The Executioner's Song

by Norman Mailer, Dave Eggers

Overview

Norman Mailer's Pulitzer Prize-winning and unforgettable classic about convicted killer Gary Gilmore now in a brand-new edition.

Arguably the greatest book from America's most heroically ambitious writer, The Executioner's Song follows the short, blighted life of Gary Gilmore who became famous after he robbed two men in 1976 and killed them in cold blood. After being tried and convicted, he immediately insisted on being executed for his crime. To do so, he fought a system that seemed intent on keeping him alive long after it had sentenced him to death. And that fight for the right to die is what made him famous.

Mailer tells not only Gilmore's story, but those of the men and women caught in the web of his life and drawn into his procession toward the firing squad. All with implacable authority, steely compassion, and a restraint that evokes the parched landscape and stern theology of Gilmore's Utah. The Executioner's Song is a trip down the wrong side of the tracks to the deepest source of American loneliness and violence. It is a towering achievement-impossible to put down, impossible to forget.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781455510832
Publisher:	Grand Central Publishing
Publication date:	05/08/2012
Sold by:	Hachette Digital, Inc.
Format:	eBook
Sales rank:	143,439
Lexile:	960L (what's this?)
File size:	6 MB

About the Author

Norman Mailer was born in 1923 in Long Branch, New Jersey, and grew up in Brooklyn, New York. In 1955, he was one of the co-founders of the Village Voice. He is the author of more than thirty books, including The Naked and the Dead; The Armies of the Night, for which he won a National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize; The Executioner's Song, for which he won his second Pulitzer Prize; Harlot's Ghost; Oswald's Tale; The Gospel According to the Son, The Castle and the Forest and On God. He died in 2007.

Dave Eggers is the award-winning and bestselling author of many books, including the National Book Award finalist A Hologram for the King, as well as books for younger readers including What Can a Citizen Do?, Her Right Foot, This Bridge Will Not Be Gray, and The Lifters. He is the founder of the independent publishing company McSweeney's and the nonprofit organization ScholarMatch, in addition to cofounding The International Congress of Youth Voices and 826 Valencia, which has inspired similar organizations worldwide. Eggers lives in Northern California.

Hometown:

Provincetown, Massachusetts, and New York, New York

Date of Birth:

January 31, 1923

Date of Death:

November 10, 2007

Place of Birth:

Long Branch, New Jersey

Education:

B.S., Harvard University, 1943; Sorbonne, Paris, 1947-48

Table of Contents

Book 1	Western Voices
Part 1	Gary	3
Part 2	Nicole	69
Part 3	Gary and Nicole	119
Part 4	The Gas Station and the Motel	205
Part 5	The Shadows of the Dream	307
Part 6	The Trial of Gary M. Gilmore	371
Part 7	Death Row	453
Book 2	Eastern Voices
Part 1	In the Reign of Good King Boaz	507
Part 2	Exclusive Rights	575
Part 3	The Hunger Strike	665
Part 4	The Holiday Season	739
Part 5	Pressures	791
Part 6	Into the Light	899
Part 7	The Fading of the Heart	993

Editorial Reviews

. . .[N]o one but Mailer could have dared this book. . . .the very subject of The Executioner's Song is that vast emptiness at the center of the Western experience. . .a dread so close to zero that human voices fade out. . . .This is an absolutely astonishing book. -- The New York Times Books of the Century, reviewed October 7, 1979

Joan Didion

Not since The Grapes of Wrath has there been an American book that so discovered the voices in our culture.

Philadelphia Inquirer

Literature of the highest order…It lives in the mind long after the last page has been read.”

Miami Herald

A harrowing, absolutely eyes-on account…elevated by Mailer’s genius into art.”

Houston Chronicle

The Executioner’s Song takes you inside Gilmore’s head and the harrowing fight he launched against those who tried to save him against his will.”

New York Times

Norman Mailer’s Pulitzer Prize-winning work of journalistic fiction, centered on convicted killer Gary Gilmore, boasts a terrific narration by Maxwell Hamilton…Hamilton is spot-on as he delivers Mailer’s well-drawn sketches of the people in Gilmore’s life—his family and friends—and their hardscrabble existence, capturing Utah’s rigid moral code and scofflaw Gilmore’s low regard for its restrictions. A remarkable tale and narration. Winner of an AudioFile Earphones Award.”

AudioFile

No one but Mailer could have dared this book…The very subject of The Executioner’s Song is that vast emptiness at the center of the Western experience…a dread so close to zero that human voices fade out…This is an absolutely astonishing book.”

New York Times Book Review

Norman Mailer's Pulitzer Prize-winning work of journalistic fiction, centered on convicted killer Gary Gilmore, boasts a terrific narration by Maxwell Hamilton. After Gilmore was tried and convicted of the cold- blooded murder of two men, he insisted that he be executed for the crime. However, the state of Utah and the anti-death-penalty ACLU fought to keep him alive, frustrating his wishes. Hamilton embodies Gilmore from his small-time crook mentality to his self-aggrandizement, from his alcoholic rages to his complete indifference to other people’s feelings. Hamilton is spot-on as he delivers Mailer’s well-drawn sketches of the people in Gilmore’s life—his family and friends—and their hardscrabble existence, capturing Utah’s rigid moral code and scofflaw Gilmore’s low regard for its restrictions. A remarkable tale and narration. S.J.H. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award © AudioFile 2018, Portland, Maine

JUNE 2018 - AudioFile