Terror stricken
Hari Kunzru: Given the kind of titles I have on my bookshelves, the police raid could be coming any minute
If he did it …
Last year OJ Simpson was banned from publishing a book in which he explained how, hypothetically, he might have murdered his ex-wife Nicole Brown Simpson and her friend Ron Goldman. Now things have got even more bizarre. Goldman's family have won the right to print OJ's 'confession' - and are currently in Britain promoting it, on what must be one of the strangest book tours ever. Stuart Jeffries meets them
In praise of … John Betjeman
Leader: Saint Pancras, the teenage Roman martyr, and Sir John Betjeman, the 20th-century poet, meet at only one place, the station which from tomorrow will send trains from London to Paris
Norman Mailer
Obituary: Pugnacious journalist and author, he was a literary great who became the chronicler of postwar America
The pugilist who wrote the story of America
He fought in the Second World War, stabbed one of his six wives in the neck and wrote some of the most acclaimed literature and journalism of the 20th century. As the tributes flowed last night for the man who led a new generation of writers, we chart an extraordinary and full-blooded life.
‘We writers are meaner and more competitive than athletes’
Earlier this year Robert McCrum, The Observer's literary editor, interviewed Norman Mailer at his home in Provincetown, Cape Cod. Here we reprint a short extract, from what was one of Mailer's last interviews.
He could be flawless. And he could also fail on an epic scale
Appreciation: It may or may not have been Tom Wolfe who first coined the term 'the New Journalism,' but it was almost certainly Mailer who produced its highest achievement.
Author Norman Mailer dies at 84
Norman Mailer, the two-times Pulitzer prize winner who was a dominating presence on the US literary scene across seven decades, has died today, his editorial assistant said. He was 84.
You’ll happily be taken along for the ride
New Yorker critic Alex Ross points out what you wouldn't hear otherwise, which is why his new book is so readable even if you don't agree with him, says Christopher Bonanos.
Walter Kempowski
Obituary: Influential German writer who helped his country come to terms with its Nazi past.
The benevolent God of the funny papers
A major new biography suggests that Charles Schulz saved his real love for his characters, writes Devin McKinney.