The Executioner's Song

By Norman Mailer

This book won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 1980.

Back in the mid 1970s, a recently released convict named Gary Gilmore killed two men during the commission of two robberies. He was caught and convicted and sentenced to die. Gilmore, who had spent many years in prison, decided that he couldn't bear to be in jail any longer and so he declined to appeal his conviction and he demanded to be executed as per his sentence. This decision launched an uproar over the death sentence as a form of punishment and many people tried to prevent the execution through legal means even though they went against Gilmore's wishes. They failed though and Gilmore was executed by firing squad. This novel is Mailer's presentation of those events.
When I found out what the novel was about I really wasn't that keen on reading it. Plus, the book is huge, more than 1000 pages. So I made a schedule, planning to read so many pages a day till I was finished. But I didn't need the schedule. This book, despite its nasty main character and ugly subject matter, is very readable and absorbing. It is very detailed but still manages to avoid being boring. It examines Gilmore's life after his last prison release, takes us through the trial and the furor generated by his wish to be executed and his two suicide attempts and to the fulfillment of the death sentence. You certainly learn a lot about Gilmore who was a very angry, irresponsible, selfish and childish person. He was so selfish that he talked the gullible woman who thought she loved him into committing suicide with him (they both survived). He was never really able to explain why he shot two men who put up no resistance during the robberies. Both men were solid citizens, married with young children, who were complete strangers to Gilmore. About the only explanation is that Gilmore was angry at his girlfriend and took his anger out on his two victims.
Gilmore got what he deserved, he was a manipulative, selfish creep, but he died like a man. I guess that's something.

As a portrait of a killer, The Executioner's Song is top-notch. As a look at how the media operates, the book is a revelation, a real insider's view. I thought I would hate this book. I won't say I loved it, but I will say it was well worth reading.

Review from Kirkus Reviews.

New Words:
Rotogravure: a printing process by which the paper is rolled through intaglio cylinders; a print made by such a method; the portion of a printed work produced by this method. "Bessie studied dresses in the rotogravure before sewing her own, and went ballroom dancing at the Utahma Dance Hall in Provo when they brought orchestras in."
Tautologic: repetition of same sense in different words: 'a true fact' and `a free gift' for example. "The reason you couldn't find the word in the dictionary is because you read it wrong -- or I didn't write it right -- anyhow it's TAUTOLOGIC not TANTOLOGIC."