It is easy to hold an opinion about Norman Mailer without having read a single sentence he has written. His tumultuous personal life and provocative opinions on contemporary social issues may at one time have made him, in his own words, the second most unpopular man in America, surpassed only by Richard Nixon. What is difficult is to hold an opinion about Mailer's writing that is not influenced by his image as a public figure. Robert Merrill's Norman...