Norman Mailer, Outspoken Novelist, Dies at 84 – New York Times — End of an era that probably really ended around 1980. It was unique to see Mailer walking around the streets of Manhattan during his heyday. He would invariably be surrounded by a large entourage to whom he’d be lecturing while walking. The group would plow down the street. On Park Avenue I once happened upon an entourage with Mike Tyson in the middle. Mailer’s group was more spirited by far. I personally felt Mailer was difficult to read in his later years. Since these sorts of deaths come in threes I wonder who is next.
Norman Mailer, the combative, controversial and often outspoken novelist who loomed over American letters longer and larger than any writer of his generation, died today in Manhattan. He was 84.
Norman, you were a real egomaniacal a$$hole but you did some great work. RIP.
1st person I ever read who suggested there was nothing wrong with being a sociopath – when the society sucked!
I still agree.
The world will be a lesser place now that you’ve passed.
Give ’em hell in heaven, Mr Mailer!
Crap. Mailer was a one-hit wonder (Naked/Dead) and the rest of his career was spent resting on his laurels.
Vonnegut already died. The next might be Gore Vidal. That would be your three, John.
Mailer was a lot of fun.
He was a trouble-making journalist who got tarred as being the big hope for “Serious American Culture” when he was very young.
He knew it, but every time he got the chance to practice his true vocation, he got saddled with the myth. That’s why a lot of his stuff reads badly. The novels (except for the fab potboiler American Dream) are psuedo-Bibilical garbage,
Read Armies Of The NIght instead – and you get the smell of being there – as well as his sense of why he shouldn’t be there, and the world going to hell in a handbasket.
The PC/NYT crowd will ensure Mailer is buried in a concrete coffin, but I’d like to think of him kicking his way out.
What, he wasn’t dead already, the overrated, ego-tripping asshole?
Mr. Dvorak — do you really believe that stuff comes in threes? Whether you do or not, you just re-enforced a garbage, non-mathematical, non-scientific belief.
Mailer did seem to have been screwed up by being so successful at the age of twenty-five with “The Naked and the Dead.” From then on he seemed to be trying too hard in everything he did and being a silly provocateur, sort of like Dvorak.
Then again, Mailer did have the merit of being able to write coherently and obey grammar and spelling rules, unlike some journalists. 🙂
#9 — not necessarily threes…but in bunches for sure. And it is mathematically valid if you know anything about random number theory which apparently you do not.
I did not agree with some of his actions but his writing made me think. I found his artical in playboy this month on GOD very thaughtful. I didnot realise he was close to death.
I never studied him at school – I always assumed no one teaches him because it’s simply uninspired popular fiction, much like Tom Wolfe.