A new authorized biography and collection of essays show why the literary figure has been so mythologized, reviled, and revered. This summer, I spent a string of rainy days exploring Norman Mailer’s Brooklyn Heights home—or to be precise—an exact replica of it, re-constructed and assembled in the artist Matthew Barney’s studio in Long Island City. From the dining-room table set on a faded carpet, to Mailer’s own library neatly installed on aging bookshelves, no detail had been overlooked. The simplicity of Mailer’s home stood in stark contrast to the flourishes that Barney, whose gallery I work for, had added—massive slabs of glistening salt, a feast caught in decay, a decadent golden throne enshrined in a room all its own—elements that in many ways conjured the spirit of Mailer, or Mailer’s work, even more than the actual interior of his home. There, I watched as Barney filmed a movie based loosely on Mailer’s Ancient Evenings, but which, more significantly, was inspired by the mythology of Mailer himself.