Norman Mailer, We Did Know Ye, And You Will Be Missed.

If you're a good writer with a penis today, you are more than likely naval-gazing, wussified, soft-spoken, Oprahtized, and generally testosterone challenged. It didn't always used to be so:

Norman Mailer, the pugnacious prince of American letters who for decades reigned as the country's literary conscience and provocateur with such books as "The Naked and the Dead" and "The Executioner's Song" has died at the age of 84.

He drank, fought, smoked pot, married six times and stabbed his second wife, almost fatally, during a drunken party. He had nine children, made a quixotic bid to become mayor of New York City, challenged professional boxers, and was banned from a Manhattan YWHA for reciting obscene poetry.

Do you really have to ask why the Drugmonkey's world feels a bit emptier this night?

Mailer had numerous minor run-ins with the law, usually for being drunk or disorderly, but was also jailed briefly during the Pentagon protests in the late 1960s. While directing the film "Maidstone" in 1968, the self-described "old club fighter" punched actor Lane Smith, breaking his jaw, and bit actor Rip Torn's ear in another scuffle.

But as Newsweek reviewer Raymond Sokolov said in 1968, "In the end, it is the writing that will count."

There was a time when you could be an asshole, but ultimately if your ideas and your art were good enough, they could not help but to be celebrated. Today, it's the act of being an asshole itself that gets you fame.

This makes me sad. Go read "The Naked And The Dead" right now. You will not see its like ever again.