Mailer on the War
by John F. Baker -- Publishers Weekly, 3/31/2003
It's been plain in recent interviews and articles that veteran novelist Norman Mailer is not happy about our current war with Iraq, and his views will be given full rein in a brief, low-priced trade paperback that Random House is rushing out in early April. It's called Why Are We at War? (a title that will deliberately remind older readers of his trenchant Why Are We in Vietnam? published 36 years ago) and is an expansion of a piece he wrote recently for the New York Review of Books. His editor, David Ebershoff (replacing Ann Godoff), said the book had actually been planned before the NYRB piece, in discussions with Andrew Wylie, his agent, and the whole deal had been put together very rapidly. Wylie is selling foreign rights and has already made some sales.
