Rating: 
Summary: harrowing, brilliant...the best true crime I've encountered
Review: Norman Mailer's book is easily the best of the more than one hundred true crime books I've ever read. The story of Gary Gilmore & Nicole Baker reads like a warped American Romeo & Juliet at times, albeit a white trash version of sorts. When all was said and done, Gilmore had spent 18 of his 36 years institutionalized in one form or another. So Gary fought the state of Utah when they sentenced him to death in 1976. The twist is that he had to fight to make them follow through with their threat. Gilmore, as well as anyone, knew what prison was like and that he wanted nothing more to do with that kind of life. This is one of the feww 1,000+ page books that left me wanting more when it was over. Mailer had access to virtually everyone necessary to pull off this monumental undertaking. The narrative is basically stripped of needless frills and the author's opinions are held in check beautifully when you consider the inflammatory nature of the subject matter. Mailer also does an admirable job of allowing Gilmore's victims to appear as human beings, not merely as props used by Gilmore to achieve immortality and release. This book has the potential to spark debate on a variety of newsworthy issues, such as prison reform, victim's rights, incarceration vs. education, the death penalty as a deterrent, right to die, etc.. Gilmore's case was remarkable in regard to American Justice as we now know it. Gilmore himself was a complex and fascinating individual with underdeveloped emotional control and virtually no social skills to speak of. He developed into adulthood in legal institutions and was woefully unprepared for life outside prison walls. Mailer does not flinch or miss a single beat. He simply tells the story of Gary Gilmore and the story of the lives touched and/or destroyed by Gilmore. He does not take any obvious liberties to fit the story to match his own beliefs. I was not a Mailer fan until I read this book. It is one of the five best books I have ever had the priveldge of reading. The movie of the same title did Gilmore a serious injustice. Yes, he was certainly a thief and a murderer, there's no overlooking that, but he was also an extremely intelligent and artistic man. I also recommend reading Shot In The Heart, by Mikal Gilmore(Gary's younger brother). It is a beautifully written book that fills in a lot of blanks and generally helps to complete the Gilmore story.
Rating:
Summary: True crime classic
Review: One of my all-time favorite true crime books, "The Executioner's Song" is a quick read despite its length, though it slows in the second half. It's an extraordinary achievement, a haunting, understated, detailed, thorough, outstanding piece of journalism accomplished with remarkable speed, with the added interest of Lawrence Schiller's appearance (Schiller, of course, goes on from helping with "Song" to his own outstanding career, e.g. "Perfect Town ...") What remains with me the most a couple of years after reading "Song" is the atmosphere surrounding Gilmore's execution, the level of detail throughout & the sense of place. Includes a helpful afterword on Mailer's techniques. Gilmore, incidentally, was a sociopath, regardless of whatever sympathy he or Mailer might engender. It's symptomatic of sociopaths that they're often likeable (though I don't find Gilmore so), that's part of the deal, the chameleon nature. Gilmore wasn't destroyed by drugs or a generally good guy who had bad moments, he was a sociopath. Mailer's portrayal of the victims is weak, but the victim (for literary purposes) almost always isn't as interesting as the killer .... A must-read for true crime fans.
Rating:
Summary: Five Stars for Western Voices, Three for Eastern
Review: The first five-hundred pages were, at least, the equal of "In Cold Blood," the second half drug a little, but the ending was fantastic. I read an older paperback version and longed for an afterword about Nicole, and what became of her. I was fascinated by the so called "white trash Romeo & Juliet" part of the book, and found Gilmore familiar, as despicable as he is. I can only attribute that success to Mailer and his devotion to tell the whole story. Though it lacks the brevity of "In Cold Blood," it is equally chilling, and rewarding in the experience and horrifying memories it gives the reader.
Rating:
Summary: Fascinating true crime account
Review: This huge book tells the story of the final months of Gary Gilmore in immense and gripping detail. Gilmore was the first person to be executed in the United States after the reinstatement of the death penalty in the 1970s. Norman Mailer immerses us deeply in Gilmore and his world. The first part of the book covers his time outside prison on parole, his intense affair with Nicole Baker, and his inability to cope responsibly with freedom, culminating in the motiveless killings that put him back in prison. The second half covers Gilmore's time in prison, his battle to be executed, and the media frenzy that surrounded it. Mailer introduces us to scores of individuals who played parts both large and small in Gilmore's life, demonstrating that everyone has an interesting story if you look closely enough. This is an uncommonly rich and textured work that rewards the perseverance required to finish it. Unlike many other reviewers, I did not find the detail to be extraneous nor Mailer's writing style to be overblown or arrogant. Rather, I was impressed at how restrained and objective it was.
Rating: 
Summary: Long Journey, but Worth it in the End
Review: This is an excellent true crime book, despite Mailer's verbosity and arrogant style. Gary Gilmore--a bright man who spent half his life in jail and eventually murdered two men in cold blood while on parole before being given a death sentance--is a fascinating example of a modern criminal. His life before his final crime and then his court battles to speed up his execution is an interesting case study and since this book is written like an extended newspaper article, it provides great insight. It also contains terrific accounts of the other tragic characters in Gilmore's life (his mother, father and girlfriend). The big fault of this book, of course, is its overwhelming length. There is no reason it needed to be over 1000 pages and after finishing it I was more than ready for it to be over. There is enough drama and action to keep the narrative flowing and to keep readers interested, but it isn't a book you can sit down and read in an afternoon, you will have to devote serious time and energy to finish it. I think the effort is worth it, but for people who do not want to commit to such an endeavor, do not read this book and buy the book by Mikal Gilmore (Gary's younger brother) or avoid Gilmore all together and buy In Cold Blood, which is a must read book and the best true crime I've ever read.
Rating: 
Summary: A portrait of the Average Joe running amok...
Review: This novel seems to have received mixed reviews from Mailer fans. On the one hand, it's a 1000+ page book written in an unpoetic, detached style; but it's also a story about an incredibly tragic, weak man whose one redeeming act was his realization that he deserved to die. Perhaps this book will make you hate Gary Gilmore, maybe make you pity him, but any reader can see after reading this book that this murderer was jarringly close to being a regular guy. Sure, there's the whole killing thing... but otherwise one must admit to oneself that the line between a cold-blooded murderer and everybody else is a little blurry. As for Mailer's style, the subject of the book facilitates a cool, objective narration; the surgeon-like detail, precision and sterility serve as sort of an ironic commentary on Gilmore's life. It was nowhere as tedious, however, as some other "true-life crime" books I've read where every other sentence is dedicated to meaningless facts; how many centimeters deep a stab wound was, and so forth. Anyway, if you can sit through a book for several weeks, this one is worth it.
Rating:
Summary: Gary Gilmore: The Criminal As Celebrity
Review: Was I blown away by this book? No. But I read it to the end, and given that the version I read clocks in at over a thousand pages, it's a testament to the "readability" of this book. I have never read anything by Mailer before, largely because I had an enduring vision of Mailer-the-pompous-celebrity, and that image turned me off. As a 27 year old I am too old to remember a time when Mailer was anything other then a "literary lion". I decided to read "Executioner's Song" because of it's prominent role in Matthew Barney's "Cremaster Cycle". In Cremaster II, Barney assumes the role of Gilmore and Mailer himself plays the role of Harry Houdini, who might be Gary's grandfather (the father of Gilmore's father, Frank Gilmore). "Shot Through the Heart" by Mikal Gilmore (Gary's younger brother" was a book I read back in college, so before picking up Executioner's Song, I already had a thorough familarity with the outlines of the Gilmore story. The plot is easy enough to summarize: Career criminal gets out of prison after thirteen year sentence, falls in love, breaks up with girlfriend, commits a pair of senseless murders and then refuses to appeal, becoming the first man executed in America in over a decade. Over four hundred pages of the book deal with the story from the perspective of Lawrence Schiller, a Hollywood Impressario who decided to lock up the rights to Gilmore's story. As I waded through the hundred's of pages dealing with Schiller's struggles, I dealt with a variety of emotions. At first, I was angry, but by the end of the book, I realized that the detailed exploration of the exploitation of Gary Gilmore is really at the heart of this book. Mailer really focuses the book on the effect that Gilmore's decision to force the hand of the state has on those around him. As a criminal defense attorney, I was tickled by the ACLU types who tried to halt the execution without the permission of Gilmore. Truly, that was a time when America as a culture had not routinized the taking of human life. I found the most compelling writing to be contained in the first five hundred pages, as Gilmore is realized from prison and attempts to constuct a life. His description's of a man out of balance bring into question the efficacy of volition in the face of destiny. The more one reads Gilmore's own thoughts, the more it becomes clear that he was destined to spend his life in prison. That he transcended prison and gained lasting immortality by making the choice to die at the hand of the state is something that any casual fan of American pop-culture should consider at length. At times, Mailer draws direct parallels between Gilmore and celebrity culture, such as when Gilmore, the night before his execution, greets Johnny Cash with the question, "Is this the real Johnny Cash?" This is a resonance that is also at the heart of Barney's Cremaster Cycle. In the words of critic Nancy Spector, the story of Gary Gilmore represents, "The emancipatory potential of moving backward in order to escape one's destiny." (Spector, Only the Perverse Fantasy Can Still Save Us, in the Cremaster Cycle, p. 36)
Rating:
Summary: Gary Gilmore: The Criminal As Celebrity
Review: Was I blown away by this book? No. But I read it to the end, and given that the version I read clocks in at over a thousand pages, it's a testament to the "readability" of this book. I have never read anything by Mailer before, largely because I had an enduring vision of Mailer-the-pompous-celebrity, and that image turned me off. As a 27 year old I am too old to remember a time when Mailer was anything other then a "literary lion". I decided to read "Executioner's Song" because of it's prominent role in Matthew Barney's "Cremaster Cycle". In Cremaster II, Barney assumes the role of Gilmore and Mailer himself plays the role of Harry Houdini, who might be Gary's grandfather (the father of Gilmore's father, Frank Gilmore). "Shot Through the Heart" by Mikal Gilmore (Gary's younger brother" was a book I read back in college, so before picking up Executioner's Song, I already had a thorough familarity with the outlines of the Gilmore story. The plot is easy enough to summarize: Career criminal gets out of prison after thirteen year sentence, falls in love, breaks up with girlfriend, commits a pair of senseless murders and then refuses to appeal, becoming the first man executed in America in over a decade. Over four hundred pages of the book deal with the story from the perspective of Lawrence Schiller, a Hollywood Impressario who decided to lock up the rights to Gilmore's story. As I waded through the hundred's of pages dealing with Schiller's struggles, I dealt with a variety of emotions. At first, I was angry, but by the end of the book, I realized that the detailed exploration of the exploitation of Gary Gilmore is really at the heart of this book. Mailer really focuses the book on the effect that Gilmore's decision to force the hand of the state has on those around him. As a criminal defense attorney, I was tickled by the ACLU types who tried to halt the execution without the permission of Gilmore. Truly, that was a time when America as a culture had not routinized the taking of human life. I found the most compelling writing to be contained in the first five hundred pages, as Gilmore is realized from prison and attempts to constuct a life. His description's of a man out of balance bring into question the efficacy of volition in the face of destiny. The more one reads Gilmore's own thoughts, the more it becomes clear that he was destined to spend his life in prison. That he transcended prison and gained lasting immortality by making the choice to die at the hand of the state is something that any casual fan of American pop-culture should consider at length. At times, Mailer draws direct parallels between Gilmore and celebrity culture, such as when Gilmore, the night before his execution, greets Johnny Cash with the question, "Is this the real Johnny Cash?" This is a resonance that is also at the heart of Barney's Cremaster Cycle. In the words of critic Nancy Spector, the story of Gary Gilmore represents, "The emancipatory potential of moving backward in order to escape one's destiny." (Spector, Only the Perverse Fantasy Can Still Save Us, in the Cremaster Cycle, p. 36)
Rating:
Summary: Did anyone else notice all the typos?
Review: Yes, it was an important event in our nation's history. No one would dispute that, but Mailer's account follows all the wrong roads. Without a better understanding of who Gilmore is and why it's so important for him to assert control over his life, I ended up not caring an awful lot about a guy who didn't seem to care much about anyone but himself.
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