Norman Mailer Dies at 84

Pulitzer Prize-winning author Norman Mailer died this morning in New York City of acute renal failure. He was 84.

Over a nearly 60-year career, the New Jersey-born author wrote such seminal works as The Naked and the Dead, The American Dream, Armies of the Night, and The Executioner’s Song, which earned him his second Pulitzer Prize.

In 1967, Mailer’s theatrical adaptation of his 1955 novel Deer Park played the Theatre de Lys (now the Lucille Lortel Theatre) for 128 performances. The cast included Rip Torn, Hugh Marlowe, and a young Marsha Mason. In 1973, the Public Theatre produced Jack Gelber’s adaptation of Mailer’s 1951 novel Barbary Shore, starring Torn, Estelle Parsons, Lane Smith, and Lenny Baker.

Mailer was also one of the nation’s foremost journalists and essayists; in addition, he directed such films as Maidstone and Tough Guys Don’t Dance, based on his own novel. Mailer also acted in a few films, most notably playing Stanford White in Milos Forman’s version of Ragtime.

He was married five times, most recently to Norris Church, who survives him, and had eight children and a stepson.