Norman Mailer's Pulitzer Prize-winning and unforgettable classic about convicted killer Gary Gilmore now in a brand-new edition. Arguably the greatest book from America's most heroically ambitious writer, The Executioner's Song follows the short, blighted life of Gary Gilmore who became famous after he robbed two men in 1976 and killed them in cold blood. After being tried and convicted, he immediately insisted on being executed for his crime. To do so, he fought a system that seemed intent on keeping him alive long ...
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Norman Mailer's Pulitzer Prize-winning and unforgettable classic about convicted killer Gary Gilmore now in a brand-new edition. Arguably the greatest book from America's most heroically ambitious writer, The Executioner's Song follows the short, blighted life of Gary Gilmore who became famous after he robbed two men in 1976 and killed them in cold blood. After being tried and convicted, he immediately insisted on being executed for his crime. To do so, he fought a system that seemed intent on keeping him alive long after it had sentenced him to death. And that fight for the right to die is what made him famous. Mailer tells not only Gilmore's story, but those of the men and women caught in the web of his life and drawn into his procession toward the firing squad. All with implacable authority, steely compassion, and a restraint that evokes the parched landscape and stern theology of Gilmore's Utah. The Executioner's Song is a trip down the wrong side of the tracks to the deepest source of American loneliness and violence. It is a towering achievement-impossible to put down, impossible to forget.
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This review is based on the first 300 pages of this book because I don't think I can take much more of it. So far there are no interesting aspects to this criminal mind. I find following Gary Gilmore's minute by minute lack of judgment and poor impulse control to be extremely tedious and boring. I do not see how this book won the Pulitzer prize. I am just not seeing any literary merit to the work.
Maggy
Oct 21, 2007
Like In Cold Blood, this book is a nonfiction novel following the imprisonment and death of Gary Gilmore, a "cold-blooded" murderer. Though the validity of this book has been questioned, it is still a very interesting tale of murder and its effects on society. Admittedly, the views are a bit skewed towards Gilmore, and there are some very lurid details (descriptively sexual, mainly), but all in all, if you can get through it, this book is a good read.
