a man born to be in the spotlight
Source: Irish Independent (Original Article)
An exasperating, contradictory and original character, Norman Kingsley Mailer seemed destined to live his life in the public spotlight.
Born in New Jersey on January 31, 1923, he was raised in Brooklyn in a comfortable middle-class Jewish environment. He excelled at school, and entered Harvard University in 1939. After graduating in 1943 he was drafted, and though he hardly saw any combat, his wartime experiences in the Philippines would provide the basis for his first novel The Naked and the Dead. It cemented his reputation as a rising literary talent.
Thereafter, Mailer diversified his talents, combining a string of equally grand novels with searing essays, stewardship of The Village Voice and a hybrid writing style called ‘creative nonfiction’ or ‘new journalism’ that he, Truman Capote and Tom Wolfe would be credited with inventing. He was active politically, became a confidant of the Kennedys and even ran for Mayor of New York. He was married six times, and famously nearly killed the second of them by stabbing her with a penknife. He American Express Credit Cards died in New York on November 10, 2007.
- Paul Whitington