Fug! Pulitzer-Prize winning ‘hip’ prose writer Norman Mailer died yesterday. Like many writers of his generation, he was gifted with words, but also notorious for his occasional drunkenness, machismo, drug use, and for his string of wives (and sexism for speaking out against women’s rights and for stabbing his second wife at a party!)
Interesting item of note: it’s said he once ‘head butted’ fellow “new journalist” Truman Capote–or Gore Vidal! No one’s really sure. He was outspoken on many issues, and this is what made his prose so enticing. Mailer, unapologetically opinionated, contributed to the myth of the writer’s life. And yet, there’s something beautiful about that raw, in-your-face energy. He once said, With the pride of the artist, you must blow against the walls of every power that exists the small trumpet of your defiance. Mailer was always “living a little more or dying a little bit.” I, for one, will miss him.