"Writing books is the closest men ever come to childbearing."
Norman Kingsley Mailer (January 31, 1923 – November 10, 2007) was a two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning American author.
He once knocked over Gore Vidal with a headbutt. Vidal had just compared him to Charles Manson at the time. Of course, Vidal being Vidal, Gore would remark about the exchange: "Words fail Norman Mailer yet again."
His most famous work included The Naked and the Dead, The Executioner's Song and Armies of the Night.
Works by Norman Mailer that have their own page on TV Tropes:
Other appearances by Mailer in media:
- When We Were Kings: Mailer covered the Muhammad Ali-George Foreman 1974 "Rumble in the Jungle" heavyweight fight, and actually wrote a book about it. In this documentary of the fight he is one of the most prominent Talking Heads.
Other works by Norman Mailer contain examples of:
- Anorgasmia: In the short story "The Time Of Her Time" Sergius tries to make Denise experience orgasm, because she never could do so before. Eventually he sodomizes her and calls her "a dirty little Jew", which causes her to climax after all.
- Eating the Eye Candy: In his Biography of Marilyn Monroe Marilyn: a biography he writes about how she liked liked to go to Muscle Beach in Santa Monica on very hot days to watch the Speedo-clad muscle boys lift weights and demonstrate their various feats of strength when their half-naked bodies were covered with sweat.
- Informed Judaism: Marilyn Monroe's conversion to the faith in Marilyn: a biography.
- Third-Person Person: In his nonfiction works. In The Armies of the Night, he referred to himself as "Mailer" and in The Fight as "Norman".
