Norman Mailer: Death and Remembrance

Norman Mailer, the Pulitzer-winning novelist and towering figure of American letters, died today in Manhattan, at the age of 84. Over the course of a career that spanned six decades, Norman Mailer became one of the great American writers of our time, publishing over 30 books on subjects ranging from his experiences during World War II to the 1967 antiwar march on the Pentagon. Always curious about new ways to communicate, Norman Mailer was an occasional blogger for this site. We send our warmest wishes to his family and friends.

As NYUs Jay Rosen wrote shortly before the Democratic National Convention in 2004, Mailer always said he hated journalism. His coverage of the 1960 Democratic convention in Los Angeles broke the mold of the traditional political reporter. Rosen wrote that Mailer's story for Esquire Magazine, titled "Superman Comes To The Supermarket," demonstrated that John F. Kennedy

was about to send a powerful (and erotic) jolt into mainstream America-- if he won the election. For this was the idea Mailer developed as he tried to make sense of what he saw, heard, and felt in Los Angeles.

"Superman..." appeared in Esquire Magazine well after the event was over. To read it today...is to realize that things don't have to be the way [a traditional reporter] says they are. There are other ways into the intricacies of politics. And if they are not practical for the reporter from Mudville who got the assignment to cover the convention, they can at least be inspirational. If not that, educational.

You can read "Superman Comes To The Supermarket," from the November 1960 issue of Esquire here.

In 1969 Mailer ran for Mayor of New York City alongside columnist Jimmy Breslin, who was running for President of the City Council. Time Magazine reported in 1969 that Mailer was pitching himself as a "left conservative," who explained that he was in the race because "I am paying my debt to society."

You can read a June 13, 1969 Time Magazine article on Mailer's run for office here.

To listen to Breslin's recollections of their candidacy, click here.

Story continues below

Read Paul Krassner's "Remembering Norman Mailer"

Read RJ Eskow's "Norman Mailer's City"

Read Norman Mailer's HuffPost blog "God's Chosen Envoy for America"

Read Norman Mailer's HuffPost blog "Intelligence 101A"

Read Norman Mailer's obit from the AP

Read Norman Mailer's obit in the New York Times

Read Michiko Kakutani's appraisal of Norman Mailer's career

Read Norman Mailer's obit in the Washington Post

Norman Mailer's Bibliography

Comments

[citizenofmars]

"Armies of the Night" should be required reading in High Schools...

[willrob456r]

Here's the thing about Norman Mailer.
If you want to know about truth, Mailer would tell you his version of humanistic truth-which happens to be the truth for almost all of us, which is to say, the human species. Animals of course, know a different truth, even more visceral than Mailer, and he was the most visceral of truth tellers.

Mailer's truth could be dirt hard and base to reflect what he felt in his gut, which is as much truth most of the time as anyone can ever know. Sex, booze, power, God, Hitler and the Devil, book after book in a meandering discovery of truth that was to him as necessary and sacred and self evident as We the People.

There will never be another Norman Mailer, not because of his driven talent, but because this new age has very little to do with anything approaching real truth. Other writers got close. Hunter S. Thompson came close, but Hunter was too playful with it. Thompson would hurl himself at the rawness of the American Dream, stir the entrails, then laugh at himself. Hunter was having too much fun to fully embrace the heat. Hemingway came within a whisper, but while Hemingway could make you weep, Mailer could make you think.

Mailer ran toward the heat. The heat and odor of sex with a linger of bourbon. The manic muscle grip of anger irrationally spent. He was hard wired for it, and had the damnation of immeasurable ego he was compelled to share.

If you purvey the American scene, look fast and look backward now. Truth as an icon, truth in your gut that transcends this era's cadence of facts, is gone this moment and forever.

[RootlessCosmopolitan]

"Milton ! thou shoudst be living at this hour :
England hath need of thee : she is a fen
Of stagnant waters : altar, sword, and pen..."

As Wordsworth wrote and even truer in Mailer's America.

Rest in Peace, Norman, We will continue the battle.

— Dr. Wu, the last of the big-time thinkers, LA

[MartyGee]

He wrote a book about the moon landing.
It was the most brilliant example of how to explain complex information to a lay audience I ever read.
He had flaws and who doesn't.
I think I'd be more full-of-myself than he was full-of-himself if I could write as well as he did.

[frug]

I've read a little Mailer and although I didn't particularly esteem his work, it always surprises me at how many of his insights stuck, and became guiding lights in my life. A passionate and original mind. Even his wrong ideas were often interesting.

[brooklyncitizen]

Why is it "sad"? was he suppose to live for ever? maybe because the circumstances were sad...seems like he had a good life: on his own terms; messy and self-destructive.

That almost killing his second wife...kind of unforgivable or is it unforgettable?she never pressed charges.tsk tsk.

He was part of that laughable bigger-than-life-all-male-artist club, which includes Painters such as DeKooning, Pollock...ego centric chauvinistic and toxic.

[MsLiz]

I have never read any Norman Mailer. I read Time, so that article calling him a male chauvinist is probably one reason, and the wife stabbing and multiple marriages are others. Reading an opposing viewpoint is fun, but I was repulsed by descriptions of Mailer.

No one has mentioned his championing of Jack Abbott. He facilitated the release of a sociopath from prison based upon his literary talent:

"Abbott's talents were of such importance, [Mailer] assured, that it would be a crime to ignore it. "Culture is worth a little risk," Mailer later told reporters."

http://www.crimelibrary.com/notorious_murders/celebrity/jack_abbott/index.html

or
http://snipurl.com/1tfj2

Abbott murdered someone within weeks of his parole from prison.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norman_Mailer

Someone here mentioned Woody Allen's comment about Mailer's massive ego. Yep.

[micdago]

I've hung onto this since 2002 -- from Drudge (surprise!) If you're a Mailer fan, enjoy. Edited to fit huffpo word count

DRUDGE REPORT
FRIDAY SEPT 06, 2002 20:32:09

NORMAN MAILER DECLARES: 'AMERICA IS SO VAIN'

In an 8,000-wordish polemic to be published in this weekend's London SUNDAY TIMES [9/8/02], Norman Mailer sounds what he hopes to be a "wake up call for America," the DRUDGE REPORT has learned.

" In America we're playing musical chairs - don't get caught without a flag or you're out of the game. Why do we need all this reaffirmation? We don't need compulsive, self-serving patriotism. It's odious...

"When you have a great country it's your duty to be critical of it so it can become even greater...

"Culturally, emotionally America is growing more loutish, arrogant, and vain.

"I detest this totally promiscuous patriotism. Wave a little flag and become a good person? Ugly.

"If we have a depression or fall into desperate economic times, I don't know what's going to hold the country together...

"Patriotism in a country that's failing has a logical tendency to turn fascistic...

"Let's suppose ten people are killed by a small bomb on a street corner in some city in America. The first thing to understand is that there are 280 million Americans. So, there's one chance in 28 million you're going to be one of those people. By such heartless means of calculation, the 3000 deaths in the Twin Towers came approximately to one mortality for every 90,000 Americans. Your chances of dying if you drive a car are one in 7,000 each year. We seem perfectly ready to put up with automobile statistics. I fear I am ready to say there is a tolerable level to terror...

"Clinton made a point of surrounding himself with people who might be 90% as intelligent as himself, but never his equal. Bush is smart enough to know that he couldn't possibly do the same, or the country would be run by morons."

[givemycountryback]

This is sad. He was not only a great writer, but a voice against injustice and he hated the idiot in the white house. I just read his last novel and I loved it and was amazed how he could write like this in his advanced years. I really feel like he was a better author than Hemingway, who I think was so overrated and boring, just my opinion.

[rini]

Let me add (actually, you have no choice).

There probably are other great writers who also have moral and ethical consciences. Unfortunately, it is the writers of meaningless fiction and copycat fantasy that seem to sell big, that, and stupid self help books. Listen, I don't need someone to tell me how to put zucchini in my kids pancakes, OK?

[rini]

Sadly,

There has been no one to pass the torch onto.