**FILE**Noted authors, from left, Gay Talese, Susan Sontag, Norman Mailer, and Gore Vidal gather at a party following the Actors' Studio benefit production of George Bernard Shaw's "Don Juan In Hell" at Carnegie Hall, in this Feb. 15, 1993 file. Mailer, the macho prince of American letters who for decades reigned as the country's literary conscience and provocateur, died of renal failure early Saturday, Nov. 10, 2007. He was 84. (AP Photo/Ron Frehm)