Young norman mailer biography book

Norman Mailer managed through a long, long career to make himself a towering emblem of inadvertent comedy and ill-will; see for example John Cheever's parody of him (with, I believe, Mailer in the audience) in a MLA speech, where he relates "the adventures of a hypothetical novelist who, in search of material, becomes a war correspondent, spy, pornographer, and drug-addict, until he is finally run over by a taxi in Moscow.

Mailer is furious" (from the "Chronology" in the Library of America edition of Cheever's stories).

But Mailer also was a champion of the value of art and literature, and had, at times, from the heart of the maelstrom, a keen eye for the demands and responsibilities creation can have on the creator.

With this spirit he approaches Picasso's early years.

Really, this book is an excuse for Mailer to riff interpretations of Picasso's work and life--there's a reason Mailer's name is as big as Picasso's on the cover (