Mailer Error

Norman Kingsley Mailer died this morning, aged 84. He was an irascible and somewhat perverse man of letters. I will always remember him for a traumatic O-level year in which he published Ancient Evenings. It was a very interesting, meticulously well-researched piece of ridiculous social rubbish. It was also 704 pages thick. I wasted a lot of time on it. At the end I knew two things: Norman Mailer was a wonderful writer, and this was certainly not a good book.

All the same, wherever he's gone, I hope it's not to his ancient Egyptian hell. There is such a thing as too much description.