Norman Mailer, RIP
by fledgling otakuHe passed away today at the age of 84. I’ve never read a single book of his, surprisingly. Anyone have any suggestions?
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November 10th, 2007 at 4:46 pm
Nor have I. I think Mailer is one of those authors, like Hemingway, that is a coffee-table author, someone whose books you leave on the coffee-table to impress other people, someone that every cultured person is supposed to have read, in order to prove how cool they are.
Very much an “emperor’s new clothes” kind of thing. At least that’s my impression. I’ve only read two books by Hemingway (in high school) and none at all by Mailer, and I have little curiousity about either of them.
November 10th, 2007 at 5:08 pm
I actually have felt that way about Virginia Woolf ever since I tried and utterly failed to make it through the interminable Howard’s End. I haven’t read anything by Hemingway either, but Mailer was one of those who was always recommended highly by others, so I have some curiosity. I figure that the best way to catch up on the backlog of contemporary authors is to pick a book of theirs when they die