Norman Mailer Has Died

Mailer lived in New York City and kept a beach-side home in Provincetown, where he eventually lived full time.

Cape Cod Voice Editor Seth Rolbein knew Mailer, and he says the author fit in well on the outer Cape.

"He could be here and work, be engaged in a creative community that he liked very much. I think he felt a lot of freedom in Provincetown from constraints that he might have felt in the literary social swirl of Manhattan."

Mailer was born in Brooklyn, and studied engineering at Harvard before he joined the Army and served in the philippines.

In his mid-20s he wrote one of his best known works "The Naked and the Dead," and he earned a reputation as confrontational and controversial.

Mailer published his latest book, "On God: An Uncommon Conversation" last month.

He died Saturday morning, leaving nine children, and his wife Noris.