBARY SHORE

New York Toronto: Rinehart & Company, Inc, 1951. First Edition, First Printing. Cloth. Fine/Very Good. 8vo, black cloth with white lettering on spine, Mylar-protected lettered dust jacket (unclipped) with a black background designed by SKA Associates, [vi] +312 pages. BARBARY SHORE was Norman Mailer's second published novel, written after Mailer's great success with his 1948 debut The Naked and the Dead. It concerns a protagonist who rents a room in a Brooklyn boarding house with the intention of writing a novel. Wounded during World War II, he is an amnesiac, and much of his past is a secret to himself. <br/><br/>Norman Mailer (1923 - 2007) was an American novelist, journalist, essayist, playwright, film-maker, actor, and political activist. His novel The Naked and the Dead was published in 1948 and brought him renown. His best-known work is often considered to be The Executioner's Song (1979) winner of the Pulitzer Prize for fiction. Mailer's Armies of the Night won the Pulitzer Prize for non-fiction and the National Book Award.<br/><br/>Along with Truman Capote, Joan Didion, Hunter S. Thompson, and Tom Wolfe, Mailer is considered an innovator of creative nonfiction, a genre sometimes called New Journalism, which uses devices of literary fiction in fact-based journalism. Mailer was also respected for his essays, the most famous of which is "The White Negro." He was a cultural commentator and critic, expressing his often pugnatious and controversial views through his novels, journalism, essays, and frequent media appearances.<br/><br/>SUPERIOR CONDITION internally: clean, tight, with slight typical toning to post-war paper. Small bookplate of previous owner on free front endpaper. Small chip loss to lower dj spine edge.