The Executioner's Song

by Norman Mailer

Overview

Winner of the 1980 Pulitzer Prize

In what is arguably his greatest book, America's most heroically ambitious writer follows
the short, blighted career of Gary Gilmore, an intractably violent product of America's
prisons who became notorious for two reasons: first, for robbing two men in 1976, then
killing them in cold blood; and, second, after being tried and convicted, for insisting on
dying for his crime. To do so, he had to fight a system that seemed paradoxically intent on
keeping him alive long after it had sentenced him to death.

Norman Mailer tells Gilmore's story—and those of the men and women caught up in his
procession toward the firing squad—with implacable authority, steely compassion, and a
restraint that evokes the parched landscapes and stern theology of Gilmore's Utah. The
Executioner's Song is a trip down the wrong side of the tracks to the deepest sources of
American loneliness and violence. It is a towering achievement—impossible to put down, impossible to forget.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780375700811
Publisher:	Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Publication date:	04/28/1998
Series:	Vintage International Series
Pages:	1072
Product dimensions:	5.22(w) x 7.98(h) x 1.77(d)
Lexile:	960L (what's this?)

About the Author

Norman Mailer was born in 1923 in Long Branch, New Jersey, and grew up in Brooklyn, New York. In 1955, he was one of the co-founders of The Village Voice . He is the author of more than thirty books, including The Naked and the Dead ; The Armies of the Night, for which he won a National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize; The Executioner's Song, for which he won his second Pulitzer Prize; Harlot's Ghost ; Oswald's Tale ; The Gospel According to the Son, The Castle and the Forest and On God . He died in 2007.

Hometown:

Provincetown, Massachusetts, and New York, New York

Date of Birth:

January 31, 1923

Date of Death:

November 10, 2007

Place of Birth:

Long Branch, New Jersey

Education:

B.S., Harvard University, 1943; Sorbonne, Paris, 1947-48

Table of Contents

Book 1	Western Voices
Part 1	Gary	3
Part 2	Nicole	69
Part 3	Gary and Nicole	119
Part 4	The Gas Station and the Motel	205
Part 5	The Shadows of the Dream	307
Part 6	The Trial of Gary M. Gilmore	371
Part 7	Death Row	453
Book 2	Eastern Voices
Part 1	In the Reign of Good King Boaz	507
Part 2	Exclusive Rights	575
Part 3	The Hunger Strike	665
Part 4	The Holiday Season	739
Part 5	Pressures	791
Part 6	Into the Light	899
Part 7	The Fading of the Heart	993

Editorial Reviews

. . .[N]o one but Mailer could have dared this book. . . .the very subject of The Executioner's Song is that vast emptiness at the center of the Western experience. . .a dread so close to zero that human voices fade out. . . .This is an absolutely astonishing book. -- The New York Times Books of the Century, reviewed October 7, 1979

Joan Didion

Not since The Grapes of Wrath has there been an American book that so discovered the voices in our culture.

Philadelphia Inquirer

Literature of the highest order…It lives in the mind long after the last page has been read.”

Miami Herald

A harrowing, absolutely eyes-on account…elevated by Mailer’s genius into art.”

Houston Chronicle

The Executioner’s Song takes you inside Gilmore’s head and the harrowing fight he launched against those who tried to save him against his will.”

New York Times

Norman Mailer’s Pulitzer Prize-winning work of journalistic fiction, centered on convicted killer Gary Gilmore, boasts a terrific narration by Maxwell Hamilton…Hamilton is spot-on as he delivers Mailer’s well-drawn sketches of the people in Gilmore’s life—his family and friends—and their hardscrabble existence, capturing Utah’s rigid moral code and scofflaw Gilmore’s low regard for its restrictions. A remarkable tale and narration. Winner of an AudioFile Earphones Award.”

AudioFile

No one but Mailer could have dared this book…The very subject of The Executioner’s Song is that vast emptiness at the center of the Western experience…a dread so close to zero that human voices fade out…This is an absolutely astonishing book.”

New York Times Book Review

Norman Mailer's Pulitzer Prize-winning work of journalistic fiction, centered on convicted killer Gary Gilmore, boasts a terrific narration by Maxwell Hamilton. After Gilmore was tried and convicted of the cold- blooded murder of two men, he insisted that he be executed for the crime. However, the state of Utah and the anti-death-penalty ACLU fought to keep him alive, frustrating his wishes. Hamilton embodies Gilmore from his small-time crook mentality to his self-aggrandizement, from his alcoholic rages to his complete indifference to other people’s feelings. Hamilton is spot-on as he delivers Mailer’s well-drawn sketches of the people in Gilmore’s life—his family and friends—and their hardscrabble existence, capturing Utah’s rigid moral code and scofflaw Gilmore’s low regard for its restrictions. A remarkable tale and narration. S.J.H. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award © AudioFile 2018, Portland, Maine

JUNE 2018 - AudioFile