For those with an interest in writing, literature, and contemporary American culture, you probably noted the glowing obits for Norman Mailer, a cultural novelist-cum-prophet of 20th century America.  In case you need a dissenting opinion about his influence on culture, you might like this essay by Roger Kimball.  In a discussion of “The White Negro,” one of Mailer’s more popular essays (about how whites adopted black culture…long before hip-hop, I might add), Kimball writes:

Although many critics took issue with Mailer’s exoneration of violence, the real message of the essay – if it feels good, do it! – was just then beginning to sweep the country with irresistible force. “The White Negro,” along with some of Mailer’s other essays from the late 1950s, represented an important opening salvo in the war on convention, restraint, and traditional morality. This, not his literary accomplishment, was the ultimate secret of Mailer’s broad appeal. Mailer, as Joseph Epstein observed, “was one of the key men responsible for releasing the Dionysian strain in American life.” He promised his readers what they longed to hear: that ultimate, self-centered ecstasy was theirs for the taking. Mailer once said that he would “settle for nothing less than making a revolution in the consciousness of our time.”

Well, you have to admire a man with goals.