Brooklyn man of letters, two-time winner of the Pulitzer Prize, film director, mayoral candidate, co-founder of the Village Voice, and a larger-than-life author/celebrity died yesterday of kidney failure, Norman Mailer died yesterday. He was 84.  Read the Obituary in the New York Times, from which this is an excerpt:

Mr. Mailer was a tireless worker who at his death was writing a
sequel to his 2007 novel, “The Castle in the Forest.” If some of his
books, written quickly and under financial pressure, were not as good
as he had hoped, none of them were forgettable or without his
distinctive stamp. And if he never quite succeeded in bringing off what
he called “the big one” — the Great American Novel — it was not for
want of trying.

Along the way, he transformed American
journalism by introducing to nonfiction writing some of the techniques
of the novelist and by placing at the center of his reporting a
brilliant, flawed and larger-than-life character who was none other
than Norman Mailer himself.

The  Village Voice on-line has a good obituary, too, as well as early Village Voice articles written by Mailer.