The Gospel According to the Son

by Norman Mailer

Overview

Norman Mailer fused fact and fiction to create indelible portraits of such figures as Marilyn Monroe, Gary Gilmore, and Lee Harvey Oswald. In The Gospel According to the Son, Mailer reimagines, as no other modern author has, the key character of Western history. Here is Jesus Christ’s story in his own words: the discovery of his divinity and the painful, powerful journey to accepting and expressing it, “as if I were a man enclosing another man within.” In its brevity and piercing simplicity, it may be Mailer’s most accessible, direct, and heartfelt work.
 
Praise for The Gospel According to the Son
 
“Quietly penetrating . . . [Norman Mailer’s] gospel is written in a direct, rather relaxed English that yet has an eerie, neo-Biblical dignity.”—John Updike, The New Yorker
 
“A book of considerable intellectual force . . . The writer’s powerful mind works in a specialized way, not by theological argumentation but by telling or retelling a story.”—The New York Review of Books
 
“Challenges readers on the religious right and the atheist left with equally rich interpretive tasks.”—The Dallas Morning News
 
“An informed and believable work of fiction . . . of what may have been going through the mind of Jesus during his epic ministry.”—San Francisco Chronicle
 
Praise for Norman Mailer
 
“[Norman Mailer] loomed over American letters longer and larger than any other writer of his generation.”—The New York Times
 
“A writer of the greatest and most reckless talent.”—The New Yorker
 
“Mailer is indispensable, an American treasure.”—The Washington Post
 
“A devastatingly alive and original creative mind.”—Life
 
“Mailer is fierce, courageous, and reckless and nearly everything he writes has sections of headlong brilliance.”—The New York Review of Books
 
“The largest mind and imagination [in modern] American literature . . . Unlike just about every American writer since Henry James, Mailer has managed to grow and become richer in wisdom with each new book.”—Chicago Tribune
 
“Mailer is a master of his craft. His language carries you through the story like a leaf on a stream.”—The Cincinnati Post

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780345434081
Publisher:	Random House Publishing Group
Publication date:	09/07/1999
Pages:	256
Product dimensions:	5.18(w) x 8.01(h) x 0.61(d)

About the Author

Born in 1923 in Long Branch, New Jersey, and raised in Brooklyn, New York, Norman Mailer was one of the most influential writers of the second half of the twentieth century and a leading public intellectual for nearly sixty years. He is the author of more than thirty books. The Castle in the Forest, his last novel, was his eleventh New York Times bestseller. His first novel, The Naked and the Dead, has never gone out of print. His 1968 nonfiction narrative, The Armies of the Night, won the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award. He won a second Pulitzer for The Executioner’s Song and is the only person to have won Pulitzers in both fiction and nonfiction. Five of his books were nominated for National Book Awards, and he won a lifetime achievement award from the National Book Foundation in 2005. Mr. Mailer died in 2007 in New York City.

Hometown:

Provincetown, Massachusetts, and New York, New York

Date of Birth:

January 31, 1923

Date of Death:

November 10, 2007

Place of Birth:

Long Branch, New Jersey

Education:

B.S., Harvard University, 1943; Sorbonne, Paris, 1947-48

Read an Excerpt

In those days, I was the one who came down from Nazareth to be baptized by John in the River Jordan. And the gospel of Mark would declare that on my immersion, the heavens opened, and I saw "a spirit like a dove descending." A mighty voice said "You are my beloved son in whom I am well pleased." Then the Spirit drove me into the wilderness, and I was there for forty days, and was tempted by Satan.

While I would not say that Mark's gospel is without truth, I would say that it is much exaggerated. And I would offer less for Matthew, Luke and John who gave me words I never uttered, and described me as gentle when I was pale with rage. Their words were written many years after I was gone, and only repeat what other men told them. Very old men. Such tales are to be leaned upon no more than a bush that is cut away from its root and blown about by the wind.

So I will try to give my own account. For those who ask how my words have come to this page, I would tell them to look upon all that is here as no more than a small miracle. (My gospel, after all, will speak of miracles.) Yet, I hope to remain closer to the truth ...

Editorial Reviews

Praise for The Gospel According to the Son
 
“Quietly penetrating . . . [Norman Mailer’s] gospel is written in a direct, rather relaxed English that yet has an eerie, neo-Biblical dignity.”—John Updike, The New Yorker
 
“A book of considerable intellectual force . . . The writer’s powerful mind works in a specialized way, not by theological argumentation but by telling or retelling a story.”—The New York Review of Books
 
“Challenges readers on the religious right and the atheist left with equally rich interpretive tasks.”—The Dallas Morning News
 
“An informed and believable work of fiction . . . of what may have been going through the mind of Jesus during his epic ministry.”—San Francisco Chronicle
 
Praise for Norman Mailer
 
“[Norman Mailer] loomed over American letters longer and larger than any other writer of his generation.”—The New York Times
 
“A writer of the greatest and most reckless talent.”—The New Yorker
 
“Mailer is indispensable, an American treasure.”—The Washington Post
 
“A devastatingly alive and original creative mind.”—Life
 
“Mailer is fierce, courageous, and reckless and nearly everything he writes has sections of headlong brilliance.”—The New York Review of Books
 
“The largest mind and imagination [in modern] American literature . . . Unlike just about every American writer since Henry James, Mailer has managed to grow and become richer in wisdom with each new book.”—Chicago Tribune
 
“Mailer is a master of his craft. His language carries you through the story like a leaf on a stream.”—The Cincinnati Post

From the Publisher