The White Negro
"The White Negro: Superficial Reflections on the Hipster" — Mailer's most celebrated and most castigated essay, and one of the most anthologized American essays since World War II. Published in Dissent in the summer of 1957, it theorizes the hipster as a white existential outsider; it grew out of the "Lipton's" journal and provoked a famous rejoinder from James Baldwin.
“The White Negro (Superficial Reflections on the Hipster).” Dissent 4 (summer 1957), 276–93.
Mailer’s essay defines the hipster as a postwar existential figure — the “philosophical psychopath” who, living for the dangerous present, models an outsider’s freedom on Mailer’s romanticized image of the marginalized Black American. The essay has its origins in “Lipton’s,” the marijuana journal Mailer kept in 1954–55. Lennon calls it “Mailer’s most celebrated and castigated essay … also one of the most anthologized since World War II,” usually reprinted together with its follow-up exchange, “Reflections on Hipsterism” (58.1).
Lawrence Ferlinghetti’s City Lights Books issued the essay as a standalone pamphlet (pictured) — commonly misdated 1957 but, per Lennon, a 1959 publication (see 59.8a); the cover photograph is by Harry Redl.
James Baldwin answered the essay with “The Black Boy Looks at the White Boy,” collected in Nobody Knows My Name (New York: Dial, 1961) — one of the most searching of the many critiques the essay drew.
Rpt: Advertisements for Myself (59.13), where it became a centerpiece of the omnibus.
Full text
The complete annotated scholarly edition of the essay — Gerald R. Lucas and Jason Mosser‘s Project Mailer text, with section-by-section notes — is reproduced at The White Negro (full text).
Related pages
- 1957 | Dissent | Hipster
- Reflections on Hipsterism | Advertisements for Myself | James Baldwin
- The White Negro (City Lights pamphlet) (59.8a)
Criticism 16
Essays, chapters, and books
- Baldwin, James. “The Black Boy Looks at the White Boy.” Esquire, 1961-05, 102–06. register
- Abel, Lionel. “So Who's Not Mad?” 1965/1966. register
- McKinley, Maggie. “Existentialism, Violent Liberation, and Racialized Masculinities: Norman Mailer’s “The White Negro” and An American Dream.” Masculinity and the Paradox of Violence in American Fiction, 1950–75, Bloomsbury, 2015. register
- Pollack, Neal. “The Execution and Un-Execution of Norman Mailer.” Book and Film Globe, 2022-01-04. register
- Wolff, Michael. “Was Norman Mailer Canceled? His Publishers Say No.” The Ankler, 2022-01-05. register
- Shullenberger, Geoff. “Mailer and the Monoculture.” Washington Examiner, 2022-01-06. register
- Owolade, Tomiwa. “Norman Mailer Wanted to Be Cancelled.” UnHerd, 2022-01-06. register
- Black, Tim. “If Norman Mailer Can Be Cancelled, No One Is Safe.” Spiked, 2022-01-10. register
- Dreier, Peter. “"The White Negro": Norman Mailer's Essay 65 Years Later.” Common Dreams, 2022-01-10. register
- Walsh, David. “The Effort to "Delete" American Novelist Norman Mailer.” World Socialist Web Site, 2022-01-17. register
- Mailer, Michael. “What Norman Mailer's "Cancellation" Reveals.” The Spectator, 2022-01-20. register
- Klion, David. “Norman Mailer Wasn't Canceled.” The Nation, 2022-02-02. register
- Mailer, Michael. “Canceling My Father, Norman Mailer: The US Needs to Stop Eating Its Own.” The Boston Globe, 2022-02-04. register
- Pinckney, Darryl. “My Norman Mailer Problem—and Ours.” The Nation, 2022-03-07. register
- Shullenberger, Geoff. “The Real "Woke Right".” Compact, 2024-12-13. register
- Neal, Mark Anthony. “Revisiting Norman Mailer's 'White Negro' Essay.” Level, 2026-03-25. register
Referenced by 65
Works
- "The White Negro": Norman Mailer's Essay 65 Years Later
- Advertisements for Myself
- An American Dream
- An Impolite Interview with Norman Mailer
- An Interview with Norman Mailer
- Canceling My Father, Norman Mailer
- Eminent Jews: Bernstein, Brooks, Friedan, Mailer
- Existentialism, Violent Liberation, and Racialized Masculinities: Norman Mailer’s “The White Negro” and An American Dream
- Hip Mailer Talks to Orwell Forum; Defines American Beatnik Generation
- Hip, Hell, and the Navigator
- If Norman Mailer Can Be Cancelled, No One Is Safe
- In the Ring with Mailer
- Lipton's, A Marijuana Journal
- Mailer and the Monoculture
- Mailer to [Lorraine] Hansberry
- My Norman Mailer Problem—and Ours
- Norman Mailer and the Cutting Edge of Style
- Norman Mailer in Context
- Norman Mailer Speaks His Mind
- Norman Mailer Wanted to Be Cancelled
- Norman Mailer Wasn't Canceled
- Our Country and Our Culture: A Symposium
- Quickly (25 April 1956)
- Quickly: A Column for Slow Readers
- Reflections on Hipsterism
- Revisiting Norman Mailer's 'White Negro' Essay
- Saint and Psychopath
- Ten Words from the Dean
- The Black Boy Looks at the White Boy
- The Effort to "Delete" American Novelist Norman Mailer
- The Execution and Un-Execution of Norman Mailer
- The Hipster and the American Right
- The Ordeal of Norman Mailer
- The Real "Woke Right"
- The Structured Vision of Norman Mailer
- The Surreal Professor
- The White Negro (City Lights pamphlet)
- Throwing Punches: Mailer on Mailer
- Understanding Norman Mailer
- Was Norman Mailer Canceled? His Publishers Say No.
- What Norman Mailer's "Cancellation" Reveals