One of America’s greatest writers, Norman Mailer (1923–2007) burst onto the literary scene with his powerful first novel, The Naked and the Dead (1948).

Raised in Brooklyn, with an engineering degree from Harvard, the young artist wrote his graphic World War II epic just before enrolling in Paris’ Sorbonne, becoming an overnight celebrity. The spotlight arrived fast, but the craft demanded endurance.

“Being a real writer means being able to do the work on a bad day,” said the man known for his eloquent, gritty journalistic style.

Outspoken, with a reputation for living life boldly, he admitted how elusive certainty can be: “Discovering the truth is about as simple as getting to know a woman well. It’s close to impossible.”

Along with Hunter S. Thompson, Joan Didion, and Truman Capote, Mailer helped shape the New Journalism, bringing the immediacy of fiction’s tools into nonfiction writing.

Calling novelists a special breed, he once said, “We’re ...somewhere between psychologists, historians, detectives, students of style and manner, we have a capacity to do things that other people don’t.”

Mailer won the Pulitzer Prize twice, for The Armies of the Night (1968), his tumultuous antiwar observations, and The Executioner’s Song (1979), the Gary Gilmore epic.

With a career of creative longevity and a larger-than-life public persona, Mailer courted controversy. He continued to write for over half a century, while keeping one practical worry in view: critics. “I care about reviews, they affect your wallet in the most direct fashion.”