The Executioner's Song | Norman Mailer | "If I feel like murder, it does not necessarily matter...

The Executioner's Song | Norman Mailer | 1000+ pages of everything

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The Executioner's ...

	The Executioner's Song Norman Mailer Vintage, 1998 - 1072 pages average customer review:based on 77 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

"If I feel like murder, it does not necessarily matter who gets murdered."

Winner of the 1980 Pulitzer Prize, The Executioner's Song scrutinizes the life and death of Gary Gilmore, arrested and tried for the 1976 killings of two innocent men in Provo, Utah, during petty burglaries which netted him less than $250. Author Norman Mailer bases his novel on the one hundred interviews and hundreds of phone conversations he conducted with people involved in Gilmore's life, trial, and execution. He also examined all available police documents and court transcripts, and made many trips to Utah and Oregon to talk with witnesses and people who knew Gilmore,

Having had no contact with Gary Gilmore himself, Mailer maintains a reporter's distance, ultimately portraying Gilmore as a loser who got his "education" in the prison system in which he spent half his life, and turning him into a symbol of the sociopath for whom society has found no answer except the death penalty. The novel divides naturally into several sections: the gruesome crimes themselves, including Gilmore's mindset at the time, his background, and the effect of the crimes on his family and friends; the pre-trial maneuvering and the trial itself; the conviction and post-conviction appeals; and Gilmore's execution and its aftermath.

Gilmore is not presented sympathetically, though Mailer goes to great lengths to portray him accurately. Gilmore's unusually high IQ, his poetic letters to his girlfriend Nicole, and his admission of guilt and desire to pay for his crimes with his own death create a unique picture of someone who had both intelligence and a kind of honor. But neither Gilmore nor the psychologists could ever explain why he did what he did. One moment Gilmore says, "I don't know what the hell I'm doing," and another moment he says, "I've always had a choice."

Mailer takes the long view throughout the novel, which ultimately becomes an extraordinary study of a man facing justice and the extraordinary steps the judicial system takes to see that true justice is served--the agonies endured by friends, the sleepless nights of attorneys and judges, the soul-searching of those required to carry out the sentence, many of them Mormons who do not support the death penalty, and the frustration of Gilmore, who wants death and fears that he will be reprieved. A brilliant and complete study of the American way of life and those, like Gilmore, who cannot live within it, the novel is, however, excruciatingly long. The last half of the book, with the minutiae of the legal maneuvering, the post-trial activities, and the appeals could have been cut in half without sacrificing depth or truth. n Mary Whipple

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1000+ pages of everything

Is "The Executioner's Song" a novel or a piece of journalism? If you read the afterword and know what everything that is written actually happened you would think the latter. And it is, but the writing is so compelling it is also a piece of literature like Truman Capote's "In Cold Blood".

In short, the story is about Gary Gilmore, a villain who has been in jails and correction centers for most of his life but who has never been corrected, maybe even the opposite. He gets out of jail, works in a shoe store and meets Nicole, the number one person for him for the rest of his life. His life outside of jail is one of drugs, violence and a lot of drinking, until one day he brutally kills two people. He is then sentenced to get the death-penalty, which had a moratorium for few years. Even though many groups like the ACLU try to stop this he actually wants to get the Death Penalty. The last pages are excrusiating, does he get it or not?

Gary Gilmore was a menace, not a nice person who kept drinking and making other people's lives miserable. I had to be really careful not to feel some kind of sympathy for him however. Was het a victim of society and/or the prison system? In the end I actually was hoping he would not die.

The lives of the other people around him are also masterfully told. From his immediate family to the lawyers that came in later.

This book is great of you want a book about average Americans, about the legal system, the Death Penalty and interestingly enough also the Mormon Church.
It may be more than a 1000 pages but every one is worth it. The chapters are short and also divided into smaller parts. Because of the writing style you can put it away for a few days and pick it up again.

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One of Mailer's Most Fully Realized Works

Norman Mailer puts together one of his most successful efforts in this piece of new journalism. Recounting the tale of Gary Gilmore, the first person executed in the United States following the Supreme Court decision legalizing the death penalty, this book goes into Gilmore's life, crime, and thought at length. Mailer's writing is straightforward and engaging, although it rarely reaches the lyrical quality of his very finest prose. Mailer is quite at home with the subject matter, and brings the sordid world of the characters home to the reader. A great book, a disturbing story, and impossible to put down before it's done.

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Yikes!

Be prepared for a long haul....this book is very tedious, and goes into much unnecessary detail. It also characterizes Gary and Nicole's relationship as "loving/romantic". Not so much - more like Gary abused and controlled her! If you are looking for a good "true-life novel" of this sort, stick to Truman Capote's In Cold Blood. IF you are looking for a good book about the death penalty and death row, try John Grisham's The Chamber.

reviews: 1, 2, 3, page 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13

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