Norman Mailer, Barbary Shore

James MacDonald (University of Exeter)

The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 3.2.4: American (US) Writing and Culture: Postwar and Contemporary, 1945-present.
Vol. editors: Sofia Ahlberg (Uppsala University), Patrick Chura (University of Akron), Emory Elliott (University of California, Riverside), Dale Enggass (University of Utah), Christopher Hugh Gair (University of Glasgow), Matthew Hofer (University of New Mexico), Stephen E. Meats (Pittsburg State University), Kerry Myler (Birmingham Newman University), Justin Parks (UiT - The Arctic University of Norway), Nick Selby (University of East Anglia)

Dates

First circulation or publication 1951

Places

United States (Country of Origin)

Genres and Modes

Novel

Resources

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Michael Lovett, war veteran, tyro novelist and the narrator of this novel, holes up in an obscure rooming house in Brooklyn Heights to write his book. Seeking anonymity, he nonetheless becomes involved with the other residents: Beverley Guinevere, landlady and former burlesque queen, Lannie Madison, a waifish singleton, Leroy Hollingsworth, a mysterious Midwesterner notionally involved in the stock market and, pivotally, William McLeod, intellectual artisan with a Stalinist past, a murky present and a loquacious tendency toward America’s post-war prospects. Lovett’s gradual awareness of these characters’ personal histories coincides with their rather seedy ambitions of fulfilment, culminating in Hollingsworth’s unmasking as an FBI agent on the trail of Trotskyite McLeod, who is…

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1173 words

Citation: MacDonald, James. "Barbary Shore". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 21 November 2007 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=6444, accessed 23 April 2024.]

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