Stormin' Norman dies

Richard Pyle at Associated Press, via CNN:

Norman Mailer, the macho prince of American letters who for decades reigned as the country's literary conscience and provocateur, died of renal failure early Saturday, his literary executor said. He was 84. Mailer died at Mount Sinai Hospital, said J. Michael Lennon, who is also the author's official biographer.

From his classic debut novel, "The Naked and the Dead," to such masterworks of literary journalism as "The Armies of the Night," the two-time Pulitzer Prize winner always got credit for insight, passion and originality.

Some of Mailer's works were highly praised, some panned, but none was pronounced the Great American Novel that seemed to be his life quest from the time he soared to the top as a brash 25-year-old "enfant terrible."

Mailer built and nurtured an image over the years as pugnacious, streetwise and high-living. He drank, fought, smoked pot, married six times and stabbed his second wife, almost fatally, during a drunken party.

More here.  Longer New York Times obituary here.  An interview with Mailer here.

Comments

[fred lapides]

critic richard poirer once said of Miler that Norman was more interesting when he was wrong than most writers when they were right. Always exciting and challenging as writer and as person.

[Jonathan]

Gore Vidal makes a similar sort of comment in the NYTimes obit, something of the order of Norman's faults added to his greatness.

At any event, this is a passing of considerable importance. The world has lost a titan. The Executioners Song is to my mind Mailer at his best, but I'd be curious to know what others think. A feminist friend and colleague of mine, for example, recently found her self adoring his anti-feminist diatribe, The Prisoner of Sex, from the early seventies.

[jet]

I read his collection of essays on writing, The Spooky Art, and it has stuck with me ever since. I read this blog regularly and have linked to you. just letting you know.

[Pete Chapman]

I need some help here; I'm trying to recall an essay that Mailer wrote (I believe for Esquire) back in the mid to late seventies. It was about television and had a cute/cryptic title that began with "On" and ended with "Dots" (at least as far as my age dimmed memory can recall). It was the first thing by him that I ever read and it seems in retrospect to be one of the better or at least balanced (to the degree that that was ever a concern with him) pieces that he ever wrote. I sure would like to read it again but it helps to get the title right. Is anybody out there familiar with this particular essay?

[fred lapides]

http://www.glowfoto.com/viewimage.php?img=11-053907L&y=2007&m=11&t=jpg&rand=9832&srv=img4> src="http://img4.glowfoto.com/images/2007/11/11-0539079832T.jpg" alt="free image hosting" border=0 />

norman">http://books.guardian.co.uk/obituaries/story/0,,2209029,00.html">norman mailer

His 35 books and more than 300 interviews litter the past 60 years like milestones in the formulation of America's literary life. Incendiary, ground breaking, exhilarating and, sometimes, quite awful, his work is nothing if not controversial. His latest - an obsessive portrait of the young Hitler - is set to unleash a fairly typical fire-storm of protest. Norman Mailer can hardly wait ...

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Remembering Norman Mailer, the pint-size Jewish fireplug. - By Christopher Hitchens - Slate Magazine

By Christopher Hitchens
Posted Sunday, Nov. 11, 2007, at 12:52 PM ET

"Culture," said Norman Mailer, pugnaciously, in 1981, "is worth a little risk." Admittedly, he was uttering these words at a rather chaotic press conference, just after a tripwire-dangerous convict for whose release he had so ardently campaigned had stabbed a harmless waiter to death. But I remember admiring Mailer's audacity even as I slightly whistled at his promiscuity, and I suppose that no appreciation of the man is really possible without taking a comparative survey of both those capacities. I find I have to add that it's quite surprisingly difficult to picture the cultural scene without him.
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Why Norman Mailer Mattered - TIME