Norman Mailer

Norman Mailer

Norman Kingsley Mailer (January 31, 1923 – November 10, 2007) was an American novelist, journalist, essayist, playwright, film maker, actor and political candidate. His best work was widely considered to be The Executioner's Song, which was published in 1980, and for which he won one of his two Pulitzer Prizes. In addition to the Pulitzer Prize, Mailer's book Armies of the Night was awarded the National Book Award.

Along with the likes of Truman Capote, Hunter S. Thompson and Tom Wolfe, Mailer is considered an innovator of creative nonfiction, a genre sometimes called New Journalism, which superimposes the style and devices of literary fiction onto fact-based journalism.

In 1955, Mailer and three others founded The Village Voice, an arts and politics oriented weekly newspaper distributed in Greenwich Village.

Read more about Norman Mailer:  Early Life, Political Activism, Biographical Subjects, Death and Legacy, Cultural References

Famous quotes by norman mailer:

    So the blind will lead the blind, and the deaf shout warnings to one another until their voices are lost.
    Norman Mailer (b. 1923)

    The final purpose of art is to intensify, even, if necessary, to exacerbate, the moral consciousness of people.
    Norman Mailer (b. 1923)

    He could jazz up the map-reading class by having a full-size color photograph of Betty Grable in a bathing suit, with a co- ordinate grid system laid over it. The instructor could point to different parts of her and say, ‘Give me the co-ordinates.’... The Major could see every unit in the Army using his idea.... Hot dog!
    Norman Mailer (b. 1923)

    I never saw love as luck, as that gift from the gods which put everything else in place, and allowed you to succeed. No, I saw love as reward. One could find it only after one’s virtue, or one’s courage, or self-sacrifice, or generosity, or loss, has succeeded in stirring the power of creation.
    Norman Mailer (b. 1923)

    There is one expanding horror in American life. It is that our long odyssey toward liberty, democracy and freedom-for-all may be achieved in such a way that utopia remains forever closed, and we live in freedom and hell, debased of style, not individual from one another, void of courage, our fear rationalized away.
    Norman Mailer (b. 1923)