Norman Mailer has died at the age of 84, bringing to an end a life whose fame relied on a prodigious body of work, but was powered by a formidable personality that dared others to challenge him. From the publication in 1948 of his sensational first novel, The Naked and the Dead, which reported in terrifying detail his experiences of war in the Pacific, to the appearance earlier this year of The Castle in the Forest, a fictional account of the childhood of Adolf Hitler, he chased down the hardest of topics and squared right up to them.

In a world where novelists are nurtured in creative writing schools and garlanded by Oprah, he is taking a rougher-edged era with him to the grave. He was credited with pioneering the genre of creative nonfiction with work that audaciously blended straight reportage and fiction, the most famous example being 1979's The Executioner's Song, his Pulitzer Prize-winning account of the life and death of murderer Gary Gilmore. His work addressed matters of great importance - the death penalty, war, radical politics, boxing, the relations between the sexes - and, when he was criticised, he always came out punching.

When he wasn't writing one of his 35 books, Mailer found the time to marry - not once or twice, but six times, almost fatally stabbing his second wife during a drunken brawl. Elsewhere, he fought and cursed and roared his way through an astonishing career that lit up America's cultural life for more than half a century. His work will be treasured for many years to come.