Mikal Gilmore was kind enough to make available his piece in Rolling Stone, March Io, 1977, about his visits with his brother, and Sam Smith allowed a tour of his prison.
Finally, a most special word of appreciation must be offered to Colleen Jensen and Debbie Bushnell for consenting to give a portrait of their husbands, and thereby obliging themselves to relive the most shattering and excruciating hours of their existence. No interviews were more painful for subject and interviewers both, and none were more valuable to the balance of this book.
For assistance in research and typing, thanks are due to Janet Barkas, Dean Brooks, Sister Bernadette Ann, Clayton Brough, Murray L. Calvert, Molly Malone Cook, Peter Frawley, Kathleen Garrity, Lenny Hat, Jere Herzenberg, Diana Broede Hess, Susan Levin,
I05
AN AFTERWORDp>
Francis Lorsen, Mary Oliver, Donna Pode, Dave Schwendiman, Martha Thomases, and o Mike Mattil who did a gargantuan job of styling with considerable speed and skill.
To those who were asked to read and comment on this manu script: Norris Church, Bernard Farbar, Carol Goodson, Robert Lucid, Scott Meredith, Stephanie Schiller, and John T. Williams: my con tinuing indebtedness. I would add here the name of Judith McNally, who not only read and commented on this manuscript, but did ten years of work in one as my secretary, interviewer, research assistant, and critical reader. This work could not have been written in fifteen months without her.
Last, to the memory of that good, fine, and devoted man of litera ture, Lamed G. Bradford of Little, Brown, who passed away on May i, i979. He was my editor for ten years, and he would have enjoyed the publication of this work.
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“Norman Mailer is a man of wisdom and perception who tells a good story powerfully and well.” —The New Yorker
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With this extraordinary novel, which was written during the height of McCarthyism, Norman Mailer proved his audacity by exploring the failed promise and continuing allure of socialism in a narrative that is at once a sinuous thriller and an intellectual slugfest.
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In his blistering 1950s classic, Norman Mailer trains his unforgiving eye on a privileged oasis called Desert D’Or, where the aristocrats of Hollywood make their deals and satisfy a variety of illicit desires. As Mailer traces the interlacing love affairs of an ex-Air Force pilot, a radiant starlet, a brilliant director, and a self-destructive young woman, he reimagines the Hollywood novel as a sexual and moral proving ground.
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THE FIGHT
This is the account of the 1975 “rumble in the jungle” between Muhammad All and George Foreman—two of boxing’s most outsized talents and monumental egos—that took place in Za’ire, Africa. Observing this epic battle was Norman Mailer, whose sensitivity to the fight’s cultural and racial nuances make this book a classic of the literature of sport.
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In the summer of 1976 Gary Mark Gilmore, a helplessly violent ex-con who had spent half his life in prison, robbed two men. Then he shot them in cold blood.He was tried, convicted, and sent to Death Row, where he might have languished for the rest of his years. But Gary Gilmore wanted to die—and was willing to fight for it the way other men fight to stay alive.
In this monumental work of journalism, our most heroically ambitious writer tells Gilmore’s story and the stories of the men and women caught in his procession toward the firing squad. With steely compassion and a restraint that evokes the parched landscapes and stern theology of Gilmore’s Utah, Norman Mailer travels down the wrong side of the tracks and taps the source of American loneliness and violence. The Executioner’s Gone is a towering achievement, impossible to put down, impossible to forget.
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