Norman Mailer died on 11/10/07 at the age of 84.
And I thought that blow hard would never die due to the fact that he had so much hot air in his lungs.
Like many famous fuck ups in the past, Mailer started out on a good note, and then it was straight downhill from there.
His first novel, The Naked and The Dead, was a critical achievement and was well received by many...placing on the radar screen to embarrass himself. From there on it started to go wrong.
The drinking, the bad marriages, 8 or 9 all told, sorry but I lost count. On top of that, the really, really bad writing.
Barbary Shore and The Deer Park were both bad. Advertisements for Myself sold for Mailer because of the rise of the counter-culture....when you think of the title, thou, you can see it's all Norman. I mean, here was a guy that just LOVED to talk about himself and how wonderful he is. How boring.
Then we have him stabbing one of his wives in the late 1960's at a dinner party. Charming, isn't it. And another embarrassment: In 1980, Mailer spearheaded convicted killer Jack Abbott's successful bid for parole. In 1977, Abbott had read about Mailer's work on The Executioner's Song and wrote to Mailer, offering to enlighten the author about Abbott's time behind bars and the conditions he was experiencing. Mailer, impressed, helped to publish In the Belly of the Beast, a book on life in the prison system consisting of Abbott's letters to Mailer. Once paroled, Abbott committed a murder in New York City six weeks after his release, stabbing to death 22-year-old Richard Adan. Consequently, Mailer was subject to criticism for his role; in a 1992 interview, in the Buffalo News, he conceded that his involvement was "another episode in my life in which I can find nothing to cheer about or nothing to take pride in."
And let's not forget the time when he ran for mayor of New York in the 60's and lost miserably. The reason? Well, when you get up to the podium, drunk, and insult your campaign people on an open mike, things have a tendency to go wrong.
Stabbing wives, letting killers go free to kill again, insulting people, drunk on whiskey most of the time and bad writing.
Yeah, he's going to be missed.
LOL!!!
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