Naked And The Dead

Norman Mailer's The Naked and the Dead was published in 1948, and the novel earned the author immediate overwhelming popular and critical acclaim. The book’s success was so extensive, it claimed the top spot on the The New York Times "Bestseller List" for eleven weeks consecutively. Both the author and the book drew reviews and opinions from critics both independent and from the most relevant magazines and newspapers, giving Mailer a strong push into literary relevance at a very young age, as seen in the New York Herald Tribune, when Richard Match claimed in his review that "with this one astonishing book ... [Mailer] joins the ranks of major American novelists.” Reviewer C. J. Rolo wrote that the novel was "the most impressive piece of fiction
Nonetheless, there was an almost consistent opinion and agreement that the book was a significant depiction of the inhumanity of war and that it deserved attention and reading. Despite its disappearance from the popular press, The Naked and the Dead has remained present in the academic environment when making references to post-World War II literary fiction, from books with an ethnic perspective like The Jewish Soldier in Modern Fiction to the political references in The Naked, the Dead, and the Machine. This goes to show that The Naked and the Dead’s literary relevance never really faded just as many other bestsellers did; it has remained in print and, regardless of the lack of publicity as the decades go by, it is still read by the general public and referred to by
In 1981, Book World released an article where the author, referring to The Naked and the Dead, wrote that "there is little dispute that it is the finest American novel to come out of World War II,” and just as well, another 1981 article in Changing Times, mentioned Mailer's novel under the heading of "Popular works from recent decades" and called it "the first major about World War