Norman Mailer has died of kidney failure.

It is a huge, irreplaceable loss.

When he was young, Mailer said, "fiction was everything. The novel, the big novel, the driving force. We all wanted to be Hemingway ... I don't think the same thing can be said anymore. I don't think my work has inspired any writer, not the way Hemingway inspired me."

I hope that isn't true; in fact, I know that isn't true, for, though I am not a novelist nor could I even approximate Mailer's stature as a writer, he was a huge inspiration to me.

On first reading "The Naked and the Dead," I found it a revelation, a testament to the combined powers of imagination, creativity, and reportage. I have urged more people than I could count to read it since, as a demonstration of what a novel can and ought to be.

And when I was in college and read "The Executioner's Song," I thought to myself, this is what journalism can do. Even though it's not entirely journalism.

He lived a life full of mistakes, inconsistences, irritants, arrogance, brilliance, wonder, and most of all, passion.

He lived a life.