Mailer sells papers to University of Texas

AUSTIN, Texas, April 25 (UPI) -- Pulitzer Prize-winning author Norman Mailer has sold his papers to the University of Texas for $2.5 million.

Mailer will officially announce the sale to the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center this week at the university, the Austin American-Statesman reported Monday.

Among the reasons he selected the University of Texas was the Ransom center, which he told The New York Times has "one of the finest, if not the finest, collections of American literary archives in the world."

Mailer, who is now 82, became famous with his 1948 novel "The Naked and the Dead." Among his best-known works are "Advertisements for Myself," "The Armies of the Night," "Miami and the Siege of Chicago" and "The Executioner's Song."

Mailer has kept a thorough record of his life, including about 25,000 letters saved as carbon copies and computer files. In his youth, his mother, Fannie, kept his notebooks, photographs and even his dogs' identification tags.