Microphone and quill Starting in the 1960s, New Journalism exponent Norman Mailer used literary techniques to make reportage his own
by Steven Thomsen / The work of Norman Mailer is far less prevalent in the German-speaking world now than it was in the 1960s and 1970s. Few of those who continue to read or discover his novels today know that the American author also worked as a journalist throughout almost his entire career. Loved and hated in equal measure in his home country, the intellectual was a master of using literary techniques to enliven journalistic texts. This paper uses the famous report on the Democratic National Convention, »Superman Comes to the Supermarket,« to illustrate how Mailer redefined and went beyond the boundaries of traditional reportage.