January 29, 2004

Mailer at 81

The Scotsman has a profile of Norman Mailer on the writer's eighty-first birthday.

Two factors have denied [Mailer] the accolades he deserves. First, he has produced no incontrovertibly great book. The Naked and the Dead is a young man�s work, visceral, na�ve, derivative, shapelessly insightful. For all his obsession with the novel as a form - he calls it "great Bitch Goddess" - Mailer has only produced one novel that flirts with greatness and again the "intertextuality" is a giveaway.
Read the article in full here.

posted by Laila Lalami at 09:22 PM