At risk of sounding like a Philistine, this book was just way too damn long!

It's true that the writing is truly fantastic, on the sentence level at least. It's clear, crisp, and evocative, much like a plain spoken tale told by that one uncle who has the gift of beautiful rustic oratory, while sitting on a front porch swing on a hot and dusty afternoon.

However, why does Mailer feel the need to regale the life story of every single character that is only tangentially related to the main story? After the 20th of these meandering hijackings, I started to feel resentful. It gave the impression of being an egoic exercise, as if Mailer was saying, "Here is EVERYTHING I found out about this story. Consume it because I went down these rabbit holes, and so should you." (Editor be damned.)

To be honest, Gary is not that compelling of a character. He's not 1000 pages compelling. Nowhere near the structural craft and tautness of In Cold Blood. But I do realize that mine is a minority (Philistine-y) opinion.

It is truly comical to label an account of a criminal and the double murder he committed, which spans over a thousand pages, as restrained.

Mailer meticulously documents every detail of Gary Gilmore's life and indeed that of everyone in Gary's extremely extended circle who had met him even once. Yet, he never once passes judgment on the heinousness of the crime or the justness of the death sentence.

I discovered that although I didn't take pleasure in the book, there is a numbing barrage of simply despicable behavior that evokes the matron aunt within me. Nevertheless, I did value how the book compels you to think profoundly about the challenges of the death penalty and what society should do with men like Gary Gilmore.

At the very conclusion of the book, I was thoroughly relieved to have reached the end of this gloomy slog through this vile little man's life. However, I was deeply conflicted as to why a talented writer like Mailer would have dedicated such meticulous care to the book and the worthiness of it, in contrast to its likability.

In reading this extensive work of more than 1000 pages, the reader is confronted with fundamental inquiries regarding the book. For instance, are the individuals portrayed truly captivating? Could the time invested in reading this be better utilized elsewhere? And is the author the appropriate person to pen this particular volume? From this reader's perspective, the answers are no, yes, and no respectively.

When the author, at the conclusion of the work, reveals that this book was distilled from approximately fifteen thousand pages of transcript information, one wonders why more condensation wasn't achieved. The case of convicted murderer and career con Gary Gilmore, whose 1976 execution in Utah was the first in the US in several years and led to the reinstatement of the death penalty, is the focus. Like many, I firmly believe that the death penalty is not employed frequently enough. However, this book endeavors to present a large cast of rather uninteresting characters based on their belief systems. Fair time is given to anti-death penalty activists, including those from the NAACP who correctly surmised that a return to the death penalty would likely result in the execution of more black criminals. Admittedly, the context of the death penalty is itself an engaging topic, but this book falls short as it zeroes in on people who, from the convicted murderer himself to judges, journalists, family members, lawyers, and activists, simply lack the allure or interest to make their life stories and ordinary behavior worth reading about.

This book, which spans about 1050 pages, is divided into two parts, each consisting of seven sections. The first part, titled Western Voices, contains chapters about Gary, a career criminal (1), his main girlfriend Nicole (2) with her tragic life story involving child abuse and tumultuous relationships, Gary and Nicole together (3), the gas station and motel (4) where the murders occurred, the aftermath of those murders (5), the trial that culminated in a conviction for double first-degree murder (6), and the start of Gary's time on death row (7). The second part is even more tiresome than the already tedious first part, delving into various appeals (1), the wrangling among journalists and others for exclusive rights to the murderer's story (2), his hunger strike (3), the intrigues that took place in winter (4), the pressures (5), the last-minute appeals and the execution itself (6), and the aftermath of the execution for different individuals (7). The book incorporates interviews copied almost verbatim, personal letters, the typical fictional speculation about what goes on in people's minds, extremely short and basic sentences, and a great deal of attention given to the question of sex among the criminal class. This clearly interests the author more than the reader.

This book serves as a prime example of the error that writers can make when they become embroiled in their own hype and convince themselves that what they are writing is more fascinating than it actually is. This work had the potential to be an engaging and worthwhile volume of around 200 or 300 pages, discussing the robbery and murder of two men, some of the life histories of the murderer and the victims, and the trial and its numerous appeals. Instead, this book is hundreds of pages longer than the interest its subject matter generates. There is detailed discussion about last-minute hearings that are quickly resolved, as well as the political in-fighting between Utah's local Mormon-dominated community and a federal judge whose carelessness leads to his decisions being frequently overturned on appeal. The author seems to believe that every person in this sprawling and bloated narrative needs to have their life story introduced, which only makes this book more tedious and lengthy. It's as if the author had so much that he found interesting in his research that he was eager to convey to the reader, but forgot to ask whether the material itself was interesting enough to the reader to warrant the space it occupies. One can only hope that the author wasn't paid by the word for this muddled mess.