The news bulletins tonight are rightly marking the death of Norman mailer as a major event. The interesting conclusions seem to be that the Living and the Dead and his books of journalism will be the things that will live on. The Living and the Dead is sitting on the shelf and has been for a couple of years and after a couple of things it will get read but the journalism about lee Harvey Oswald and the criminal on trial are new to me and something maybe to try to get at the library or eBay. Mind you it would be quite fitting if they were hard to get hold of because just as with Castle in the Forest that’s one of the things you have to say about Mailer’s writing. From the bits I’ve read so far he could be brilliant but he never made it easy.
