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4 Crim. Just. J. 643 (1980-1981)
Book Reviews

handle is hein.journals/tjeflr4 and id is 651 raw text is: BOOK REVIEW THE EXECUTIONER'S SONG, by Norman Mailer, Boston, Massachusetts: Brown Little & Company, 1979. Pp. 1,049. $14.95. Reviewed by Martin Brounstein* In April of 1976, Gary Gilmore was released from the United States Penitentiary at Marion, Illinois. Barely forty years old, Gil- more had spent twenty-two assorted years of his life in prison. Nine and one-half months later, he was executed by a firing squad in Utah State Prison at Point of the Mountain, Utah. Gilmore's execution had been the first judicially sanctioned death penalty in the United States in ten years. Gilmore had sought neither appeal nor pity after his conviction. His last public words were Let's do it. Norman Mailer has created perhaps his most powerful novel to date and has done so by the use of extensive interviews and flat journalistic technique in reporting the direct and indirect conse- quences of the events leading up to the deaths of a gas station attendant, a hotel clerk, and Gary Gilmore. The book is physically categorized into two segments entitled Western Voices and Eastern Voices. Western Voices sets a tone of intertwining histories, personal trauma and the offset of human individuality with its antithetical environment. Setting the tone for Western Voices is the opening third person narrative of Gilmore's cousin Brenda, who is anxiously awaiting the arrival of her newly released and tall cousin Gary from an Illinois prison. Brenda and her husband picking up Gary at the airport and being confronted with the nonthreatening posture of a distant yet close relative in black plastic shoes. Gary working at his uncle Vern's shoe shop, Gary drinking a lot of beer, Gary procuring his own car, and seeking and getting the young and disturbed Nicole. Ni- cole Barrett becomes the bane and cause of Gilmore's conscious thoughts. Nicole Barrett, in Gilmore's total picture, had become * Martin Brounstein is a sole practicioner in San Diego, California. He received his undergraduate degree from San Diego State University, and his Juris Doctorate from Western State University College of Law.

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