The Paper House
Mailer's first published short story — set in occupied Japan and drawn from his 1946 Army experience there — appearing in the second New World Writing paperback anthology. Dedicated to Vance Bourjaily, "who told me the anecdote on which the story is based."
“The Paper House.” In New World Writing: Second Mentor Collection, 58–69. New York: New American Library, November 1952, softcover.
Story set in occupied Japan. Dedicated to Vance Bourjaily, “who told me the anecdote on which the story is based.”
Rpt: Lilliput’s Extra Holiday Reading (London), August 1953; Stories of Scarlet Women (New York: Avon, T-113, n.d. [mid-1950s]; with Algren, Coward, Henry Miller, Woollcott, Saroyan, Zweig) — not in Lennon 52.2, added from J. Michael Lennon’s copy (cover scanned October 2026; the story identified by the editor; date to be confirmed from the copyright page); Advertisements for Myself (59.13); 67.11; 68.32; 82.19; and Stag, February 1975.
The New World Writing printing (p. 58) carries a contributor’s note that places the story in its moment — the 1941 Story prize, “A Calculus at Heaven” in Cross-Section, Barbary Shore “published last year,” Mailer “now living in New York, working on a new novel” — with the Bourjaily dedication printed as part of the note.
The Shohakusha edition
Mailer collected this story along with 52.3 and 53.2 in a small paperback, in English but with notes in Japanese: A Selection from the Short Fiction of Norman Mailer, ed. Iwao Iwamoto (Tokyo: Shohakusha, 1967). Lennon notes: “It is perhaps the rarest of all Mailer’s books in English”.
Mailer on the story
In the prefatory “advertisement” to 52.2, 52.3, and 53.2 in Advertisements for Myself (59.13), Mailer notes he has “no great pride in them, because they are respectable. They make no attempt to raise the house an inch or two.”
Related pages
- 1952 | Vance Bourjaily
- The Dead Gook | The Language of Men
- The Paper House (52.2) | Advertisements for Myself (59.13) | The Short Fiction of Norman Mailer (67.11) | A Selection from the Short Fiction of Norman Mailer (68.32) | The Essential Mailer (82.19)