Norman Mailer RIP

young writers aspired to screenwriting or journalism.

Is this true?

RIP. I suppose I should get round to reading some of his books now.

The proof that he was the first modern celebrity author is I've never read a single book of his. Think I'll start w/ Armies of the Night.

Harlot' Ghost is still on shelf today in Brooklyn library, about 20 feet from his pic on the wall.

Armies of the Night is fantastic and all about his celebrity in a way. He is very endearing in it.

it is also prescient about our current political moment which is a little painful to read.

Executioner's Song really is fantastic - especially love the lengthy autopsy sequence near the end of the book that reminded me of the lengthy autopsy sequence near the end of Albert Goldman's Elvis bio - tho I suspect that may have a lot to do w/ all the research/access that came from Mailer's collaborator/business partner Lawrence Schiller (Schiller's Perfect Murder, Perfect Town (abt JonBenet Ramsey) and his book on the OJ Simpson trial are two of my v. favourite true crime bks). Mailer, always in competition, obv. had one eye/mind on Capote's In Cold Blood, but I think Executioner's Song is the better bk - less sentimental/gratuitously poetic, less enamoured of crims (ironic considering the Abbot biz), and keenly sympathetic (surprisingly) to the women in Gilmore's life.

RIP

http://gilmoregirls.serialy.info/images/herci/ine_slavne_tvare/norman_mailer.jpg

Aw damn, RIP.

I am 53. You would thinnk he would appeal to someone who was nearer to his own age and epoch. I have never read Mailer, so he might be a fabulous, fantastic, moving writer of great excellence and I would not know it.

His death is very little different to me than the death of any other well-known person who has not touched my life. I am sorry for those who loved him. That does not include me. RIP, Norman.

You lived it, Norm.

I read one of his Esquire pieces from the '60s last night. Say what you want about his ego, at least the guy was not boring. His writing snaps and crackles.

If only there were more people writing about politics with a novelist's eye like Mailer's these days:

"Superman Comes to the Supermarket"

http://web.archive.org/web/20030910061551/www.esquire.com/features/articles/2003/031001_mfe_mailer_1.html

I think of Mailer as almost being, like, America's version of Cyril Connolly: both men never really wrote the Next Great Novel they were anointed to write as young men, and both men introduced a new sort of intellectual archetype who would epitomize the opinions of the age who came after him.

One last honor.

The winning passage, which leaves little to the imagination, begins: "So Klara turned head to foot and put her most unmentionable part down on his hard-breathing nose and mouth and took his old battering ram into her lips."

old battering ram = National Book Award?

Here's the infamous brawl with Rip Torn, who looks like he's eaten a lot of Ho-Hos since then:

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

has anyone read harlot's ghost?

2 things i wanna know

is it great?
and
do u need to know a lot about the CIA to get it?

yes, sort of, no

Yes. His best novel. When I read it, I finally found the novel equiv of JFK.

yeah, his magnum opus.

it is certainly good, i'm just not sure it justifies its length

iirc i read it between ellroy's "cold six thousand" and "gravity's rainbow" ... it was a paranoid summer

Been dipping into his Apollo book, Of a Fire on the Moon, as mentioned on this thread: DSKY-DSKY Him Sad: Official ILB Thread For The Heroic Age of Manned Spaceflight. It's a really great subject for him. Fantastic evocation of the era and speculation of the significance of certain events and behaviors and what might come next. Really nice set pieces, like the comparison of the personalities and speaking styles of the three Apollo 11 astronauts.

Note: don't think any of us on the other thread had actually gotten around to reading it yet so maybe I should have posted there first.