The Greatest Thing in the World
Mailer's first published story, placed in the Harvard Advocate in April 1941 during his sophomore year at Harvard; won Story magazine's Eighth Annual College Contest and $100, gave Mailer his first national notice, and — on his own later account — is what "fortified" him to begin treating himself as a writer.
Publication
The Harvard Advocate, April 1941, pages 3–6 and 24–28. Mailer’s original working title for the piece was “The Suckers and the Setup”; he wrote it for Robert Gorham Davis‘s English 1-A class in his sophomore year, 1940–41. Davis encouraged Mailer to submit the story to Story magazine’s Eighth Annual College Contest under the byline “Norman K[ingsley]. Mailer.” It won first prize of $100.
The prize had a lasting onomastic effect: “Mailer ceased using his middle initial and name after college, although he employed it once for his 1971 movie, Maidstone: A Mystery (71.28), in which the director-hero is called Norman T. Kingsley”.
Mailer on the contest, in a 1964 interview (64.1): “when I found out it had won — which was at the beginning of the summer after my sophomore year — well, that fortified me, and I sat down and wrote a novel. It was called No Percentage. It was just terrible. But I never questioned any longer whether I was started as a writer”.
Reprints
Per Lennon 41.1, the story was reprinted in:
- Story 19 (November–December 1941), 17–26. First reprint, carrying the contest win into the magazine’s own pages.
- Hold Your Breath: Suspense Stories, edited by Alfred Hitchcock (New York: Dell, no. 260, 1947).
- Story: The Fiction of the Forties, edited by Whit Burnett and Hallie Burnett (New York: E.P. Dutton, 1949).
- The Tough Ones: Stories of Life in the Raw, edited by Whit and Hallie Burnett (New York: Popular Library, G352, n.d. [c. 1956–59]), 41–56, under the byline “Norman K. Mailer,” with an editorial headnote. Not in Lennon 41.1; added from J. Michael Lennon’s copy (signed by Mailer on the contents page), scanned October 2026. Date to be confirmed from the copyright page.
- Advertisements for Myself (59.13) — preceded in that volume by an introductory “advertisement”.
- Firsts of the Famous, edited by Whit Burnett (New York: Ballantine, F598, 1962), 122 ff. The headnote (p. 122) records that Mailer “has always been somewhat reluctant to have it reprinted” but permitted inclusion “together with the comment which he wrote for Advertisements for Myself,” which it quotes. Not in Lennon 41.1; added from J. Michael Lennon’s copy, scanned October 2026.
- 67.11 and 82.19 (to be catalogued in their respective years).
The textual apparatus for these reprints (sigla TO, FOTF) is kept on the NMSF story page.
Reception
The Harvard Crimson editorial of 21 April 1941 (unsigned, 2 cols.) — occasioned by the Advocate’s publication of 41.1 — is recorded by Lennon as “the first published critical (and favorable) comment on Mailer’s work”. See [[bibliography/1941]] for the row.
Later Mailer-retrospective commentary on the story appears passim in Advertisements for Myself (59.13) and at 75.14, 77.2, 83.10, 89.10, and 13.2 (to be catalogued in their respective years).
Full text
A scan of the original Advocate printing is held in the project’s media library; a transcription is in preparation.
Related pages
- 1941 | Right Shoe on Left Foot | Maybe Next Year | A Calculus at Heaven
- The Harvard Advocate | Story | Harvard University | Robert Gorham Davis
- Full text (rights pending): texts/1941-04-greatest-thing-in-the-world
- Maidstone: A Mystery (71.28) | Norman Mailer: The Art of Fiction XXXII (64.1) | The Greatest Thing in the World (41.1) | Advertisements for Myself (59.13) | The Short Fiction of Norman Mailer (67.11) | The Essential Mailer (82.19) | Preface to Fiction Writer's Handbook (75.14) | Our Man at Harvard (77.2) | Twelfth Round: An Interview with Norman Mailer (83.10) | Norman Mailer: A Double Life (13.2)
Criticism 1
Essays, chapters, and books
- [unsigned]. “[Editorial on "The Greatest Thing in the World"].” Harvard Crimson, 1941-04-21. register