Writer Norman Mailer dead at 84

Source: MSNBC

NEW YORK - 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.



Read more: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21721695/

a prosaic voice.

RIP, Mr. Mailer. MKJ

I don't think you meant prosaic, "heavy, flat, unimaginative; dull commonplace."

I am very grateful you pointed this out.

I cringe when I see poor usage of vocabulary, and when I do it to myself, it's downright painful.

But, life is learning, thanks again sk! :toast:

Requiem in pace.

If only we had more people now with rocks like him :patriot:

RIP

R.I.P.

I wish him peace in whatever journey he is on now. I know I and millions of others will miss him. Thanks Mr. Mailer for the many many hours of reading.

It feels a little like a sock in the stomach this one. Too many losses recently.

Michner

Buchwald

Mailer

:cry:

He was one of the wild ones. It will be a long time before his contributions to literature can be fully assessed. When he was good, he was great.

As in, "The EXecutor of his estate confirmed... " The first time she said it, I was sure the Faux staff would get her corrected by the next screen time. Nope, she said it again.

Fox News knows that all they need to reach their core audience of disgruntled white guys is Hot Babes. :eyes:

was a fascinating, heavily detailed account of the life of Lee Harvey Oswald. Once you know just who Oswald was, the rest of the story is self-evident.

Mailer was a great storyteller.

RIP

He'll be missed.

RIP and thanks, Mr. Mailer.

I was always taken with the fact that Norman lived quietly with his wife in his cottage in P-Town on the Cape, a village filled with homosexuals and Norman was the most 100% Angus Male of all writers. I liked Norman and this news makes me sad and tells me how old I am getting, too.

And then used it for literary material.

After his remarkable debut in The Naked and the Dead, his writing became ever more verbose and ever less competent. Like his hero Hemingway, he largely squandered his considerable early talent on booze, dissolution, and fascination with violence. Just try to get through even one chapter of The Gospel According to the Son (1997). Mailer, for most pseudoliterati, is an author to talk about knowingly and approvingly, but not to actually read. You can't; crystal meth wouldn't keep you awake.

He was a pugnacious sexist narcissist who thought nothing of making other people feel bad (either emotionally or physically), loved the expression of power through sexual subversion (he was fixated on buggery), and embodied all the worst parts of the macho mindset. It makes the mind wobble to see him spoken of so approvingly on a progressive board.

R.I.P. Mailer. You had none while you were alive, and neither did anyone unfortunate enough to be involved with you.

"Sexist narcissist" sums him up quite nicely. Thank you!

This needed to be said.

When I was a teenager. Same with some of the other works ("Armies of the Night" comes to mind). He kind of lost me after "Ancient Evenings".

Still, at his best he was great and at his worst he was still interesting.

Here's a clip of Rip Torn attacking Norman Mailer with a hammer during the filming of "Maidstone"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5XU4jpnJWFY

Another voice of freedom has gone silent.

Mailer was a world-class misogynist, and a pretty big homophobe. He got a little better on those fronts as he got older, mostly due to getting his ass kicked over it, IMO.

But when presented with a worthy enemy (Bushco) Mailer's instincts were right on, and he responded effectively and bravely. I respect him for that.

who people here seem to inexplicably worship.

Statutory rape? I bet you took Fear and Loathing and Las Vegas as pure non-fiction!

On guns...

If the current polls are reliable... Nixon will be re-elected by a huge majority of Americans who feel he is not only more honest and more trustworthy than George McGovern, but also more likely to end the war in Vietnam. The polls also indicate that Nixon will get a comfortable majority of the Youth Vote. And that he might carry all fifty states... This may be the year when we finally come face to face with ourselves; finally just lay back and say it — that we are really just a nation of 220 million used car salesmen with all the money we need to buy guns, and no qualms at all about killing anybody else in the world who tries to make us uncomfortable. The tragedy of all this is that George McGovern, for all his mistakes... understands what a fantastic monument to all the best instincts of the human race this country might have been, if we could have kept it out of the hands of greedy little hustlers like Richard Nixon. McGovern made some stupid mistakes, but in context they seem almost frivolous compared to the things Richard Nixon does every day of his life, on purpose... Jesus! Where will it end? How low do you have to stoop in this country to be President?
"September," from FEAR AND LOATHING ON THE CAMPAIGN TRAIL '72 (Warner Books, 1973), pp 413–414

YOU DON'T HAVE TO BE A FREAKIN PACIFIST TO UNDERSTAND THAT IT IS NOT THE GUN BUT THE PERSON BEHIND THE GUN THAT MAKES THE STORY. NORMAN MAILER KNEW THAT.

:puke:

A great man, and I wanted him to be the Mayor! I was just a kid but my dad told me he was the only one running who wasn't a bum :)