The Norman Mailer obituaries came thick and fast over the weekend, reporting the novelist's death Saturday at Mount Sinai Hospital in Manhattan at age 84. 
    And what an impressive body of work, over 30 books in all, beginning with his first novel at age 25, ``The Naked and the Dead’’ (1948),  followed by ``Barbary Shore'' (1951),  ``The Deer Park'' (1955), later ``An American Dream'' (1965) and ``Why Are We in Vietnam'' (1967).
         But what leaped out, most of all, from the mountains of obituaries I read, were the outspoken novelist’s wild romps in Greenwich Village, as co-founder of the Village Voice, his insatiable thirst for alcohol, and volcanic personality, which erupted one November night in 1960, when he stabbed his second wife, Adele Morales, with a penknife during a party at their 250 West 94th Street home.
         Though Mailer's wife never did press charges, the incident drove home the point that the pen is indeed mightier than the sword.
-Bill Lucey
billlucey@bellsouth.net