On the Nihilism of WASPs
Matthew D. Tribbe · Oxford University Press eBooks · 2014
Norman Mailer was the most renowned author to write a book on the Apollo 11 moon landing. After visiting the Manned Spacecraft Center in Houston and attending the launch in Florida, he wrote three long articles for Life Magazine, followed by the full book, Of a Fire on the Moon, in 1970. This chapter details Mailer’s struggle to make sense of the moon landing and to decipher its meaning and importance to the United States in the postwar era. Several of his major ideas would be echoed by other intellectuals, as well as more broadly in American culture in the late 1960s and 1970s.