Obituary: Norman Mailer
Pulitzer Prize-winning author Norman Mailer has died of renal
failure aged 84, his literary executor has said.
Norman Mailer
Mailer won the prestigious Pulitzer Prize twice, for The Armies of
the Night in 1968 and The Executioner's Song in 1979.
He was known for biting prose and as an antagonist of the feminist
movement. His latest work, The Castle in the Forest, was published
this year.
Last month he had surgery to remove scar tissue from around his
lung.
Born in 1923 in New Jersey, Mailer wrote dozens of books as well as
plays, poems, screenplays and essays.
His strident views on US political life, and the wars in Vietnam
and Iraq, provoked and enraged readers.
Author
feuds
Mailer's first major success, the 1948 novel The Naked and the
Dead, was a fictionalised account based on his experiences in the
Army in World War II.
"A man who went to a famous prep school in the early 1920s said
afterward, 'It was the worst experience of my life and the most
valuable.' I can say the same about my time in the US Army," he
reflected in 2005.
Mailer's works were often filled with violence, sexual obsession
and views that angered feminists.
Married six times and the father of nine children, Mailer once said
in an NBC television interview that he was worried "women are going
to take over the world".
Detractors considered him an intellectual bully and he feuded with
fellow authors including Truman Capote, William Styron, Tom Wolfe
and Norman Podhoretz.
In later life he reconsidered many of his old positions but never
surrendered his right to speak his mind.
Mailer was also co-founder of The Village Voice alternative
newspaper in New York.
(source: BBC
News)