The Executioner's Song by Norman Mailer
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Book Reviews of The Executioner's Song
Book Review: Possibly the finest book I have ever read
Summary: 5 Stars
At least the first book (of two) was. Mailer's delivery is power packed. Reads like butter. Simply astonishingly good and a must read for any thinking American. Can't be praised enough!Book Review: The Executioner's Song
Summary: 5 Stars
Book arrived in a timely manner in perfect condition. On this transaction, at least, the seller was first rate.Book Review: Letting a killer off the hook?
Summary: 4 Stars
It's been approximately 35 years since this book was originally published. In the interim, the public has seen many men executed, some clearly worse than Gary Gilmore, including Ted Bundy and Timothy McVeigh. This is an interesting book because it really gets down and dirty with Gary Gilmore and the people who tried to help him. I fear, however, that it largely lets Gary Gilmore himself off the hook, allowing him to blame everyone but himself for his conduct in gunning down two very good men for absolutely no reason at all.
People who are alive are far more compelling and far more sympathetic than people who are dead. This is a rather sad fact of life for people who investigate and prosecute homicides. The killers, in all of their living and breathing technicolor glory, become the central figures in the drama of a murder case, while their victims lay forgotten. In attempting to illuminate Gary Gilmore and the forces at work inside of him, Normal Mailer makes Gary Gilmore the sympathetic main character in the drama that became The Executioners Song.
Only one example of this phenomenon is in the treatment of the Gary/Nicole "love story." Nicole, a nineteen-year-old, much-abused woman child, surrendered everything to the much older man (Gilmore was in his thirties) who claimed to love her. Gilmore, in return, attempted to kill her by manipulating her into a nearly successful suicide attempt. Gilmore's desire to possess Nicole was so great that he was unable to bear the thought that she might be capable of finding happiness without him. There was nothing loving about Gilmore's relationship with Nicole -- he sought, not to love her, but to subjugate her. When he realized that she would live on after his removal from society, and that his hold over her could be broken, he manipulated her into the suicide attempt as the ultimate expression of his total domination over her. And yet, many of the characters profiled in the book appear to accept the notion that the relationship between Gary and Nicole was that of star-crossed lovers (sort of a Western Romeo and Juliet) rather than that of sociopath and victim.
Gary Gilmore was a classic sociopath. He was incapable of caring for anyone other than himself. His decision to allow his execution was a calculated and self-centered one, and had little to do with remorse for the murders he committed. He realized that he would be unable to escape his fate, which, at best, would consist of a life in prison. He desired immortality, which he received in execution.
Read this book. It's interesting. But never forget that Gary Gilmore was not an epic hero who fell victim to circumstances beyond his control. The victims in this book are truly the very good and somewhat simple people surrounding Gilmore who were manipulated and used by him, as well as the two men he murdered. It's worth reading if only to try to understand how this sociopath manipulated those around him, beginning with his friends and lovers and ending, eventually, with his lawyers, the court, and the media.
Remember, though, that the story that we read is not necessarily the unvarnished truth, because it is based, at least in part, on interviews provided by Gary Gilmore, a man congenitally incapable of truthfulness. To some extent, we know what he wanted us to know, and nothing more.
Book Review: It is beautiful, that confounding way.
Summary: 4 Stars
A killer killed is "The Executioner's Song" by Norman Mailer.
And how beautiful that is - the ingratiated direness ethereally evoked, the gratuity, the death, gregarious in reaching forth - and reaching forth is book conjecturing not why, but what in personification of that pulchritude... Reaching forth is a book of which warped inimically within are the caricatures and caricatures defiant - the inimitable bindings lyrically straightforward and somewhat forward pursuing, forward persuading in opposition of the seemingly self-defiant length. It conjoins voices, of Gary, prisoner engulfed in treacherous temerity, of Nicole, amorous lover intrigued in that treacherous temerity, of all else treacherous, of all else of temerity...together, together in prison rhymes, together in the "Deep in my dungeon I welcome you here. Deep in my dungeon I worship your fear. Deep in my dungeon I dwell. I do not know if I wish you well."
Singing before living are they.
They are those within those obscurity-drenched travesties, coordinating contorted perspective of subordinate, those "kind of quiet" subordinate matters into something not subordinate. The engulfment of gratuitous, greater realms, stoic disposition set - wrenching are those not so subordinate, whether for life, whether against life. All is abided, whether that malicious mutiny engraved towards one's self, in a book concrete of a topic abstract. Norman Mailer doesn't attempt to explain, but explained it is nonetheless.
It is simplistic- yet sometimes languidly lacking, yet sometimes unfathomably fulfilling in the melancholy mélange of protruding progression. Yet, that song of dire desire is a tempered resolution throughout, ravenously reaping forth of sophistication- the winter, spring, summer, to the harvest of an auspicious autumn. And the accompaniment, the harmonies perhaps discordant, perhaps not always harmonious to that unrelenting song are the details minute, the letters earnestly embodying pernicious pain of unknowing, of knowing too much, of thrusting themselves because they do not know otherwise. The supposed implications, the supposed irrelevancy, of characters are those whose names are forgotten, but not forgettable- intricate to the immense intimacy lead to. And the ifs, the mays, the uhs is treacherous- a travesty turbulent, transcending throughout life unmapped and the inscription further unmapped in chapters, in parts, in books captiously cascading. The sophistication is eminent, if not beginning, then eulogy-enunciating end.
All is worth it. All is together in the "Deep in my dungeon I welcome you here. Deep in my dungeon I worship your fear. Deep in my dungeon I dwell. A bloody kiss from the wishing well." (1050)
It is simple, that condescending way. It is beautiful, that confounding way.
Book Review: Life and crimes of Gary Killmore...I mean Gilmore
Summary: 4 Stars
Mailer writes with the unembellished style of a newspaper reporter in this work which traces Gilmore's actions from his last prison release to his long-awaited execution. No detail is left out and no stone unturned, resulting in what is, at times, a jumbled panoply of lawyers, deal-making, press attention, and family dysfunction. Throw in a miserable 'love story' between two self-absorbed and selfish individuals, and you have yourself a Pulitzer Prize winner. It's hard to keep track and stay interested when the plot and focus of the novel turns from Gilmore to the circus of press, lawyers, movie directors, and judges surrounding him. Here's a selfish, cold-blooded, vile murderer and sociopath who commands the attention and admiration of the press and the nation because he's to be the first person executed in the US in 20 years and because he welcomes the sentence. Well big deal....
I really feel for the families of Benny Bushnell and Max Jensen, who had to endure seeing their loved ones' killer on tv, on magazine covers, sought out for interviews and having movies made about him while little attention was paid to the victims. What a shame!
Quantity surpasses quality in this novel, if you ask me. Less is more...I say this NOT because I dislike long novels, but because a lot of the minutia details in the novel don't contribute much to the overall story , are simply distracting, and although it shows what a huge effort was made in writing the novel, it adds little entertainment or educational value to the book. For example, do we really need to know about Lawrence Schiller's flight schedule and his relationship with his girlfriend? Or Gary's former cellmate's medical troubles? Those are just a few examples...extraneous rambling in a novel of otherwise great import which is just unnecessarily long.