Saturday, November 10, 2007

R.I.P. Norm

He projected the image of a post-World War II Hemingway -- tough, hard-edged, boozy, brawling. Norman Mailer won a pair of Pulitzers for his literary efforts that were as tough and hard-edged as the author himself.

Today he is dead and he will write no more. He leaves behind a collection of works that English teachers will one day point to when they describe the change in writing styles that followed the Second World War. Mr. Mailer began his career by penning The Naked and the Dead, putting his experiences in the war-torn Philippines into every page, and doing it in a way that was fresh and new.

He worked with non-fiction and turned it into something bordering on fiction, thus launching a new genre. With success he became bigger than life, and he eschewed a more writer-like isolation for the glare of the public spotlight. His feud with Gore Vidal remains the stuff of legend.

Women will not particularly mourn the passing of Norman Mailer, given his misogynistic rants. Good riddance, the feminists are heard to cheer, and may he sink into dismal obscurity, his books gathering dust in some library basement, unread and unwanted. Literary historians will keep him alive in course curricula, Norman Mailer as poster boy for the Beat Generation and the mood swings of the 1960's.

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