by Norman Mailer
Three years after the phantasmagorical execution of Gary Mark Gilmore, Mailer has plodded out this eerie account of the artist-killer's last year. Using atypically sparse, linear prose, Mailer traces Gilmore's life starting with his parole in April 1976 from an Illinois penitentiary after serving 12 years on an assault-robbery conviction. He recounts the two murders Gilmore committed, his capture, trial and death by firing squad at Utah's State Prison. The book also examines the women who supported Gilmore, especially Nicole Barrett, a fetching, thrice-divorced 19-year-old who shared his web of insanity in a bizarre love story. The shortcoming of the book is its length—1,056 pages—and the no-neurosis-unturned detail. The second part, "Eastern Voices" (about the execution as a media event), while sociologically worthy, also begs for editing. Mailer leaves no question unasked, no letter unread, no thought unexpressed, yet Gilmore remains an enigma—a poet capable of sensitive love and cold-blooded murder. To his credit, Mailer does not suggest any explanation, except, perhaps, the most chilling one: There isn't any. (Little, Brown, $16.95)
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