The Executioner's Song by Norman Mailer is a remarkable work that delves into the life and death of Gary Mark Gilmore. The story begins with Gilmore's release from prison and his subsequent courtship of Nicole Barrett. Mailer's writing style, with its bite-sized paragraphs and shifting points of view, creates a unique rhythm that draws the reader in.

One of the book's strengths is Mailer's attempt to present the story without judgment. He simply tells what happened, allowing the reader to form their own opinions. However, this reticence can also be a liability, as Mailer's focus on Gilmore and Nicole comes at the expense of the crime and its victims.

The book is not without its flaws. The unnecessary detail, particularly in the second half, can be frustrating, and Mailer's heavy reliance on research materials provided by others raises questions about the extent of his own involvement. Additionally, the portrayal of Gilmore as a complex and somewhat sympathetic figure may not sit well with some readers.

Despite these issues, The Executioner's Song remains a powerful and thought-provoking work. It forces the reader to confront difficult questions about justice, morality, and the death penalty. Mailer's audaciousness and narrative voice are to be admired, and the book's lasting presence in the reader's consciousness is a testament to its quality.

In conclusion, The Executioner's Song is a must-read for anyone interested in true crime, American literature, or the death penalty. It is a book that will stay with you long after you've turned the last page.

“Now, the doctor was beside him, pinning a white circle on [Gary] Gilmore’s black shirt, and the doctor stepped back. Father Meersman traced the big sign of the cross, the last act he had to perform. Then, he, too, stepped over the line, and turned around, and looked back at the hooded figure in the chair. The phone began to ring…”
-\\tNorman Mailer, The Executioner’s Song

This book is truly something special. It is one of those oxymoronically-named “non-fiction novels” that blurs the line between fact and speculation.

In a non-fiction novel, like Truman Capote's In Cold Blood, a journalist takes their research as far as possible and then fills in the gaps with reasoned speculation. While this can be a bit shady, it also makes for a hugely entertaining read.

The Executioner's Song tells the story of Gary Mark Gilmore, a lowlife thug who spent over half his life in prison before murdering two men while on parole. Instead of fighting his conviction, Gilmore forced the State of Utah's hand and became the first person executed in the US in 10 years.

The story is complex and multi-faceted, and Mailer does an excellent job of bringing it to life. His writing style is engaging and accessible, and his use of dialogue and description helps to create a vivid picture of the characters and events.

One of the most interesting aspects of the book is Mailer's portrayal of Gilmore. He presents him as a complex and somewhat sympathetic figure, despite the fact that he was a cold-blooded killer. This is not to say that Mailer excuses Gilmore's actions, but rather that he tries to understand the man behind the crimes.

Overall, The Executioner's Song is a remarkable work of literature that will appeal to a wide range of readers. It is a thought-provoking and engaging read that will leave you with a lot to think about. If you're looking for a book that will challenge your assumptions and make you question your beliefs, then this is the book for you.

Gary Gilmore's life and death is a complex and captivating story. He murdered two people in Utah, and his fight for the right to die became a significant event.

The first half of the book delves into his life and the events that led up to the crimes. It provides a detailed account of his background, experiences, and the circumstances that contributed to his actions.

The second half, on the other hand, focuses more on the film makers and journalists who were vying for the opportunity to interview him and turn his life into a film. While this aspect may be of interest to some, it can also be repetitive and detract from the central narrative.

Comparisons have been drawn between this book and Truman Capote's In Cold Blood. Having read both, I find that I prefer the latter. Capote's writing style may not be to everyone's liking, but it remains focused on the story and doesn't meander or become overly verbose. In contrast, this book at times feels like it could have been more concise. Overall, I would rate this book a 2 out of 5.

In "The Executioner’s Song", Norman Mailer meticulously chronicles the life of Gary Gilmore, a man who committed the heinous act of murdering two people in Utah in 1976.

The book delves deep into the events surrounding the murders, the trial, and ultimately the execution of Gary Gilmore. It also follows the lives of those who have come into contact with him.

The first part of the book, which leads up to the murders, is engaging and captivating. However, the second part takes a turn for the worse and becomes dull and tiresome. It provides lengthy and detailed accounts of secondary characters who have little to do with the story of Gilmore.

Mailer seems to believe that by introducing minute and often private details of these characters, the reader will be able to better understand the psychological makeup of Gilmore and the reasons behind his murders. But what he fails to realize is that the reader is not interested in the specifics of a person’s life that have no bearing on the main story.

At a whopping 1,050 pages, the book is a very laborious read. And while it may have won the Pulitzer Prize, it cannot hold a candle to Capote’s "In Cold Blood". "The Executioner’s Song" had the potential to be a classic, but unfortunately, it seems that even the best writers need the guidance of an editor to trim the fat and focus on the essential elements of the story.

I completely forgot that I had read this before.

It is truly incredibly sad. Whether one is in favor of the death penalty or against it, this account makes you really stop and think deeply about all the ramifications.

Gilmore, to my surprise, was intelligent. I had initially made an assumption that he wouldn't be, and now I actually feel a sense of guilt for having made that unfounded assumption.

This story serves as a powerful reminder that we should not judge others based on our preconceived notions. It forces us to confront the complex and often uncomfortable issues surrounding the death penalty and the people involved.

It makes us question our own beliefs and values and consider the consequences of our actions and judgments.

In conclusion, this is a story that has the potential to have a profound impact on anyone who reads it.

Capote was indeed extremely right.

This isn't genuine writing; it's merely typing.

If one desires to have a comprehensive understanding about this particular case, I would highly suggest the book "SHOT IN THE HEART" by Mikal Gilmore.

This work delves deep into the details and nuances of the case, providing valuable insights and perspectives that might otherwise remain hidden.

It offers a vivid and engaging account that can truly enhance one's knowledge and perception of the events surrounding the case.

Whether you are a casual observer or a serious researcher, this book is well worth exploring.

It has the potential to open your eyes and make you think differently about the case and the broader implications it may have.

So, don't hesitate to pick up a copy and embark on this enlightening journey.

Gary Mark Gillmore is dead.

This book offers a fascinating account of Gary Mark Gillmore and the individuals who influenced his life. From the very start, Gary was a thief and spent more than half of his life incarcerated. At the age of thirty-five, upon his release from prison, he found himself completely unprepared for the outside world. He didn't know how to hold a job, maintain relationships, or handle the daily tasks that we all take for granted. Tragically, Gary went on to kill two people, a decision that ultimately led to his sentence of execution by firing squad in Utah.

While on death row, many of his family members, lawyers, and the press were all striving to stop the execution, but this was completely contrary to Gary's own wishes. He believed that being executed would grant him absolution. He even made two attempts to commit suicide with his lover Nicole, but both were unsuccessful.

I highly recommend this book to everyone. Oh, and by the way, it's a true story. So, enjoy reading and may you be blessed. Diamond

Extraordinary book! It is quite a commitment to attempt to read a book this long, with over 1000 pages. However, this one was truly well worth it. The description of what happened to Gary Gilmore, the first person in the US to be executed for 10 years, is incredibly detailed and intimate. In particular, it describes his strong wish to be executed and his complex relationship with his girlfriend Nicole. But it also delves into his life before the crime, his time on Death Row, and the profound effect it had on numerous others who were affected by it. It is an unsettling read, as by the end, I found myself feeling that I almost knew and even liked someone who had cold-bloodedly murdered 2 innocent people. This is a must-read for any fan of true crime and a book that you will still be thinking about a long time after you've finished it. It offers a deep and thought-provoking exploration of a tragic and controversial topic.

I read this book when I was 14, and it had an outsized impact on me.

It is an unrelenting, exhaustive, and harrowing account of 9 months of Gary Gilmore's life, from his parole release to the day of his execution. The book is based almost entirely on the accounts of his family and friends and is written in an unperformative, transparent style that is extremely detailed but remarkably never boring or tedious.

Mailer follows Gilmore's pitiful life in inscrutable detail. A product of America's prisons, he was intractably violent. He spent 20 of his 35 years in prison and robbed and killed two innocent men by shooting them point-blank in the backs of their heads. Then, he insisted on dying for his crimes. The book chronicles his fight with the judicial system, which was intent on keeping him alive after sentencing him to death. By refusing to appeal his sentence, Gilmore threw the justice system into chaos.

At 14, I was not immune to the erotic allure of the condemned murderer or to being conned. Gilmore had a highly evolved con man style. He was not a raving lunatic with an axe or a ski-masked rapist. He was complicated, charming yet violent, insecure but also self-aggrandizing, uneducated yet poetic. His story is set against the grim, melancholy backdrop of Provo, Utah. Even this bleak landscape manages to evoke an impossibly quixotic trailer park allure. Without explanation or editorializing, but through Gilmore's own words, interactions, relationships (especially with Nicole, his teenage welfare-mother girlfriend with her own romantic ideas of "meeting beyond the grave" and their increasingly desperate and romantic love letters), the snowballing media circus, and the fumbled lover's suicide pacts, a seductive picture of a killer and his life/world is painted.

The culmination of all this occurs in 1979 in the Utah State Pen "death house" - an abandoned cannery behind the prison. After eating hard-boiled eggs and coffee, he is strapped to a chair with a wall of sandbags behind him and shot to death by a firing squad. So much for romance.

Wow. What a beautiful book indeed.

At the end, I was brought to tears. Norman Mailer's writing was so vivid that it made me feel as if I was right there with Gary and the others during the execution.

Simultaneously, I was also reading "Shot at the Heart" by Mikal's Brother, which provided me with even deeper insights into the family and Gary himself.

It's truly a pity that I wish I could find pictures of Gary and Nicole. However, there seems to be none of Nicole to be found, and perhaps only three of Gary on the Internet.

It makes one wonder about the scarcity of visual representations of these individuals who played such significant roles in this story.

Maybe it adds an air of mystery and makes us rely even more on the power of the written word to imagine and understand their lives and the events that unfolded.

Nevertheless, the combination of these two books has given me a profound and unforgettable experience in exploring this particular aspect of history.

I can't resist the deliciously apparent metaphor provided by the circumstance that it took me pretty much exactly from Christmas to Easter to read this epic, 1100-page book about the life and death of Gary Gilmore.

1100 pages! I've only read one longer book in my life, The Glass Bead Game, which was so good it took less than a week to read. Obviously, this book wasn't in the same league.

But it was much better than expected, since I'd otherwise been nursing a nascent hatred of Mailer initially spawned by my dissatisfaction with the wretched Armies of the Night. I figured I'd give him another shot though, I mean, people fucking worship Mailer. So, why not try the OTHER book he won a Pulitzer for?

And indeed, The Executioner's Song was well played and well deserving of that honor. The book is actually broken into two separate books. The first is, at its core, an intact and insulated love story set in rural Utah between a recently-sprung life-long convict and his new lady love. The first book never hints at a larger world -- it is a completely zoomed-in microcosm that never really roams farther than a couple of blocks of a single small town. There's a small cast, and the reader feels a sense of security in the smallness of the story, and the finite boundaries of its physical and emotional domains.

The second book is an instant and complete paradigm shift. It zooms out from small-town Utah to the broader country and watches the firestorms that are set off when Gilmore refuses to appeal his death sentence after being tried for murders to which he admits. Extremely suddenly, the sense of nearly idyllic security provided by having just read 500 pages about 4 or 5 people in a single town is exploded by the introduction of all of the big-time journalists (Geraldo Rivera, Barbara Walters), politicians (the Supreme Court, the president), Hollywood producers (big names in the 70's, though lost on me today), and celebrities (when Johnny Cash calls, Gilmore says, "Is this the real Johnny Cash? Oh yeah? Well this is the real Gary Gilmore!") who swoop down into Provo, Utah, to capitalize on the sensationalism of capital punishment.

It was a nerdy delight to discover that much of the second book is really an exercise in the minutiae of civil and criminal procedure in the federal courts, as Gilmore's lawyers wrangled with the ACLU and other civil rights groups for Gilmore's "right to die." Gilmore was the first person executed in the US after the Supreme Court issued and then rescinded a moratorium on the death penalty. As if the issue of capital punishment wasn't thorny enough in 1970's politics, Gilmore threw the wrench of WANTING to be executed, and of wanting the right NOT to appeal. From a legal standpoint, it was a mess of tangled and conflicting jurisprudence, and everyone from the local magistrate in Provo to the District Court to the Tenth Circuit to the Supreme Court weighed in - numerous times!

Through much of the first half, I figured this was Mailer's FUCK YOU to Capote for In Cold Blood. This was Mailer's response, and if you're going to take on In Cold Blood, it might as well be 1100 pages. But I was wrong. This book does a whole lot more - it encapsulates In Cold Blood, in a sense. It tells that story - a small town rocked by murders, and the boys who done it, and the execution. But Mailer tells the other story too, and it turns out to be just as compelling - the legal wrangling, the movie deals, the fancy New York lawyers who fly in with the contracts, the Hollywood bigwigs who move in for the kill (literally, into the TraveLodge by the prison).

In good conscience I can recommend this book without reservation. But, it IS 1100 pages........

And now, on to Fear & Loathing on the Campaign Trail. When will this "New Journalism" streak end?????

CW: murder, violence, gun violence, pedophilia, suicidal ideation, suicide attempt, emotional abuse, confinement/prison, child abuse, description of injuries, forced marriage, rape, assault, antisemitism, racism, homophobia, capital punishment
Read for the "Read the States" Challenge for: Utah!

What an unpleasant and incredibly long book this is! :) Gary Gilmore was truly an abhorrent person, yet not entirely to blame for his actions. Despite being intelligent, he had great difficulty holding a job and was a habitual liar to employers, family, and friends. He was violently antisemitic and racist, seemingly without any real thought or understanding (as evident from his letters). He was likely a pedophile, although as far as we know, he never acted on these urges. He killed two men for a relatively small amount of money.

And he did not deserve to be executed by the state. Gilmore's execution was the first in the US after a ten-year moratorium on the death penalty to examine its legality under US law. Notably, he was one of the only (if not the only) people to refuse his rightful appeals. Death penalty cases typically take decades to conclude, with numerous appeals and the presentation of evidence. From conviction to execution, Gilmore's case took only five months.

I could not care less about Gary Gilmore himself, but I do care deeply about the death penalty. I find it not only personally unethical but also believe that the US system is deeply flawed and unfair to those who bear its consequences. While I might be persuaded that there could be some extremely rare cases that merit the death penalty, this is not one of them. Gilmore was failed by the justice system throughout his life and refused to listen during his lifetime that he was an emblematic and important case. To most of the world, he was not an important person; he was a legal precedent. He was mean, scared, tired, and the only way he saw to escape was through legal execution. It was the first thing he fought for in his entire life.

I managed to reach page 825 of this 1000-page behemoth, but I simply couldn't go on any further. "In Cold Blood" it was not.

I constantly double-checked to ensure I was reading the correct book. With so many five-star reviews, I assumed they couldn't possibly be referring to this one. Evidently, they were, and it seems I must be overlooking something.

The premise itself is captivating. Whether you are in favor of or opposed to capital punishment, this book确实 gives you a great deal to ponder. A career criminal murders two men, is sentenced to death, accepts it, and has no desire to appeal. However, the courts don't know how to deal with this and force him to appeal his sentence. Somehow, though, this gets buried in a deluge of words, facts, and peripheral individuals that muddle the situation and quite frankly, put me to sleep. I mean, this is Norman Mailer, shouldn't it be good?

I'm still clinging to the hope that I read the wrong book and there's actually a really excellent book titled "The Executioner's Song" that I missed.