Writer Norman Mailer Hospitalized

The winner of two Pulitzer Prizes and the National Book Award, American writer and icon Norman Mailer is hospitalized with respiratory problems.

Mailer is one of my favorite American personalities, as he constantly defies any categorization or pigeon hole-ing and always does his own thing (although many consider "his own thing" less than savory). My favorite Mailer moment occurred during all of the banning and obscenity discussion surrounding one of his books (The Naked and The Dead, or Armies of the Night, I can't remember). During this period the war in Vietnam was also heating up, and Mailer was on some T.V. talk show. The host asked him what all the controversy was about, was his work obscene? Mailer responded with insane intensity, without skipping a single beat, his words resonating like the rat-a-tat of a machine gun : Can words be considered obscene when taken with the type of obscenity General Westmoreland is witnessing and creating in Vietnam on a daily basis?

All the best, Mr. Mailer. My thoughts are with you.