The Oddest Couple in American Literature: Part I

An essentially illiterate man, someone who’d never read a novel or even a newspaper article all the way through without difficulty, helps resurrect and then extend the career of one of America’s foremost novelists. More than that, he becomes one of that novelist’s closest friends, caring for him until the day he dies, and then tends tirelessly to his legacy. Together, they form one of literature’s oddest couples and surely its most improbable and successful collaborations. On their first joint venture, they end up loathing one another and vowing never to work together again. But they—Norman Mailer and Lawrence Schiller—simply can’t stay apart, and only a few years later they’re back at it, with a book that wins the Pulitzer Prize: The Executioner’s Song.