Norman Mailer Is Gone

My world tilted a bit this morning when I woke to learn Norman Mailer was dead.

I have never known a world in which Mailer was not alive and writing. It feels strange to be existing in a reality in which he is not out there.

No matter what you thought of Mailer as a writer or as a person, no one can argue that he was a literary force of nature.

Mailer won the Pulitzer twice and the National Book Award once.

I wish there was a literary equivalent of dimming the lights on Broadway when a theater luminary dies. Mailer certainly deserves that compliment.