Norris Church Mailer Dies at 61

[The Straight Story]

Norris Church Mailer Dies at 61

Norris Church Mailer, the former model who married Norman Mailer and managed his career and his family life over three decades while carving out her own niche as a writer, died on Sunday at her home in Brooklyn Heights. She was 61.

The cause was the gastrointestinal cancer that she had battled for 11 years, said her son John Buffalo Mailer.

Ms. Mailer, who had grown up as Barbara Jean Davis in rural Arkansas, was a high school art teacher, former pickle-factory worker and divorced mother when Mr. Mailer came to Russellville, Ark., in 1975 to plug his book-length reflection on Marilyn Monroe. Brooklyn-bred, Harvard-educated, with the first of two Pulitzer Prizes to his credit, he was almost as celebrated for his brawling egocentrism and intellectual provocations as he was for his novels. He was also twice her age and by that point had been married four times.

But as a Book-of-the-Month Club member, she was eager that he sign her copy of “Marilyn.” After a few moments of conversation, he was enchanted by the auburn-haired beauty. She found him “easily the most interesting man I had ever met.” She was to give another motive for their magnetic attraction.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/22/books/22mailer.html?_r=1