The Executioner's Song by Norman Mailer
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Book Summary Author: Norman Mailer Edition: Paperback Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published) Published: 1998-04-28 ISBN: 0375700811 Number of pages: 1072 Publisher: Vintage |
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Book Reviews of the The Executioner's Song
Customer Review: A poorly written attempt to make Gods of common gutter trash
Summary: 1 Stars
Gary Gilmore was a piece of common gutter trash. His story was not worth recording. Nicole Barrett was (and presumably is) another scrap of garden-variety white trash whose memory should have been restricted to the 5,000-ish men and women with whom she slept. Mailer speaks of these people with a reverence that I find impossible to understand. The most obscene example of this comes just before Gilmore's execution. Mailer tells of Gilmore asking for water while strapped in his execution chair. This is such a clumsy and distasteful allusion to Christ's being given water by a Roman soldier while hanging on the cross that I can hardly imagine the ego and cognitive distance that would allow such a comparison to be written. Maybe Mailer did not intend it to be such an allusion and I am making too much of it; or, he figured that once anyone got to page 956, or wherever it was, they would be so mind numb from the book's sheer badness that no one would notice. Mailer's own taste in literature comes into question with the repeated (and I do mean REPEATED) use of Gilmore's letters to Nicole. They are juvenile in the extreme - talk of "booties" and what he wanted to do with/to them. In his afterword, Mailer compliments Gilmore's writing and assures the reader (in the passive voice, minus 10 points) that he was true to his writings - lucky for us. Sweet Lord, God, how was this ever inflicted on the world?
This is an awful book. Mailer spends 1056 pages glorifying this human trash and, inexplicably, won a Pulitzer Prize for it. The characters are unworthy of any discussion - let alone this tome. The writing is simple-minded. Certain facts are repeated so often that it brings into question whether this document was edited in any way. I had to force myself to finish reading this book. I held out hope that I could find something, even a single page - failing that a single sentence - that would justify, or begin to explain why this was published in the first place. Despite my best efforts, I could find no such justification. I was even hoping for a clever or touching meaning to the title of the book. Oh, WOW, was I ever let down on this one. The guidelines for submitting reviews on this site include "no spoilers." Consequently, I will not give the name of the executioner's song, but I will say that NWA's "Pop That Coochie" would have been more sentimental.
Do not read this book. Let the list of Gilmore's victims end with me.