Norman Mailer Dies

Two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning author Norman Mailer died early today at the age of 84.

Along with the likes of Tom Wolfe and Truman Capote, Mailer was regarded as one of the innovators of "New Journalism," a genre of creative nonfiction, which covers the essay to the nonfiction novel. Mailer was part of the culture since 1948, when his semi-autobiographical World War II novel The Naked and the Dead was published.

For six decades, Mailer was a cultural icon. He won his Pulitzer Prizes for The Armies of the Night in 1968 and The Executioner's Song in 1979.

An anti-Vietnam activist, Mailer wrote The Armies of the Night about the October 1967 March on the Pentagon. It was penned at a time when other "New Journalism" works like Capote's In Cold Blood and Hunter Thompson's Hell's Angels had already been published and just before Wolfe's The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test was published.

I was born more than 10 years after Mailer's debut with The Naked and the Dead. The first Mailer book I read was The Executioner's Song when I was in college. If you haven't read it, it is a riveting account of the story of Gary Gilmore, who was executed in Utah.

I thought the book was remarkable, and I thought Mailer's writing was astonishing.

Ultimately, he may be remembered by future generations and future writing students for coining the word "fug" to replace the four-letter slang word for sexual intercourse in The Naked and the Dead.

(For you trivia buffs, "fug" is referred to indirectly in some dialogue in an early episode of the M*A*S*H TV series. General MacArthur is supposed to visit the camp, and Frank Burns takes it upon himself to rid the camp of what he regards as evidence of subversion prior to "Big Mac's" arrival. One of the things Burns does is burn a pile of books he has gathered, including Mailer's The Naked and the Dead. The book is never mentioned by name. When questioning Burns about his selections for burning, Trapper John looks at him disapprovingly and says, "Norman Mailer." Burns replies, "It's got that word in it!")

Replacing "that word" was actually urged upon Mailer by his publishers, and Mailer reportedly said about the affair:

"... The word has been a source of great embarrassment to me over the years because, you know, Tallulah Bankhead's press agent, many years ago, got a story in the papers which went ... 'Oh, hello, you're Norman Mailer,' said Tallulah Bankhead allegedly. 'You're the young man that doesn't know how to spell ... ' You know, the four-letter word was indicated with all sorts of asterisks ... I thought she (Bankhead) should have hired a publicity man who had a better sense of fair play."

Undoubtedly, Mailer will remain controversial in death, almost as controversial as he was in life.

He was absolutely certain on one point. "I knew that there was one thing I wanted to be and that was a writer."

One man's life can't be summed up adequately in one newspaper article, but the obituary in today's New York Times does as good a job as can be expected. You can read it here.