Jack and Norman: A State-Raised Convict and the Legacy of Norman Mailer's "The Executioner's Song"

by Jerome Loving

Overview

This is the story of an author and his apprentice. It is the story of literary influence and tragedy. It is also the story of incarceration in America.

Norman Mailer was writing The Executioner’s Song, his novel about condemned killer Gary Gilmore, when he struck up a correspondence with Jack Henry Abbott, Federal Prisoner 87098-132. Over time, Abbott convinced the famous author that he was a talented writer who deserved another chance at freedom. With letters of support from Mailer and other literary elites of the day, Abbott was released on parole in 1981.

With Mailer’s help, Abbott quickly became the literary “it boy” of New York City. But in a shocking turn of events, the day before a rave review of Abbott’s book, In the Belly of the Beast, appeared in The New York Times, Abbott murdered a New York City waiter and fled to Mexico. Eerily, like Gary Gilmore in Mailer’s true-life novel, Abbott killed within six weeks of his release from prison.

Now Jerome Loving explores the history of two of the most infamous books of the past 50 years, a fascinating story that has never before been told.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781250106995
Publisher:	St. Martin's Publishing Group
Publication date:	02/21/2017
Pages:	256
Product dimensions:	5.80(w) x 8.30(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

JEROME LOVING is the Distinguished Professor of English at Texas A&M University. Loving has taught as a visiting professor at the University of Texas in Austin and as a Fulbright Scholar at Leningrad State University.

Table of Contents

Introduction xi

1 Gilmore in the Flesh 1

2 Partners in Crime 11

3 Eastern State Penitentiary 21

4 Marion Federal Prison 33

5 Raised in a Box 44

6 The Prison Movement in the 1970s 56

7 His Own Voice 64

8 State-Raised Convict 73

9 Gilmore in Texas 83

10 The Executioner's Song: Circumstance, Substance, and Reception 93

11 Utah State 113

12 A Light at the End of the Tunnel 121

13 No Paradiso 132

14 In the Belly of the Beast: An Analysis and Autopsy 145

15 Running 158

16 The 60 Minutes Interview 169

17 His Grandmother's Orchard 182

18 Jack's Return 193

Acknowledgments 209

Notes 213

Index 225

Editorial Reviews

11/14/2016
Norman Mailer always seemed to court controversy in both his writings and his personal life, and now Loving (Walt Whitman) offers an absorbing chronicle of Mailer’s infamous relationship with Jack Henry Abbott, Federal Prisoner 87098-132. When Mailer was writing his “true life novel,” The Executioner’s Song, Abbott struck up a correspondence with the novelist, offering Mailer gritty descriptions of prison life that Mailer used to complete his portrait of what incarceration must have been like for Gary Gilmore, the subject of his book. Part literary criticism, part social commentary, and part true crime story, this riveting book chronicles Abbott’s existence as a “state-raised convict” who, as he recounted in his debut book, In the Belly of the Beast, spent most of his life in the dehumanizing prison system. Abbott won his petition for parole thanks in part to Mailer’s support, but not long after his release, Abbott murdered Richard Adan, a restaurant manager and aspiring playwright, and was caught and returned to prison. Loving’s gripping book offers a page-turning case study of the disturbing character of the American prison system and the fascinating compulsion that can drive writers to seek literary celebrity. (Feb.)

Publishers Weekly

"Jerome Loving tells the story of a famous mistake in law and literature with great authority. He juxtaposes a serial criminal, Jack Henry Abbott, and one of our most renowned writers, Norman Mailer, in a tragic dance of affirmation and denial. Among other things, this book is a devastating portrayal of our prison system."
—Robert A. Ferguson, George Edward Woodberry Professor of Law, Literature, and Criticism, Columbia University, and author of Inferno: An Anatomy of American Punishment

"Here are three impulsive, self-absorbed men—one a lionized cultural giant, the other two doomed from birth and hardened in prison to become remorseless killers. Somehow a major book, The Executioner's Song, results from their unlikely intersection. These are the makings of Jerome Loving's sad, ironic tale, at once an indictment of American incarceration and a reminder, if we needed one, that literary talent is no guarantee of respect for the lives of others." —Frederick Crews, author of Follies of the Wise and Freud: The Making of an Illusion (forthcoming)

"A story of American incarceration, cross-stitched with the friendship between a larger-than-life author and his state-raised convict apprentice. Luminous, unflinching, and unforgettable." —Wai Chee Dimock, Professor of English and American Studies, Yale University

"Part literary criticism, part social commentary, and part true crime story, this riveting book chronicles Abbott’s existence as a 'state-raised convict' who, as he recounted in his debut book, In the Belly of the Beast, spent most of his life in the dehumanizing prison system. Abbott won his petition for parole thanks in part to Mailer’s support, but not long after his release, Abbott murdered Richard Adan, a restaurant manager and aspiring playwright, and was caught and returned to prison. Loving’s gripping book offers a page-turning case study of the disturbing character of the American prison system and the fascinating compulsion that can drive writers to seek literary celebrity." —Publishers Weekly

"Loving hits all the notes he’s supposed to hit while carving out a slice of literary history, generously quoting from unpublished letters: He sets up Mailer’s fascination with criminality and his failures of empathy, and questions whether Mailer took enough responsibility when his artistic ideals clashed with real-life consequences. Loving also uses the episode to try to illustrate larger failings of the criminal justice system, an issue that fits awkwardly around the contours of a smaller-scale, if still ethically complicated, tale of the ruined remnants of 1950s literary culture. Jack and Norman is a book that makes one wonder why it took so long for someone to write a full-length treatment of the whole mess." —New Republic

"A sympathetic telling of the life and death of an infamous convict and the ill-fated intervention of a famed writer." —Kirkus Reviews

From the Publisher

01/01/2017
In 1981, murderer Jack Henry Abbott won parole from prison thanks, in large part, to the advocacy of novelist Norman Mailer. A short time later, Abbott was back in prison, convicted of another murder. Abbott had just published a book of his letters from prison, In the Belly of the Beast, which Mailer had championed. Their relationship is explored in great detail by Loving (English, Texas A&M Univ.). Abbott began writing to Mailer during the time that the author was working on his book about convicted killer Gary Gilmore, The Executioner's Song. Loving demonstrates how Abbott's letters provided Mailer with an inside look at prison life which became crucial to his understanding of Gilmore's situation. There is a lot packed into this short study: background on Mailer's literary career and personal life; biographical sketches of Abbott and Gilmore; and the critical reception for The Executioner's Song and In the Belly of the Beast. Most compelling is Loving's account of Abbott's difficult adjustment to freedom on New York City's Lower East Side. Loving tends to be a little repetitive, and his digressions are distracting, but this is a worthy addition to Mailer scholarship. VERDICT Anyone interested in Mailer's writings will appreciate this work.—Thomas Karel, Franklin & Marshall Coll. Lib., Lancaster, PA

Library Journal

2016-12-04
In 1979, Norman Mailer published The Executioner's Song, a novel that narrated the life and death of Gary Gilmore, a notorious killer executed in 1977. Loving (English/Texas A&M Univ.; Confederate Bushwhacker: Mark Twain in the Shadow of the Civil War, 2013, etc.) offers the back story of Mailer's fraught relationship with the murderer whose story was eerily similar to that of Gilmore. At the end of his mighty book, Mailer acknowledged the "exceptional letters" from Jack Henry Abbott "that delineate the code, the morals, the anguish, the philosophy, the pitfalls, the pride, and the search for inviolability of hard-line convicts." Abbott, who said he knew Gilmore, was also a coldblooded murderer imprisoned since adolescence, reared by a punishing government. Both prisoners raged against regulation, controlling "pigs," fellow cons, and sniveling do-gooders. Gilmore had some artistic talent, and Abbott had uncanny literary skill, founded on sophisticated reading, including Baudelaire, Kierkegaard, Rimbaud, and Marx. Abbott surely sensed an ally in Mailer, who had famously stabbed his own wife. The convict's letters cemented a relationship with the celebrated author, and Mailer was an important voice in gaining Abbott's parole. Eventually, Abbott released his musings in the form of In the Belly of the Beast (1981), which became a bestseller. The morning before a positive review appeared in the New York Times, he stabbed to death a blameless waiter. He was soon captured and found guilty of manslaughter. His defense was "prison paranoia"—i.e., he was trained by the state to kill. Mailer pleaded for a brief sentence because of the killer's writerly talent, but Abbott died in prison, perhaps by his own hand. In his forthright, if sporadic report, which could have used a chronology, Loving relies on research and the available correspondence between the famed writer and the clever convict, and he reveals the odd nexus of literature and penology, the meeting of art and criminality. A sympathetic telling of the life and death of an infamous convict and the ill-fated intervention of a famed writer.

Kirkus Reviews