Well, some thought it would never happen.

But this week they buried Norman Mailer (shown above recently and below in 1949), or at least memorialized him before more than 2,000 people, according to various news reports.

Here's the one from the Los Angeles Times:

NEW YORK - The late Norman Mailer, a novelist and cultural provocateur who was rarely at a loss for words, was remembered at a memorial service Wednesday as a man whose deep and abiding commitment to the American novel will be his most enduring legacy.

Long after the feuds and quarrels that Mailer carried on with other authors are forgotten, friends and family members said during a Carnegie Hall ceremony, his willingness to take chances on behalf of art - and his great successes - will be what future generations remember.

Mailer, a two-time Pulitzer Prize winner, won plaudits over six decades for influential and bestselling works such as "The Naked and the Dead," "The Executioner's Song," "The Armies of the Night," "Oswald's Tale," and many other works of fiction and nonfiction.

The author, who died of heart problems in November at 84, got up each morning and faced challenges like everyone else, novelist Joan Didion told an overflow crowd. "But he knew the risks" of creating something new, "and the difference with him is he kept taking them. ... I can think of no other writer with the character to have risked this much and brought it home," she said.

Novelist Don DeLillo, recalling Mailer's obsessive belief in the power and mission of the American novel, described him as "the writer in opposition, the individual who confronted power. ... Mailer was not just a voice but a force, a provocateur, and finally a writer. He was a great novelist figuring out the world, sentence by sentence."

Others who lined up to remember Mailer, beyond family members, included public television host Charlie Rose, journalist Tina Brown, writers William Kennedy and Lawrence Schiller, Sean Penn, and Lonnie Ali, a partner to Muhammad Ali, who was friendly with Mailer.

At the end of the service, family members said they are forming a writers' colony in the author's name, which will offer fellowships and be located at his longtime home in Provincetown, Mass.

During his storied career as an author, anti-war activist, political candidate, journalist, filmmaker, boxing enthusiast and celebrity, Mailer often seemed to be as famous for his flamboyant personality as his art. But during the service, family members recalled a loving dad who challenged his nine children to realize their full potential.

They talked about the unique, sometimes comical challenges of growing up with a famous father who had divorced five wives.

His sister, Barbara, described "a loving, supporting and certainly exciting person to be with."

Sam Radin, Mailer's first cousin, recalled that Mailer read "The Iliad" during a hospital stay for heart bypass surgery and compared himself to warriors in that epic whose chests were torn open, saying: "I've been a warrior all my life."

Nephew Peter Alson, remembering Mailer's last hospital stay, when death was imminent, talked about how the novelist seemed to rally when family members brought him his very last drink of rum, orange juice and water. Daughter Kate Mailer, remembering her turbulent adolescence, said: "It's hard to rebel against a father when your father is Norman Mailer."

She broke up the crowd in telling the story of how he insisted that each of his children go sailing with him in rough waters off Maine: "He did this so we'd get to know each other under dire circumstances," she said. "He believed that we had to face our fears by engaging our fears."

The tributes remembered Mailer's quixotic campaign for mayor of New York; his blazing of a new path with long-form journalism; his feuds with fellow literati like Gore Vidal and William F. Buckley Jr.; and his 33-year marriage in the last chapter of his life to Norris Church, who sat at the front of the hall and was applauded by the crowd."

So far, so good.

But for me, here's the thing: I am deeply ambivalent about Mailer.

Some of his writing seems great and some of his writing seems like little more than hack work. Almost all of it seems like it was overpromoted and overstated by Mailer himself, who could be, by turns, a wise and insightful artist and a pugnacious, pompous wind bag. (He was something unbelievable to hear on his last novel about Hitler.)

Anyway: What do you think of Normal Mailer?

What would you have said at the Carnegie Hall tribute?

Do you have a favorite book of his that you consider his best?

Which of his books is your least favorite or his worst?

Let Art Talk know.