Mailer Undergoes Lung Surgery

Norman Mailer on the mayoral campaign trail in 1969.

American literary icon and Village Voice co-founder Norman Mailer was recovering on Wednesday from surgery to remove scar tissue from his lung, his family said.

One of Mailer's ex-wives, Carol Mailer, told the New York Post for Wednesday's editions that "He's not in very good shape. It's breaking my heart." Carol Mailer told the paper that he was admitted to Mount Sinai Hospital in Manhattan after his lung collapsed.

But later that day his daughter-in-law Salina Mailer told the Associated Press "He's getting better every time I see him."

The 84-year-old Brooklyn-raised writer who burst on the scene in 1948 with The Naked and the Dead, which was based on his experiences as Army infantryman in the Pacific Theater of World War II, is still writing. His latest work The Castle in the Forest was published earlier this year.