There's a superb obit written by Jerry Tallmer in this week's THE VILLAGER. http://www.thevillager.com/villager_237/normanmailer.html

What's with the Herman Wouk reference in the headline?

I heard a description of Mailer which I found apt: "In a literary sense, he was America's crazy uncle: Beloved even when embarrassing"

I'm sorry to have to ask: But does anyone else find this galling? The Voice of America website's obituary refers to the success of the "prolific and controversial" author's first novel and states it is "remarkable because Mailer wrote realistically of combat without ever actually having taken part in battle." Personally, I believe this statement to be misleading to the point of being libelous. Because what the article fails to reveal to its readers "in 44 languages" around the world is that Norman Mailer -- unlike the executive in chief who I believe is ultimately responsible for the VOA -- served his country with honor in the military for two years during a time of war. I have been demanding a correction through VOA and the State Department since Saturday to no avail - making what was already one of the saddest Veteran's Days I can remember even worse. Can anyone help? (You can see the VOA piece here: http://www.voanews.com/english/2007-11-10-voa19.cfm) -Dan Currie, Boston

I lived down the street from Mr. Mailer. On numerous occassions I dined at a table next to his in a local restaurant. I'd spoken with him on several occassions when he took his daily walk down Commercial Street. I don't understand how/why it is that people speak so nastily here about someone I doubt they knew or had ever met.

It's one thing not to have liked what he wrote, but to "piss on his grave" because of it? I'd hate to think of what you'd be doing to his grave had you actually spoken with him and not liked him. Did Mr. Mailer actually harm you? Why is it that some of you are full of such hate and vitriol?

HE CERTAINLY HAD GEORGE W. BUSH'S NUMBER - KNEW WHAT A MORON GEORGE IS AND THAT HIS WAR MONGERING WAYS WOULD CREATE AN ALMOST IRREVOCABLE MESS IN THE WORLD. WHY DO WE LET THE BRILLIANT WORDS OF A GENIUS LIKE NORMAN MAILER GO UNHEARALDED WHILE LISTENING TO THE DISGRACEFUL LIKES OF RIGHT WING POLITICAL NUT PUNDITS LIKE PAT BUCHANAN AND THE DRUG ADDICT RUSH LIMBAUGH?

A great, great talent, but a real schmuck.

"Ancient Evenings" is the only book I read of his and I read it twice before I realized I didn't like it!

Mr. Mailer was a great talent. A genius.



http://verybestwebsites.blogspot.com/

He may not have quite written the Great American Novel, but clearly he was the Great American Novelist.

I produced a film with Norman Mailer in it. We had to paste signs up all over the room so he could read them. And yet, in the end, his delivery was amazing. But the part I remember the most was the two us taking a piss break, and out of nowhere he started to tell me about visiting Gary Gilmore on death row.

And for all these Republican hacks disrespecting the guy, I wonder who will be remembering you... Let him rest and show some respect. And I maybe the rest of us won't piss on Bushes grave.

Mailer"s attention was captured by Jack Abbott, a violent convict and self-declared Communist who began writing Mailer long "existential" letters about life in prison. Mailer loved them. He helped Abbott have them published, first in The New York Review of Books and then as a book, called In the Belly of the Beast (1981). In his introduction, Mailer described Abbott as "an intellectual, a radical, a potential leader, a man obsessed with a vision of more elevated human relations in a better world that revolution could forge." It seems clear that Mailer"s interest helped to expedite Abbott"s release from prison: "Culture," Mailer declared at one point, "is worth a little risk." Abbott had scarcely set foot in New York when he stabbed and killed Richard Adan, a twenty-two-year-old Cuban-American waiter. Mailer testified on Abbott"s behalf at the ensuing murder trial. Asked about Adan"s family at a press conference following his testimony, Mailer said: "I"m willing to gamble with a portion of society to save this man"s talent." A reporter from The New York Post then asked "who he was willing to see sacrificed. Waiters? Cubans?" Questions to which Mailer had no response but bluster: "What are you all feeling so righteous about, may I ask?" Clearly, he did not know the answer to his own question.

Is it not customary to refrain from speaking ill of the recently deceased.
Nice manners, folks.

I imagine these derrogatory comments come from those bright lights who call US disrespectful when we our criticism over Boy George

Norman Mailer died of Bush Derangement Syndrome. Like all left wing idiots, he actually died in December 2000, when George Bush was finally declared the winner of the '00 presidential election.

Since then he's been hysterical and irrelevant, a hack and traitorous to his country.

That's a dead man in my book.

Anyway, his physical body has now succumbed. We all gotta go sometime.

I first tried to read Mailer when I was 15.
Had to wait another 10 years until I knew what
he was trying to say.
If I needed to find a complicated mind,I'd rather
read Yukio Mishima.At least he understood passion
and committed Harakiri in the name of his own
insanity.
The last important "ritual suicide" in Japan.