The White Negro: Superficial Reflections on the Hipster

[32 pp.] The second appearance in print, after its original publication in Dissent. This edition also includes correspondence related to Mailer's work: Reflections on Hipsterism by Jean Malaquais, and Mailer's reply, and correspondence from Ned Polsky, also with Mailer's reply. "The White Negro: Superficial Reflections on the Hipster, a 9,000-word essay by Norman Mailer, connects the 'psychic havoc' wrought by holocaust and the atomic bomb to the aftermath of slavery in America in the figuration of the Hipster, or the 'white negro.' It is a call to disassociate from Eisenhower and a numbing culture of conformity and psychoanalysis to embrace a rebellious, personal violence and emancipating sexuality that Mailer associates with marginalized black culture. The essay was first published in the 1957 special issue of Dissent, before being published separately by City Lights. While Mailer's essay was controversial upon its release, winning praise, for example, from Eldridge Cleaver and equal criticism from James Baldwin, it remains perhaps his most famous and reprinted essay and 'established Mailer's reputation as a philosopher of hip.'"