Norman Mailer died early this morning. Mailer had a six-decade career as a novelist, opening with his best-selling debut The Naked and the Dead and closing with The Castle in the Forest, his meditation on the life of Adolph Hitler, and producing influential works in the emergent genre of “New Journalism”—The Executioner’s Song, Miami and the Siege of Chicago—along the way. Whatever his faults as an artist may have been, he remained an enduringly provocative figure throughout his lifetime. Below, you can read a free selection of writings on Mailer’s work, along with pieces from his own hand, from the pages of COMMENTARY.

John Gross on The Castle in the Forest (March 2007)

Thomas L. Jeffers on The Spooky Art (April 2003)

Peter Shaw on Miami and the Siege of Chicago (December 1968)

Richard Poirier on An American Dream (June 1965)

Midge Decter on The Presidential Papers (February 1964)

William Barrett on Barbary Shore (June 1951)

Raymond Rosenthal on The Naked and the Dead (July 1948)

By Mailer:

“The Battle of the Pentagon” (April 1968)

“Modes and Mutations: Quick Comments on the Modern American Novel” (March 1966)