Peerless in his ability to fix in words the measure of a man (and it was invariably a man), no other literary figure approached Mailer’s combination of brilliant writing, superb setting of place, shrewd summary of character, and uncanny political savvy. Give him 22 pages, and he’d give you the world — with impossibly long, impeccably paced sentences that revealed the power and unspoken rules of the game behind the pomp and posturing of public behavior... a month before the assassination, JFK is summarized as “a man of many natures, not all of them necessarily rooted in granite.” Especially impressive, from one year later, is “A Vote for Bobby K.,” an endorsement in the Village Voice of Robert Kennedy for senator from New York.