Gotfryd, Bernard, photographer · Public domain

Norman Mailer announced himself at 25 with The Naked and the Dead in 1948, then spent six decades restlessly inventing new forms to write nonfiction as if it were fiction — The Armies of the Night, about a 1967 Pentagon march, and The Executioner's Song, about a condemned Utah murderer, each won a Pulitzer Prize, one for nonfiction and one for fiction, an unusual double. He co-founded The Village Voice in 1955, ran a failed campaign for New York mayor in 1969, and in 1960 stabbed his second wife, Adele Morales, nearly killing her, an act for which he was convicted of assault.