It might seem strange to attempt to put Norman Mailer and Charles Dickens in conversation, or even to pair them as interlocutors collaborating on much of anything, except of course that both were writers, nearly a century apart, who had an equally central role in the cultures of their different social worlds.Article continues after advertisement
There are more obvious connections, like their negative histories with women, or how both had works released in both whole and serialized formats, or how their sentences could travel for miles before parking at a period… but more than this, they were both novelists with their fingers on the pulse of contemporary social questions and concerns, as well as journalists who addressed their publics directly, engaging with their audiences on as interpersonal a level as was possible by the forums in which they shared their ideas. (In case I seem biased in noticing similarities between these two men in particular, I’ll disclose my conflicting associations: I am a 19th century historian and a Dickens specialist, and I am also married to the youngest son of Norman Mailer, though I never met the man and have never had a research investment in his work. In this analysis, I’m shilling for neither. Just observing.)
