His life was as provocative as his prose.
Norman Mailer, the New York literary lion both loved and loathed, had two Pulitzers, six wives, nine children, and an opinion on everything.
He smoke, drank and put up his dukes. He ran for mayor and stabbed his second wife. He called himself a “psychic outlaw” and inspired the phrase “male chauvinist pig.”
But mostly he thrilled readers with a powerful writing style that made books like “The Executioner’s Song” instant classics.
Mailer’s epic tale came to an end Saturday when the Brooklyn Heights resident died at a Manhattan hospital of kidney failure after a series of illnesses. He was 84.
From his smash debut novel “The Naked and the Dead” to the classic work of literary journalism “The Armies of the Night,” Mailer was praised for his incisive writing and devastating wit.
But with his penchant for high life and hard living, the macho Harvard-educated writer nurtured a reputation as a controversial giant of the New York scene.
His bellicosity was legendary, but even his second wife, Adele Mailer – who was almost killed when he knifed her during a boozy party in 1960 – praised him for his passion.
“He was an enormously gifted writer and had a marvelous mind,” she told the Daily News from her upper West Side apartment.
“He was brilliant and inventive and wild and fearless – and I adored him.
“He put up a fight when he was in the hospital and finally just went,” she added. “But he was unique, really one of a kind.”
Mailer’s creativity wasn’t confined to the written page.
He waged a quixotic campaign for mayor of New York, was banished from the Manhattan YWHA for reciting obscene poetry, sparred with writer Gore Vidal, and publicly denounced the women’s liberation movement.
In a 1986 interview, he described himself as the “warrior, presumptive general, champion of obscenity, embattled aging enfant terrible of the literary world.”
Author Joan Didion, who wept when she learned of his death, called him “a great American voice.”
Former Daily News columnist Jimmy Breslin lauded his good friend’s commitment to his craft.
“When you talk of Norman Mailer, right away I see Van Gogh’s work boots,” Breslin said.
“Norman was a working man. Lord, did he work. From one end of his life to the other he sat in solemn thought and left so much to read, so many pages with ideas that come at you like sparks spitting from a fire.”
Norman Kingsley Mailer was born on Jan. 21, 1923, in Long Branch, N.J.
He was raised in Brooklyn and then attended Harvard, where he studied aeronautical engineering. In 1948 Mailer achieved instant literary fame with the publication of his first novel, “The Naked and the Dead.”
Drawn from his experiences as a rifleman in the South Pacific in World War II, the harrowing war epic remains Mailer’s best selling work.
In the 1960s, Mailer joined writers like Tom Wolfe and Hunter Thompson in questioning the borders between fiction and nonfiction.
His first Pulitzer came in 1968 for his highly personal account of a protest march on the Pentagon, “Armies of the Night.” He won the coveted literary prize 13 years later for “The Executioner’s Song,” a haunting tale about convicted murderer Gary Gilmore, which he called a “nonfiction novel.” “Armies” also won him the National Book Award and a Polk Award.
As a journalist, Mailer wrote for many publications, including Esquire and Commentary. He was one of the founding editors of The Village Voice, which he also named.
Mailer published 39 books – some of which were panned by the critics – and also wrote essays, biographies, plays and screenplays.
His essays were deliberately provocative. In his most controversial piece, 1958’s “White Negro,” he found existential significance in ghetto kids murdering the elderly owner of a candy store.
His ability to shock readers prompted a Columbia University literary scholar to dub him “our Jewish Lord Byron from Brooklyn.”
Breslin recalled Mailer talking to a large crowd at Brooklyn College in 1969, the year he ran for mayor as an independent.
“He argued brilliantly for the absolute necessity of the minds of whites and blacks growing by being in the same city school classrooms,” Breslin said.
“In the midst of this, a student rose and called out, ‘We had a lot of snow in Queens last year and it didn’t get removed. What would you do about a big snowstorm?’ Norman, yanked down from high thoughts, said, ‘Sir, I’d piss on it.’ “
