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Mailer’s death diminishes American writing and ‘letters’

Norman Mailer died yesterday, one of the first truly “modern” American novelists and a pioneer in “protest journalism” whose work stands as an important legacy.

Although Mailer’s chief aspiration was to write the fabled “Great American Novel” that would tower over all other American novels, his work about a Vietnam war protest, “The Armies of the Night,” which won him a Pulitzer, has been credited with launching the genre of “the new journalism” — investigative reporting written with “novelistic” passion.

Mailer was boisterous and egotistical, but he had a quick wit and sense of cynicism that served him and America well. Good writers, indeed all writers, will miss him.

Ah, well, what do I know? I’m just a guy who reads the papers.
[tags]Norman Mailer, American fiction, American novels, American journalism, just a guy who reads the papers[/tag]