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:

    Obsession is the single most wasteful human activity, because with an obsession you keep coming back and back and back to the same question and never get an answer.
    Norman Mailer (b. 1923)

    Crude thoughts and fierce forces are my state. I do not know who I am. Nor what I was. I cannot hear a sound. Pain is near that will be like no pain felt before.
    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)

    Madness is locked beneath. It goes into tissues, is swallowed by the cells. The cells go mad. Cancer is their flag. Cancer is the growth of madness denied.
    Norman Mailer (b. 1923)

    Ultimately a hero is a man who would argue with the gods, and so awakens devils to contest his vision. The more a man can achieve, the more he may be certain that the devil will inhabit a part of his creation.
    Norman Mailer (b. 1923)