Executioner's Song

As you've probably heard, Norman Mailer--a great novelist who never wrote a great novel--passed away today.

Anthony Lane, in a 1998 New Yorker article about Legos, detailed perhaps Mailer's greatest contribution to civilization:

If you had to name one American, for instance, who clubbed together with a couple of friends in 1965 and spent more than three weeks building a futuristic seven-foot vertical city out of Lego, you might not immediately think of Norman Mailer. Thirty-three years later, however, the city still stands in Mailer's living room in Brooklyn Heights, and its creator remains enthusiastic about his project. "It was very much opposed to LeCorbusier I kept thinking of Mont-Saint-Michel," he explains. "Each Lego brick represents an apartment. There'd be something like twelve thousand apartments. The philosophers would live at the top. The call girls would live in the white bricks, and the corporate executives would live in the black." The cloud-level towers, apparently, would be linked by looping wires. "Once it was cabled up, those who were adventurous could slide down. It would be great fun to start the day off. Put Starbucks out of business."

http://www.randomhouse.com/boldtype/0802/lane/excerpt_bricks.html