Fenster writes:
We just hit on Salinger, an author whose work people may know about more through cultural osmosis than scholarship.
An old friend just sent a note that connected with that thought. He’s not a blogger here, but since he likely values anonymity I will dub him Midnight Chimes, and add his comments below:
Midnight Chimes writes:
Been reading a lot of Norman Mailer lately, what with the new J. Michael Lennon biography, ‘Norman Mailer: A Double Life,” and a new collection of selected Mailer essays, “Mind of an Outlaw.” His take on JFK in 1960, “Superman Comes to the Supermarket” continues to resonate. In a recent New Yorker, Louis Menand says that “the critical decorum that observes a boundary between the work and the person that wrote it doesn’t apply in Mailer’s case.” This brings to mind comedian Rob White’s observation of Mailer that “He drank to excess every day, he smoked pot, he was married six times, he stabbed his second wife. I’ve never read his books, but I gotta tell ya, I’m a huge fan.”
Blowhard, Esq.
Callowman
Sherbrooke
Eddie Pensier
Enzo Nakamura
Epaminondas
Fabrizio del Wrongo
Fenster
Brundle Guy
Glynn Marshes
Paleo Retiree
Atypical Neurotic
Question Lady
Sax von Stroheim
Sir Barken Hyena
The Mistaken
Uncouth Reflections 
In my opinion, Norman Mailer was a hugely talented guy, but he never lived up to his potential, because Norman Mailer the Outrageous Public Figure dominated and then devoured Norman Mailer the Writer. Most of his output is egregious garbage, IMHO, but he did leave us with “The Naked and the Dead” and “The Executioner’s Song”. That’s not nothing.
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Yeah, he was a great at being a public figure. I haven’t read any of his books either, so I’m not sure how good a writer he was. I’ve been meaning to read The Executioner’s Song. That’s the one most people recommend. Anybody else read it?
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Clearly, Mailer was a failure as a human, but not as a writer. The Naked and the Dead, Tough Guys Don’t Dance and The Executioner’s Song are all arguments in his favor, in that order IMO. The NYT says of The Naked and the Dead that it’s “a sprawling, cumbersome saga that reads like the fusion of literary ambition and severely limited artistic experience … the prose alternates between pedestrian and purple.” And they have a point; he overwrites and is consciously inventive in the modernist mode, yet the story is a remarkable reworking of his very recent Pacific war experience. It’s heartfelt.
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