From the NYT:
Norman Mailer, Outspoken Novelist, Dies at 84
By CHARLES McGRATH
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.
He died of acute renal failure at Mount Sinai Hospital early this morning, his family said.Mr. Mailer burst on the scene in 1948 with “The Naked and the Dead,” a partly autobiographical novel about World War II, and for the next six decades he was rarely far from the center stage. He published more than 30 books, including novels, biographies and works of nonfiction, and twice won the Pulitzer Prize: for “The Armies of the Night” (1968), which also won the National Book Award, and “The Executioner’s Song” (1979).
He also wrote, directed, and acted in several low-budget movies, helped found The Village Voice and for many years was a regular guest on television talk shows, where he could reliably be counted on to make oracular pronouncements and deliver provocative opinions, sometimes coherently and sometimes not.
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Kinda redundant, in my opinion, calling a novelist "outspoken".
Ah well.
Although good writing is where you find it, I supposed everyone has their Secret Reader’s Matrix: a quadrant for the “lit’rature” you love, for the lit that you recognize from a distance as worthy but which never lights your fire, for the pulp you can’t put down, and for the pulp you wouldn’t touch.
Mailer occupied a place in that second room; a generation and a half ahead of me, I caught up with him as he was working the talk and magazine circuit and becoming almost a parody of the bare-chested, two-fisted writer. And good as he was, I deposited him in that well-intentioned place where books and articles and reviews and raves by friends go for when you have more time to spend with the new voices and fresh vistas.
But, of course, there is never more time.
For me, maybe it's because the Male Writer niche got filled early with Heinlein and then Hemingway, topped off with (Harlan) Ellison, and later with the likes of Hunter Thompson, Raymond Carver and David Mamet, that I hadn’t much room left for Mailer.
Just one of those things.
I cannot say I’ll miss his writing because as powerful as it was, it just never reached me.
But I will miss knowing he is in the world, prowling the grounds and explaining, for example, in shapely language (and without ever saying it so didactically) just how the “Rumble in the Jungle” wasn’t just a punch-up in some faraway sweaty tin-pot dictatorship, but a pivot on which so much of that era’s perceptions of race, nationality, masculinity and championship turned.
Rest in peace, Mr. Mailer.
7 comments:
Legendary f*cker, fighter, drinker, writer -- try him again, Drifty. You might find a lot more there. You might also find your best voice sounds more than a bit like his.
At least one thing leaps off just about every page. This author, no matter his personal flaws, is a man who is truly alive.
No more. It'll be a colder world without him.
I recall Mailer introducing Robert Lowell in 1968 when they were both stumping for Gene McCarthy. Mailer sounded like a madman, plainly in one of his manic phases, someone who could perfectly sympathize with Lowell's own problems with bipolarity.
He will be missed. Say what you want about his prose: He was an American original.
a pivot on which so much of that era’s perceptions of race, nationality, masculinity and championship turned.
well spoken, dear. Mailer - well, obviously, eh? - was never a favorite of mine. I stayed clear of him, except for THe Naked and the Dead - and, hell, even then..... But, I would not be so disrespectful of not noting his passing - with, yes, respect.
Dude, it's never too late.
The Armies of the Night. It's in the library.
i was gonna say,
along with the other recommends above, try again with:
executioner's song.
american dream.
of a fire on the moon.
miami and the siege of chicago -- if anyone should like that one, it's you, d-man.
i used to read at least one mailer a year, along with one from hemingway, fitzgerald, roth, and steinbeck. my list has thinned on most all of them, as my tastes have ranged further and i do feel the need to hear new voices.
but mailer, more than most of his generation, took on the mantle and responsibility of the american writer. maybe he enjoyed the spotlight too much, and in his last 20 years wasn't the force of nature that came before. (who among us will be able to say otherwise of ourselves?)
even in his interviews, he would confess and make statements that gave us (or at least me) something big to think about. rarely did he waste anyone's time.
i know you weren't suggesting otherwise. but you owe it to yourself to dive into the wreck again.
Yeah, Mr. D. Glass...I might have known you'd gone the Heinlein/Harlan/Hunter route. Something deep in my primal consciousness probably recognized a kindred spirit. (Mercy! Wasn't Ellison just NUTS?) Seems to me you've mentioned Firesign Theatre at one point also.
I do believe we went to different schools together...
my favorite mailer was oddly enough featured on an NPR interview this afternoon. Harlot's Ghost is mailer at the top of his form as a novelist. the depravity, the dirtiness and cruelty of the CIA is laid bare. it is at once brutal and gorgeous. tawdry and uplifting. bold and enigmatic.
much like mailer himself. when the dude was on, he was fucking ON.
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