Ding dong, Norman Mailer is dead. Predictably, the death notices for the celebrity writer, ‘new journalism’ trailblazer and literary heavyweight ranged from breathless tributes to his towering genius and his relentless pursuit of The Great American Novel, to gleeful posthumous hatchet jobs. I guess the truth is somewhere in between, though I confess to dry eyes over the demise of a man who was against women’s liberation, contraception and homosexuality, stabbed one of his six wives at a party, made a habit of head-butting literary rivals – and helped to free a convicted murderer, who then killed a man six weeks after his release.
The overwhelming tone of some of these articles is: ‘yes, he was a great asshole as well as a great writer, but who will replace him?’ The Sydney Morning Herald bemoans the replacement of “characters such as Mailer” who “fame fitted well” with “Idol winners and reality television contestants”. The UK’s Independent complains that the dream of the Great American Novel will die along with Mailer’s generation (including Updike, Roth and Bellow), writing of the current crop of young writers that: “It’s like seeing the faces on Mount Rushmore replaced by snapshots on Facebook.”I don’t think the next generation of would-be writers are turning to Shannon Noll or the latest Big Brother tartlet for inspiration. The next generation of American literary ‘characters’ includes impressive writers like Dave Eggers, Jonathan Franzen and Jonathan Safran Foer – all of them still mid-career.
Norman Mailer is survived by an impressive body of work. Unlike the man, it is said to be well worth visiting.
From The Big Issue, 3/1/07
