Norman Mailer

This is old news for most of you, but those who haven't heard, Norman Mailer died Saturday, November 10th after undergoing lung surgery. He must have been a character to meet in person. Entertainment Weekly's website http://www.ew.com/ew/article/0,,20008037,00.html notes that he was still a provocateur at age 83. That his first novel The Naked and the Dead won him instant celebrity but also represented just about the last time everybody loved him. Since that time, he's been America's brashest writer, unafraid of making an ugly spectacle of himself in public - huffing and puffing on TV talk shows, running for mayor of New York, even stabbing his second wife in 1960. He was married six times and had eight children.

Mailer was considered an innovator of creative nonfiction, a genre sometimes called New Journalism, which covers the essay to nonfiction novel. He was awarded the Pulitzer Prize twice and the National Book Award once. Our library has six of his books: Ancient evenings, The Naked and the Dead, Harlot's ghost, The executioner's song, Oswald's Tale, The Gospel according to the son, and The castle in the forest.