you wouldn't think that many women would step out of line

Johann Hari in today's Independent offers a bracing hosing-down with cold water to the retrospective love-in following Norman Mailer's death, basically by making the point that just as being brilliant at football didn't absolve Gazza or George Best of being wife-beating drunks, so being a Great Writer didn't absolve Mailer of being one either (a wife-stabbing drunk, in fact, in Mailer's case). All the more surprising that robust feminist types like Bonnie Greer were queueing up to pay tribute, quite gushingly in Greer's case. Then again her sister (no, I know, not really) Germaine had some previous with Mailer as well.

Oh, and I forgot John Irving in my list of American authors in the previous post as well. His Wikipedia page contains a highly entertaining checklist of his major recurring obsessions (and I'd just like it noted that I namechecked a few of these in another book review a while back).

I am so not going to bother reading Until I Find You. No bears!