Mailer, Norman

The American author, journalist and public debater Norman (in reality Nachem Malek) Mailer was born in Long Branch, New Jersey, but grew up in Brooklyn. In social terms he came from the Jewish lower middle class. After obtaining a degree in engineering at the University of Harvard, he participated during the final phase of the Second World War in the battles in the Pacific Ocean, among other things as a private in a reconnaissance platoon. During the years 1947-48, he studied at Sorbonne in Paris. He lived for a while in Greenwich Village and at that time helped to found the radical Village Voice magazine. In 1969, he made an attempt to become the mayor of New York City but failed. For decades Mailer lived in a house near the sea in Provincetown, Cape Cod (Massachusetts), but towards the end of his life he lived in an apartment in Brooklyn Heights, New York.