Norman Mailer and the Death of the American Novel

There's a new biography of Norman Mailer, a massive brilliant book that needs attention because knowing of Mailer's life and work may tell us something about ourselves: Norman Mailer: A Double Life by J. Michael Lennon (October, 2013). Norman Mailer was a talented writer. He was also a drunk, a misogynist, a banal philosopher, a mediocre politician, and a man apparently torn between his need to be a person of substance and his need to be a personage playing to the crowd. Since we were contempora...