<p>[Author</a> Norman Mailer dies at 84 - USATODAY.com](<a href=“http://www.usatoday.com/life/books/2007-11-10-mailer_N.htm]Author”>http://www.usatoday.com/life/books/2007-11-10-mailer_N.htm)</p>
<p>The prose in Armies of the Night is so beautiful I wept. </p>
<p>The man sure knew his way around a sentence.</p>
<p>For Mailer at his pugnacious worst but utterly fascinating see Town Bloody Hall in which he joists with Jill Johnston and Germaine Greer about feminism.</p>
<p>He approached sex with a Lacanian insistance on the “signifier”, and stated that he could imagine what two men did, but what could two women do without a very important piece of equipment. Silly, pure Mailer.</p>
<p>I will remember his angelic sentences far longer than his devlish silliness.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Yeah, that’s why I tend to stay away from biographies about artists who mean a lot to me. Take Miles Davis, for instance; after listening to one of his achingly beautiful records, why would one want to read about how nasty and crude he could be? </p>
<p>As for Mailer, The Executioner’s Song is a masterpiece.</p>
<p>P.S. Now that I think about it, for all of their obvious differences, Norman Mailer and Miles Davis had a lot in common. Both were physically small men who were seemingly obsessed with issues regarding masculine identity. Both were pugnacious by nature. And both reinvented themselves, artistically, several times.</p>
<p>If anyone’s interested, the New York Observer has some pretty good stuff on the often enigmatic and ever fascinating (to some of us, anyway) Mr. Mailer:</p>
<p>[Oh</a> Norman, My Norman | The New York Observer](<a href=“http://www.observer.com/2007/norman-mailer-tribute]Oh”>http://www.observer.com/2007/norman-mailer-tribute)</p>
<p>Does anyone remember when he was on that episode of Gilmore Girls? And he only ordered iced tea, which led Sookie to somehow discover that she was pregnant…oh, I miss that show.</p>