I’m glad to see that the urge to lionize another public (literary?) figure upon their death has not gone unremarked upon. On the basis of the excerpts from Mailer’s work here alone, it seems his desire early on to purge himself of bad writing (by writing 3000 words a day–according to the NYTimes piece) was mere wishful thinking. Bravo to a well stated, timely antidote to the encomiums that will likely proliferate in the months to come.