Norman Mailer would probably not have wanted an old man’s death. He would have preferred some other way - an accident or a bar fight or a lover’s brawl. So that his death, like his life, could inspire or appall or, above all, make people talk.

But Mailer, a giant of American literature and one of the English language’s greatest writers, died of renal failure yesterday in a New York hospital bed. He was 84. A few months earlier he had had an operation on his lungs to remove scar tissue.

It was a quiet end to one of the loudest and most controversial voices in American letters. (Read the full post about ‘Mailer, Giant of American Literature, Dies at 84′…)