Pulitzer Prize winning author Norman Mailer dies at age 84

Norman Mailer (1923-2007)

Jewish-American Norman Mailer, the pugnacious prince of American letters who for decades reigned as the country's literary conscience and provocateur with such books as The Naked and the Dead and The Executioner's Song, has died at the age of 84.

Mailer died Saturday of acute renal failure at Mount Sinai Hospital, J. Michael Lennon, the author's literary executor and biographer, said.

"He was a great American voice," said a tearful Joan Didion, author of The Year of Magical Thinking and other works, struggling for words upon learning of Mailer's death.

From The Naked and the Dead, his classic debut novel about a combat platoon in the South Pacific during World War II, to such masterworks of literary journalism as The Armies of the Night, the two-time Pulitzer Prize winner always got credit for insight, passion and originality.

Some of his works were highly praised, some panned, but none was pronounced the Great American Novel that seemed to be his life quest from the time he soared to the top as a brash 25-year-old enfant terrible.

Via Haaretz.