Mailer, Norman - The Executioner’s Song

In 1976, in Provo, Utah, repeat felon Gary Gilmore robbed a hotel and a gas station. During the robberies, he shot two bystanders in the head, killing them. Gilmore’s murder trial captivated and divided a nation as Gilmore was convicted, sentenced to death and then defied expectations by fighting to have the execution carried out.

Norman Mailer, one of America’s greatest novelists, bought the rights to Gilmore’s story and, in 1979, published The Executioner’s Song. The book is laid out as a fictional novel and narrates the story of Gilmore’s last months, beginning with the days before he was released from prison on a previous conviction and driving right through to the impact of his eventual death.

Written with a stripped-bare prose, Executioner’s Song is one of the most extraordinary books I’ve ever read. Over 1,000 pages long, the life of Gilmore and the people that surrounded him are exhaustively researched. All perspectives, from the NAACP activists who lobbied against Gilmore’s execution to Gilmore’s lonely mother, are introduced and objectively examined. The story, and the way that the execution impacts the lives of such a myriad of people, are entwined brilliantly. For such a massive undertaking, the pages fly by.

The main character, of course, is Gary Gilmore, a talented artist and poet who has lived a life of violent crime and prison stays. His charisma and creativity are obvious, and have the effect of conjuring sympathy, but Gilmore is also a self-obsessed sociopath. A large part of the narrative focuses on Gilmore’s love affair with Nicole Baker, the book’s most tragic and compelling character, a young woman with a history of abuse who finds nearly all of her worth in sexuality. Nicole is drawn to Gilmore like a cult, and her honesty with Mailer and her other interviewers offer most of the insight into how horrible the story of Gary Gilmore’s life was.

It should be mentioned that Executioner’s Song is not for the faint of heart. Sexuality plays heavily into the relationship between Nicole and Gary, and the accounts of Nicole’s abuse and sexual history are extremely vivid and heartbreaking. No punches are pulled, and the result is a horrifying look at the sociopathic mind and the lives it affects.

Mailer’s sparse writing style perfectly complements the Utah landscape and he writes each character with furious focus and impartiality. The novel won the Pulitzer Prize in 1980, and the story of Gary Gilmore is well-known to people over 40, but the story can be especially fascinating to a younger generation largely ignorant of the events leading up to Gilmore’s execution.

Jordan Green lives in Portland, Oregon, a few miles from where Gary Gilmore grew up.

Posted on February 15, 2006 12:00 AM