Norman Mailer

The Lion in Winter: Five Snapshots

1. St. Michael’s Academy, North Ayrshire, Scotland, 1983

My English teacher, Mr. Campbell, said he’d never read anything by Norman Mailer. Mr.  read more »

Norman Mailer, 84, Is Dead

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Two-time Pulitzer-Prize winning author Norman Mailer is dead at 84. He died early this morning at Mount Sinai Hospital of acute renal failure, his family told The New York Times. The prolific writer behind The Naked and the Dead, Armies of the Night, and Executioner's Song had a long and storied career, founding the Village Voice and constantly remaining at the center of American letters.  read more »

Report: Norman Mailer in Critical Care at Mount Sinai, Recovering From Surgery (UPDATE)


Norman Mailer was checked into Mount Sinai Hospital’s critical care unit yesterday with severe respiratory problems, The Post reported this morning. His ex-wife Carol Mailer told The Post that Mr. Mailer’s lung collapsed, and that although surgeons successfully removed the scar tissue, the 84-year-old writer is "not in very good shape."

Although an in-law told The Post that "everything's fine" and that "he's recovering," his children are reportedly "holding daily vigils at his bedside."

According to Jynne Martin, Mr. Mailer's publicist at Random House, the Post story exaggerated the urgency of the situation. "Contrary to the sensationalized NY Post report, Norman is recovering from surgery, and is doing well," Ms. Martin wrote in an e-mail.

This is the second time the New York literary icon has been hospitalized since Labor Day weekend. Over the course of the last month, he has canceled several public appearances for health reasons, including one at the New Yorker Festival and one at the 92nd Street Y.

Mr. Mailer's new book, On God, which takes the form of an extended dialogue with his longtime literary executor Michael Lennon, was published yesterday by Random House.  read more »

Mailer Was the Rage

Norman Mailer
Getty Images/ Scott Gries
Norman Mailer

I’m beginning to feel that Norman Mailer might have made a strategic mistake in recent intervi  read more »

Satan, Meet Norman

Mailer's Morality: "Even the writer who can be a perfect scamp ... there is a moral under that."
Victor Juhasz
Mailer's Morality: "Even the writer who can be a perfect scamp ... there is a moral under that."

The Castle in the Forest, by Norman Mailer. Random House, 477 pages, $27.95.    read more »

Kipnis and Perel: A Literary Submission

Return of the native: Aussie-turned-Brooklyn-boy Heath Ledger.
James Hamilton
Return of the native: Aussie-turned-Brooklyn-boy Heath Ledger.

Paul Holdengräber, resplendent in a cream-colored suit beneath the spotlights at the South Cour  read more »

Never Mind the Bollocks--Here Is Walt and Mearsheimer!

Tonight's the big debate. I haven't been so excited since Norman Mailer and Germaine Greer and Susan Sontag squared off over feminism. As a pipsqueak, I was on the wrong side then (Mailer's), now I'm on the right one.

One cool thing about this event is you can play the West End in London or the Arena Stage in Washington forever, but nothing really matters till you come to New York. That's the function of a cultural capital. New York has suppressed these ideas for a long time, but thanks to the London Review of Books, it's taking them on tonight, as it should. As it provided the venue for Mailer and Greer, when they wrestled over the power of women.  read more »

The big question this time around is simple: Can we talk about the political power of Jews? I'm firmly in the yes camp.

Hugh McCracken, Ace Ombudsman

Like usual, I been a-eyein’ them newspapers and them TV news programs, and I’m a-here to tell ye  read more »

Hugh McCracken, Ace Ombudsman

Gams, she
James Hamilton
Gams, she

Like usual, I been a-eyein’ them newspapers and them TV news programs, and I’m a-here to  read more »

New York Is Reborn

Is New York over?Well, that New York is.  read more »

Countdown to Bliss

Sasha Lazard and Michael Mailer Met: March 2000|

Engaged: April 12, 2003  read more »

One Generation, Two Stories: On Campus and In Country

They Marched Into Sunlight: War and Peace, Vietnam and America, October 1967, by David Maraniss.  read more »

Mailer Was the Rage

I'm beginning to feel that Norman Mailer might have made a strategic mistake in recent interviews pl  read more »

Dick Cavett Moonwalks From Past With Rocky Horror Broadway Gig

Dick Cavett, slave to the moonwalk, just couldn't help himself. It was just past 1 p.m.  read more »

Updike's Gertrude and Claudius: It's His Valentine to Eve

You could think of them as the Holy Family of secular Western culture: Gertrude, Claudius, Childe Ha  read more »

It's Tom Wolfe Versus the 'Three Stooges'

IN NOVEMBER 1998, John Updike oh so quietly killed A Man in Full .It was a clean kill.  read more »

Sexy Life Story, Limply Told: Gore Vidal, Angel and Monster

Gore Vidal: A Biography , by Fred Kaplan. Doubleday, 850 pages, $35.Ah, to have been Gore Vidal!  read more »

Andy Warhol's Brillo Box in Big Whitney Farce

About the not-so-eagerly awaited Part 2 of The American Century: Art & Culture 1900-2000 at the Whit  read more »

Tales of Serial Antipathy: New York Eggheads Play Rough

Ex-Friends: Falling Out With Allen Ginsberg, Lionel and Diana Trilling, Lillian Hellman, Hannah Aren  read more »

Problem With Monogamy? It's So Incredibly Dull

Speaking to an audience of suits and ties and quiet jewelry at the 92nd Street Y on May 11, Norman M  read more »

Women Demand Pleasure, So Men Invent Stiff Pill

Viagra is the perfect American medicament. It raises the Dow Jones and the penis, too.  read more »

Roth, Mailer, Bellow Running Out of Gas

There comes a moment-it is scored in the evolving grain of things-when the balance between a father  read more »