This past weekend, in the wake of former Bear Stearns CEO James Cayne's getting over the denial stage and selling out his shares in the firm, thereby clearing the way for takeover by JPMorgan, 85-year-old Bear Stearns was prepared for death with more pomp and circumstance than an Egyptian pharaoh. The Times performed a eulogy: “It was a place where a young guy could get ahead on merit,” Jerome Kohlberg Jr., who worked at Bear before founding K.K.R. with fellow Bears Henry R. Kravis and George R. Roberts. “They didn’t care where you came from if you showed you were willing to work. There were Jews, gentiles, Italians, Irish. It was a mixed bag.” Fortune was more clinical: They got their scalpels out and did an autopsy, noting Bear's longtime "addiction to leverage" had "metastasized" and ultimately killed it. Bloomberg took a look at the unrest surrounding the death, and the politicians trying to capitalize on the tragedy, and everyone everywhere tried to figure out why this happened so suddenly and who was to blame. Family members, in the meantime, began a slow descent into grief and alcoholism. "I worked eight years at a firm that promoted me from the back office to investment banking," one former Bear manager told Fortune, sipping a Budweiser on a Metro-North train. "It's all gone now. I think I'll probably move to Pittsburgh, see if the Federal Home Loan Bank needs anybody."

What The Bear Meant For the Street [NYT]
The Last Days of Bear Stearns [Fortune via CNN]
Playing Politics at the Corner of Wall and Main [Bloomberg]

The story of international grand chess master Bobby Fischer has a lot of New York highlights. Fischer grew up and learned chess in Brooklyn, and for those not old enough to remember his iconic role in the Cold War, the Washington Square Park scenes from the movie Searching for Bobby Fischer are a cultural touchstone. In his later years, while living in exile, he turned against the city and America. After the September 11 attacks, he announced on the radio: "This is all wonderful news. I applaud the act." When Fischer died yesterday, at age 64, it was far from his childhood home, in Reykjavik, Iceland. "The tragedy is that he left this world too early, and his extravagant life and scandalous statements did not contribute to the popularity of chess," chess grandmaster Gary Kasparov said of him. "He single-handedly revitalized a game that had been stagnating under the control of the Communists of the Soviet sports hierarchy."

Chess Champion Bobby Fischer Dies [Guardian]

The worker who was killed on Monday in the accident at the Trump Soho was identified by the Times this morning. Yuriy Vanchytskyy was a Ukrainian immigrant who lived in a Greenpoint walk-up, below a bunch of hipsters and above the Pakistani couple who owned the building. By all accounts, he seemed nice: He helped his landlady take out the trash, she said, and a co-worker at DiFama Concrete, the subcontractor at Trump Soho, describes him as a “hard working brother; always smiling.” He had a wife and three children. The Times also found that Vanchytskyy wasn't the first DiFama employee to be killed on the job: In 2004, a worker fell 60 feet from a crane at the Lumiere, the condo building on 53rd Street, and since then DiFama — whose clients have included William Beaver House and 15 Central Park West — has received seventeen federal violations. Seven of them were related to issues relating to fall protection.

Many Violations for Employer of Worker Who Died In a Fall [NYT]
Earlier: Intel's coverage of Monday's accident at Trump Soho

We smirked a little when we saw that the Times had juxtaposed the obituaries of renowned author and critic Elizabeth Hardwick and Pimp C, the seminal hip-hop artist. Could two people be more different?, we thought. But when we looked a little closer at the defining facts of their lives, we realized that actually, Pimp C and Elizabeth Hardwick are kind of the same! Well, they're not unalike. For instance:

They Had Straightforward Styles That Helped Them Define Their Genres
• Hardwick was "credited with expanding the possibilities of the literary essay, through her intimate tone and forceful logic."
• Pimp C "helped define Southern hip-hop, with his thoughtful but unapologetic rhymes about Southern street life."

They Represented an Era
• Hardwick and her husband, Robert Lowell, were, along with some other authors, "among the last of an era of rambunctious intellectuals."
• Pimp C, along with his UGK bandmate, became "godfathers of the Houston hip-hop scene."

They Rubbed Shoulders With Legends
• On her "nightly searches for good jazz in the clubs on West 52nd Street," Hardwick "got to know, among others, Billie Holiday."
• Pimp C and UGK's "biggest moment came in 2000, when Jay-Z invited both rappers to contribute rhymes to 'Big Pimpin,' one of his biggest hits."

You know how you start sleeping with someone, and then one day, all of a sudden, he completely grosses you out and you have to immediately break up with him, and maybe even pretend it never happened? We call this Sudden Revulsion Syndrome, and we think Lydia Hearst must have gotten a strong case of it regarding her BF Cisco Adler. It seems like mere weeks ago that Lydia and the large-balled Whitestarr front man were making out at the Box, and freaking each other in L.A. on Halloween, and Lydia was gushing that their relationship was "a whole other form of creation." But a socialite's love is fleeting. "Page Six" this morning reports that Lydia was overheard saying, "I'm so single!" this past weekend, and her rep tells the Post, "they were never really boyfriend-girlfriend." Ouch. We're not too worried about Cisco though. We feel he'll bounce back. In fact, after the jump, our suggestions of ladies he could start being spotted canoodling with.

Back in 1979, at the height of his curly-haired glory, Norman Mailer composed a witty and sharp obituary for himself for Boston magazine, which has reprinted it on their Website on the occasion of his death this past weekend. "Norman Mailer passed away yesterday after celebrating his fifteenth divorce and sixteenth wedding," it begins:

He was renowned in publishing circles for his blend of fictional journalism and factual fiction, termed by literary critic William Buckley: Contemporaneous Ratiocinative Aesthetical Prolegomena. Buckley was consequentially sued by Mailer for malicious construction of invidious acronyms. “Norman does take himself seriously,” was Mr. Buckley’s reply. “Of course he is the last of those who do.”

In it, he offers up fake eulogies from some of his friends, which in retrospect are surprisingly poignant. “He was always so butch,” “Truman Capote” says. “I thought he’d outlive us all.”

Mailer's Death: We Called It [Boston]
Earlier Intel's prodigious coverage of the death of Norman Mailer

As friends and family paid respects to Norman Mailer at his wake in Provincetown, Massachusetts, yesterday, we decided to dig up our part of one of Mailer's most colorful personal stories: when he ran for mayor in 1969. "I am paying my debt to society," he told Time that summer. "That is why I am running." He ran alongside newspaper columnist Jimmy Breslin, who ran for City Council president. They began their campaign at the urging of friends like Gloria Steinem and Jack Newfield, at a time when they saw the city as a wounded place in need of healing. Breslin recounted his experience of running, and how Mailer convinced him to do it, in a May 1969 New York cover story. Click below to read.

MAILER-BRESLIN: Seriously? [NYM, pdf]

It's safe to say, now, that Norman Mailer did not become the heavyweight champion of fiction — safe to say because he's no longer around to take a swing at you with his cane. Even in his last year, Mailer would vigorously defend his reputation if he heard something he didn't like. After this magazine recently published an innocuous chart chronicling his many highly entertaining feuds, he called to deliver a loud, hearing-challenged verbal pummeling. But, though he doubtless wouldn't fully concede the point, even he must have realized that his greatest work was not fiction.

Prolific, outspoken novelist Norman Mailer passed away this morning at Mount Sinai hospital, where he'd been admitted several weeks ago with respiratory problems.

A true New York character, both colorful and controversial, Mailer co-founded The Village Voice, penned over 30 books, directed four movies, won two Pulitzer Prizes, and tossed at least one drink at Gore Vidal. A fascinating man with an ego to match, Mailer was nothing if not captivating, and the world of letters won't be the same without his bluff and bravado.

Earlier:The Rise of Mailerism [NYM]
Father to Son: What I've Learned About Rage [NYM]

Linda Stein, the punk-music pioneer turned real-estate broker, was found murdered in her Fifth Avenue penthouse on Tuesday. According to the AP, the medical examiner says an autopsy found that she died from fatal blows to the head and neck. Stein was the original “broker to the stars,” helping turn the sale of fancy real estate in the city into the gossipy, publicity-driven soap opera that it has become today, where we all know, or think we know, which boldfaced name lives where, and how much they paid. A tempestuous, bawdy, funny woman who, through her marriage in to Sire Records founder Seymour Stein (the man who discovered and nurtured Madonna as well as the Talking Heads), transformed herself from a fifth-grade teacher in the Bronx to Ramones manager and international party girl (best friends with Elton John and Studio 54 regular). And then, after she and Stein divorced, she transformed herself again. Like many a divorcée, she got her real-estate license. But she had something else going for her. “I saw that there was money to be made,” she told New York Magazine when Michael Gross profiled her back in 1991. “My clients are my friends.” They included Bruce Willis, Billy Joel, Sting, Andrew Lloyd Webber, Calvin Klein, Joan Rivers, Sylvester Stallone, Jann Wenner and Rupert Everett.