The Mailer Review/Volume 2, 2008/Tributes to Norman Mailer/Above All, He Was Never Afraid: Difference between revisions

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 The same newspaper’s front page carried two columns, the largest of which appropriately referred to Mailer as “a giant of American literature and one of the English language’s greatest writers.” Toby Allen-Mills writing from New York for the ''Sunday Times'', described Mailer as “an outrageous genius who wrote some of the finest books of the 20th century” and further consolidated the generational lament in his citation of “Stephen Amidon, the British writer, who said yesterday: ‘For a novelist of my generation, Mailer was an icon in so far as he combined being a great novelist with being a great engaged, political and cultural figure … a public figure in the tradition of Hemingway. I don’t think we will see anything like him again.’ ”<ref>{{cite news |last=Allen-Mills |first=Toby |date=November 11, 2007 |title=Norman Mailer, Literary Rebel, Dies |url= |work=Sunday Times |page=18 |access-date= |ref=harv }}</ref> Christopher Hitchens, for the ''Guardian''’s “Front Page Column Five,” headlined “Farewell to a Literary Great, with Chutzpah” could also offer little consolation for the world Mailer leaves behind, commenting that “it’s quite surprisingly difficult to picture the cultural scene without him.”<ref name="hitch">{{cite news |last=Hitchens |first=Christopher |date=November 12, 2007 |title=Column Five: Farewell to a Literary Great, with Chutzpah |url= |work=Guardian |page=1 |access-date= |ref=harv }}</ref>
-In the ''Guardian''’s extensive two-page obituary, James Campbell remembers James Baldwin’s memoir of his relationship with the young Mailer,“The Black Boy Looks at the White Boy,” which gives us an iconic picture of him in full possession of his vitality — “confident, boastful, exuberant, and loving — striding through the soft Paris nights like a gladiator,”<ref name="camp">{{cite news |last=Campbell |first=James |date=November 12, 2007 |title=Obituaries: Norman Mailer |url= |work=Guardian |page=34 |access-date= |ref=harv }}</ref> an early insight into Mailer’s humanity that is sustained in the words of those who knew him personally. Campbell himself found in Mailer what he calls “a generosity of spirit, a willingness to share ideas and help younger writers,”<ref name="camp" /> while years after Baldwin’s observations, Christopher Hitchens was brought to know that “Norman Mailer was always somehow life-affirming, and his justly famous cocky grin was something that even his enemies had to envy.”<ref name="hitch" /> In later years the young gladiator would turn into what the ''Sunday Telegraph'' termed “a rumbustious colossus,”<ref>{{cite news |author=<!--staff--> |date=November 11, 2007 |title=News Review & Comment |url= |work=Sunday Telegraph |page=19 |access-date= |ref=harv }}</ref>  who saw writing as nothing less than a courageous confrontation with the truth. For Bonnie Greer in the ''Independent'', this was the irreducible Mailer, an artist who “believed that telling the truth was the only thing a writer could and should do. Above all, he was never afraid.”<ref>{{cite news |last=Greer |first=Bonnie |date=November 12, 2007 |title=Farewell to a Feisty, Fearless Keeper of the Flame |url= |work=Independent |page=37 |access-date= |ref=harv }}</ref>
+In the ''Guardian''’s extensive two-page obituary, James Campbell remembers James Baldwin’s memoir of his relationship with the young Mailer, “The Black Boy Looks at the White Boy,” which gives us an iconic picture of him in full possession of his vitality — “confident, boastful, exuberant, and loving — striding through the soft Paris nights like a gladiator,”<ref name="camp">{{cite news |last=Campbell |first=James |date=November 12, 2007 |title=Obituaries: Norman Mailer |url= |work=Guardian |page=34 |access-date= |ref=harv }}</ref> an early insight into Mailer’s humanity that is sustained in the words of those who knew him personally. Campbell himself found in Mailer what he calls “a generosity of spirit, a willingness to share ideas and help younger writers,”<ref name="camp" /> while years after Baldwin’s observations, Christopher Hitchens was brought to know that “Norman Mailer was always somehow life-affirming, and his justly famous cocky grin was something that even his enemies had to envy.”<ref name="hitch" /> In later years the young gladiator would turn into what the ''Sunday Telegraph'' termed “a rumbustious colossus,”<ref>{{cite news |author=<!--staff--> |date=November 11, 2007 |title=News Review & Comment |url= |work=Sunday Telegraph |page=19 |access-date= |ref=harv }}</ref>  who saw writing as nothing less than a courageous confrontation with the truth. For Bonnie Greer in the ''Independent'', this was the irreducible Mailer, an artist who “believed that telling the truth was the only thing a writer could and should do. Above all, he was never afraid.”<ref>{{cite news |last=Greer |first=Bonnie |date=November 12, 2007 |title=Farewell to a Feisty, Fearless Keeper of the Flame |url= |work=Independent |page=37 |access-date= |ref=harv }}</ref>
 ==References==