Transitions — Norman Mailer
 

Norman Mailer, the author of “The Naked and the Dead”, died last night in New York. He was 84.

He won the Pulitzer Prize twice (The Armies of the Night, 1968 & The Executioner's Song, 1979) and he helped found The Village Voice newspaper in New York.

Besides writing great dialog, his writing was filled with violence, sexual obsession and views that created some rather noisy criticism.

Yes, he did have a way of upsetting the pwwers that be. We'll miss his writing.

Another Name gone.

He was a hard but fascinating read.

RIP, Mr. Mailer

Mailer was a fugging great guy,but usually in those famous feudes with Gore Vidal,I sided with Vidal. RIP Mr. Mailer.

My favorite story about that was that the publisher of The Naked and the Dead substituted "fug" for "fuck" without Mailer's consent, reasoning that mid-20th century America wasn't quite ready for the F-word in mainstream lit, but anyone adult enough to know would figure it out. Mailer complained that it made him look like an idiot, recalling some time later he was introduced to Miss Bette Davis, and she called him "the young man that doesn't know how to spell 'fuck'!"

Norman Mailer was smart.He realized when he wrote, "The Naked and The Dead",that he could have been arrested and his book banned for using the word "fuck." We did't even see Henry Miller's Tropic of Cancer in the states until 1963. Mailer wanted a novel that sounded the way soldiers really talked,but compromised on one word. He had the last laugh because his book couldn't be banned for "obsenity" but he got the point across. And then there was Tuli Kupferburg who started the band,The Fugs