Post by Dominique on Nov 12, 2007 1:13:57 GMT -5
Norman Mailer, author of The Executioner's Song and The Naked and the Dead, died yesterday at the age of 84.
Norman also had a cameo in the Gilmore Girls ep "Norman Mailer I'm Pregnant".
Here is a short excerpt of an article chis lommemorating his life, the full thing can be found at:
www.smh.com.au/news/books/norman-mailer-dead-at-84/2007/11/11/1194724813032.html
Norman also had a cameo in the Gilmore Girls ep "Norman Mailer I'm Pregnant".
Here is a short excerpt of an article chis lommemorating his life, the full thing can be found at:
www.smh.com.au/news/books/norman-mailer-dead-at-84/2007/11/11/1194724813032.html
Norman Mailer, the macho prince of American letters who for decades reigned as the country's literary conscience and provocateur with such books as The Naked and the Dead and The Executioner's Song, died today aged 84, his literary executor said.
Mailer died of acute renal failure at Mount Sinai Hospital, said J Michael Lennon, who is also the author's biographer.
From his classic debut novel The Naked and the Dead, set in the South Pacific in World War II, to such masterworks of literary journalism as The Armies of the Night, the two-time Pulitzer Prize winner always got credit for his insight, passion and originality.
Some of his 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.
He had nine children, made a quixotic bid to become mayor of New York, produced five forgettable films, dabbled in journalism, flew gliders, challenged professional boxers, was banned from a Manhattan YWHA (Young Women's Hebrew Association, a Jewish community centre) for reciting obscene poetry, feuded publicly with writer Gore Vidal and crusaded against women's liberation.
But as Newsweek reviewer Raymond Sokolov said in 1968, "in the end it is the writing that will count".