Soon after Norman Mailer died on Nov. 10, 2007 of acute renal failure at the age of 84, reports and assessments of his career poured in from all corners of the globe — all declaring his monumental stature in American literature and many making a point to emphasize the robustness of his well-documented ego.

For residents of Brooklyn Heights, the controversial writer — a two-time Pulitzer Prize winner — was a neighbor and one of the brightest stars in the constellation of writers who have dotted the historic brownstone neighborhood — a group that includes Walt Whitman, Truman Capote, Thomas Wolfe, Arthur Miller, Henry Miller, Hart Crane, Carson McCullers and W.H. Auden — to name a few.

Mailer made the harbor-front neighborhood his home for decades, at various points living on Pierrepont Street, Willow Place and for the longest time on Columbia Heights.

Though often associated with Greenwich Village, as co-founder of the Village Voice, Mailer’s career began in the Heights, where he completed his first novel, The Naked and The Dead. Poet and fellow Heights resident Norman Rosten recalled in a 1983 interview in the Brooklyn Heights Press that he helped Mailer lug the manuscript of the celebrated war novel uptown on the subway to his publisher. “We each carried big boxes under our arms,� he recalled, marveling, “Little did subway riders know. In fact, little did we know …�

Although born in Long Branch, New Jersey on Jan. 31, 1923, Mailer was raised in Brooklyn near Eastern Parkway. He attended P.S. 161 and graduated from Boys High School in 1939. He became seriously interested in writing as a 16-year-old freshman engineering major at Harvard University where he completed his studies in 1943. During World War II he served as a rifleman in Leyte and Japan, which served as a basis for The Naked and the Dead.

Mailer went on to write approximately 40 books, the last, The Castle in the Forest, was released soon before his death. Though perhaps most celebrated for his novels [His two Pulitzers are for Armies of the Night (1968) and The Executioner’s Song (1979)], Mailer wrote a great deal of non-fiction, plays, essays, screenplays and poetry. His prolific pen was matched by an active political and social life. He was married no less than five times and had nine children. He was an antiwar activist during Vietnam and made frequent, volatile appearances on talk shows [He once head-butted Gore Vidal backstage of “The Dick Cavett Show�]. He also once ran for mayor of New York City.

— P.Neidl and V. Parker

© Brooklyn Daily Eagle 2009 All materials posted on BrooklynEagle.com are protected by United States copyright law. Just a reminder, though -- It’s not considered polite to paste the entire story on your blog. Most blogs post a summary or the first paragraph,( 40 words) then post a link to the rest of the story. That helps increase click-throughs for everyone, and minimizes copyright issues. So please keep posting, but not the entire article. arturc at att.net