Norman Mailer, Pulitzer Prize winning author, film director, would-be politician, playwright and inspiration to many Northwestern professors, died Nov. 10.

His work spanned six decades and addressed many important moments in American history. He was 84.

“For my generation he was a … hero,” said NU English professor Betsy Erkkila, who met Mailer at a literary conference while teaching at the University of Pennsylvania.

Erkkila said she was very active as a student protester against the Vietnam War, following Mailer’s influence. Mailer wrote about the war in his books “Armies of the Night” and “Why Are We in Vietnam?” and protested himself. He was seen by many students as a symbol of nonconformity.

“Mailer was a rebel,” Erkkila said, “and I identified with that spirit of rebellion.”

Mailer won two Pulitzer Prizes, for “Armies of the Night” and for “The Executioner’s Song,” about the death penalty.

Janine Tobeck, a visiting English professor, has conducted research on post-war American fiction. She said her interest in Mailer stems from his frequent use of his identity as a subject.

“I think he was representative of an idea that personality is writing,” Tobeck said.

It can be difficult to analyze Mailer’s works because his personality and reputation were so well-known, Tobeck said.

“Even his friends talk about him either as a person or as a writer,” she said. “I think that his being gone almost frees us up to look at the work itself.”

In his life, Mailer shifted in and out of many roles. Mailer acted and directed in low-budget experimental films and made an unsuccessful bid for mayor of New York in 1969.

Mailer’s activism and notoriety as a public figure were essential complements to his writing but also had their drawbacks, Tobeck said.

“He invited people to focus on him and he suffered from that, too,” she said.

Much of Mailer’s work was informed by the unique nature of the post-World War II era, Erkkila said.

“Mailer was feeding off a particular despair,” she said. “At the same time as he was trying to use his voice as a writer to make a better world.”

Mailer’s legacy as an author and a celebrity will be divided by future readers and scholars, Tobeck said.

“He was a writer that people recognized as a writer,” Tobeck said. “He kept literature alive.”

Reach Kyle Berlin at [email protected].