The Executioner's Song

The Executioner's Song (1979) is a true-crime novel by the American author Norman Mailer. The book tells the real-life story of Gary Gilmore who, after murdering a gas station attendant and a motel manager over the course of two days, became the first prisoner to be executed in the United States since the Supreme Court reinstated the death penalty earlier that year. Though the book is structured as a novel, its content is based on extensive interviews with individuals connected to the crime. In 1980, The Executioner's Song won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.

In April of 1976, Gary Gilmore is released on parole from the Marion State Penitentiary in Illinois. He is thirty-five years old. Mailer begins his story here but then travels back to describe Gilmore's time at the Oregon State Penitentiary, where he was sent fourteen years earlier after being convicted of armed robbery and assault. Gilmore is described as a particularly aggressive prisoner, igniting prison riots and being forced to take the drug Prolixin, an antipsychotic medicine designed to calm his aggression. Some of Mailer's interview subjects propose that his long-term use of Prolixin was a contributing factor in his later murderous behavior. Nevertheless, it is clear from Gilmore's life story that his propensity for violence long predates his time at Oregon State Penitentiary.

Upon his release from Marion State Penitentiary, Gilmore is sent to Provo, Utah to live with his cousin, Brenda Nicol, who is chosen to serve as his sponsor. Brenda's father, Vern, hires Gilmore as an assistant at his shoe repair shop. Vern also allows Gilmore to live with him and his wife, Ida, at their house. For perhaps the first time in his adult life, Gilmore seems to make an earnest effort at making an honest living and avoiding the criminal element. Nevertheless, after a short period of hard work, Gilmore quickly becomes disillusioned and angry at his inability to become a master cobbler overnight. Before long, Gilmore begins to cope with his anger by drinking heavily. More often than not, he either shoplifts his booze or steals money from Vern to pay for it. Though Vern is too kind and passive to confront Gilmore himself, the more forceful Brenda pressures Gilmore to find a new boss and a new place to stay.



Not long after, Gilmore obtains employment at an insulation company. The boss there is equally kind, setting Gilmore up with new digs and a down payment for a Mustang. Gilmore's Mustang attracts the attention of Nicole Barrett Baker, a thrice-married twenty-year-old widow with two children and a Mustang exactly like Gilmore's. Their relationship is highly passionate but incredibly toxic. When they aren't having intense, animalistic sex, they fight violently and incessantly. One day, Gilmore escapes on a drinking binge that culminates in Idaho where he is arrested for assaulting a homosexual man and stealing his car. Here, Mailer discusses the exceedingly lax attitude of Gilmore's parole officer, Mont Court. Overly trusting and thoroughly swindled by Gilmore's opportunistically winning personality, Court arranges for the Idaho authorities to release Gilmore. Mailer argues convincingly that had Court not done this, Gilmore's eventual murder victims would still be alive.

Now dissatisfied with his Mustang, Gilmore sets his eyes on a white pickup truck. He convinces its owner to give him the truck on the condition that he procures a $400 within a week. To score the cash, Gilmore decides to rob an all-night gas station at gunpoint. Bewilderingly, he brings along Nicole's sister, April, who at twelve years old is already an acid burnout. In fact, it barely registers to April when Gilmore shoots and kills the gas station attendant, Max Jenson, execution-style. Hardly twenty-four hours later, Gilmore robs the City Center Motel, killing its manager Bennie Bushnell in the process. While fleeing the scene, Gilmore accidentally shoots himself in the hand, drawing the attention of a nearby gas station attendant who witnesses Gilmore enter his truck. The attendant writes down the license plate number and within hours, following an additional tip from Brenda, the cops apprehend Gilmore and arrest him without further violence. This all goes down in late July of 1976, just three months after Gilmore's release from Marion State Penitentiary.

After a trial lasting only two days, Gilmore is convicted and sentenced to death, becoming the first prisoner sentenced to capital punishment since an informal 1967 nationwide moratorium on the process. Rather than appeal the ruling, Gilmore accepts his punishment, preferring to die quickly and with dignity, rather than after a prolonged delay. Despite efforts by the ACLU, the NAACP, Gilmore's mother, and even various Utah state officials—none of whom wanted to represent the first state to kill a prisoner since the moratorium—Gilmore is executed on January 17, 1977, by firing squad at 8:07 a.m. The book ends with Gary's final act of lawlessness, committed from beyond the grave: According to his wishes, Gary's attorneys spread their client's ashes from an airplane flying high above Spanish Fork, an act that is illegal in the state of Utah.



According to the London Review of Books, The Executioner's Song is "a work of genius in its range, depth, and restraint."