The Executioner's Song is a 1979 novel by Norman Mailer.
The story takes place in 1976 and 1977. Although classified as a novel and written in a literary style, it is actually a true crime story, about the life and death of Gary Gilmore
. As the book begins, 35-year-old Gilmore has just been released from prison, where he has spent most of his adult life. He has been given parole thanks to the sponsorship of Brenda Nicol, a distant cousin who remembers Gary fondly. Gary gets some work, first in his uncle's shoe repair shop and then for a friend's insulation business, but he struggles to adjust to life on the outside. He starts performing poorly at work, while acting aggressive, getting into fights, and committing minor crimes.
Enter Nicole Baker, a 19-year-old woman who has already been married twice and had two children. Despite their difference in age they start a torrid love affair. But Gary continues to act violent, and soon, he has committed two murders. He's convicted of murder and sent to death row—where he asks to be executed immediately.
In 1981 the book was adopted into a TV movie that provided Star Making Roles for both Tommy Lee Jones (Gilmore) and Rosanna Arquette (Nicole).
Tropes:
- Age-Gap Romance: Gary and Nicole fall in love despite a 16-year-gap in their ages. Brenda observes that, due to Gary's long time in prison, he and Nicole are basically the same emotional age.
- The Alleged Car: Gary gets an old broken-down Mustang that keeps failing to start. After the car stalls one time too many he smashes the windshield, trades it in for a truck—and commits two robbery-murders to be able to afford the truck.
- Amazing Freaking Grace: At Gary's specific request "Amazing Grace" is sung at his funeral.
- Bestiality Is Depraved: Nicole thinks she's found a boyfriend, a nice man named John who is willing to marry her despite the fact that she's already been married twice and has two children. John takes her to see his parents in Mississippi—and one night, on the family farm, she sees John receiving fellatio from a calf. She can't look at him the same way again, he turns into an abusive brute, and soon enough she's back in Utah.
- Book Ends: The book begins and ends with a short poem, an "old prison rhyme" that the afterword confesses was actually written by Norman Mailer.
- Brig Ball Bouncing: Nicole's ex-husband Barrett was once confined to "the nuthouse" for a week. He balled up his socks and bounced them against the wall of the cell and caught them.
- Call-Back: Gary tells a pretty mean story about a prisoner named Fungoo who asked Gary to give him a neck tattoo of a snake; Gary instead gave him a tattoo of a penis. Hundreds of pages later, when Gary's giving out the money he's getting for his life story, he asks Brenda's husband Vern to send $1000 to Fungoo.
- Death Row: When Gary is put on death watch he gets three cells at Utah State Prison to himself. Gary finds this amusing.
- Death Seeker: Gary could have lived on Death Row for many years while his appeals played out, but he insists on having his execution take place as soon as possible. As a consequence he becomes the first person in the United States executed in nearly ten years, following an all-too-brief death penalty ban.
- Distant Finale: A brief epilogue visits some characters a year after the murders. It's quite sad: Nicole is ridden with guilt after finally having sex with another man, Uncle Vern is dealing with both major health issues and lawsuits, and Bessie Gilmore's knees have gotten so bad that she no longer leaves her trailer.
- Dogged Nice Guy: For a given variety of "nice", since Barrett was a drug user and drug dealer who once tried to pimp Nicole out. But he has decided to wait for her as she cycles through bad boyfriends, like the violent ex-con Gary Gilmore.
- This isn't true later, though, when Barrett comes over and beats Nicole up because he hears that she's been writing letters to Gary in prison.
- Doorstopper: A thousand-page book, with many passages that don't actually deal directly with Gary Gilmore. The prison psychiatrist who interviews Gary gets a few pages recounting his youth as a rambunctious college student. Later, long passages follow Lawrence Schiller, the writer/producer who is trying to get the rights to Gary Gilmore's story so he can make a TV movie.
- Face Death with Dignity: Gary is determined to do it. The priest who attended his execution says that Gary wanted to "die with dignity" and the priest believes that he did.
- Flashback:
- After the story starts with Gary getting out of jail and moving in with his cousin, Gary eventually meets Nicole. The next part is a long flashback that recounts Nicole's grim, sad life (sexually abused as a child, no education, two marriages and two babies before she's 19).
- A shorter flashback, after Gary is arrested for murder, focuses on his mother Bessie and her life and how she met Gary's father, who was an itinerant con artist.
- A woman named Grace finds out about her friend Bessie's son Gary being convicted of murder and sentenced to death. This starts a flashback chapter about Gary's childhood and how going to reform school made him much worse.
- Flipping the Bird: Gary flips off the paparazzi that are snapping photos of him as he's taken out of the hospital following a suicide attempt.
- Funetik Aksent: A chapter titled "Geelmore and Geebs" is about how Gilmore and his cellmate, a guy named Gibbs, mock the jailer, a Hispanic fellow named Luis. Luis says stuff like "You zon of a beetch, Geelmore."
- Good Girls Avoid Abortion: Nicole is a teen mother who doesn't particularly like it, who feels like she's been robbed of a life of her own. She still decides she can't abort her second baby.
- Had to Come to Prison to Be a Crook: Gary's first stint in reform school for stealing cars as a teenager did the exact opposite of reforming him, instead making him much harder and more violent.
- Hidden Depths: Gary Gilmore is a criminal who has spent most of his life in jail and eventually goes to Death Row. He is also a talented artist and well-read, and can quote poetry by Shelley.
- Jabba Table Manners: Brenda is irritated by how poor Gary's table manners are. Gary explains that in jail you had to wolf your food down in fifteen minutes, and he can't get used to sitting down and having a nice leisurely meal.
- Just Got Out of Jail: Gary faces all the usual problems of people getting out of prison, like a lack of education (even though he's actually quite bright) or job skills. He's got some family and friends willing to provide him with a place to stay and work, but his own tendency to violence and lack of impulse control leads to tragedy.
- The Loins Sleep Tonight: Gary can't perform the first time he gets a chance at sex with Nicole, probably because he's too nervous. Later they have a passionate affair. But later than that, Gary's continued beer drinking starts to inhibit his ability to get it up, stressing their relationship.
- Monster Fangirl: Shortly after his arrest for murder, Gary writes Nicole and tells her about a sex letter he got from a strange woman. He continues to get fan letters from women as his case becomes a huge news story.
- The Nothing After Death: Discussed Trope, as Gary writes in a letter to Nicole that he's considered the possibility of "nothing" after death but just can't believe it.
- Promiscuity After Rape: When Nicole was a child of 11 she was sexually abused by "Uncle" Lee, a friend of her father's who stayed with the family. Since then she has been extremely promiscuous, and she wonders if that's the reason why.
- The Reveal: Gibbs, the cell mate Gary had for a time when he was on trial for murder, is revealed to be a police informer when he starts making calls offering to sell his story. Gary is very upset when he finds this out, as he thought Gibbs was his friend and had already sent him a $2000 check. (It turns out that Gibbs was placed in the cell next to Gary in order to keep him away from other inmates in gen pop.)
- Shameless Fanservice Girl: Gary, who was in jail for a long time, can't get enough of seeing Nicole naked and she is happy to oblige. One scene has the two of them driving through town, her naked below the waist and with her heels propped up on the dashboard, not caring a bit when a trucker in his cab looks right at her.
- Shameful Strip: Jerry Scott the prison guard makes Gary strip after Gary arrives at Utah State Prison following his murder convction. Gary is angry.
- Shout-Out: A friend of Gary's mother taught In Cold Blood in a creative writing class. In Cold Blood, of course, is the Ur-Example of the literary True Crime narrative, with The Executioner's Song being the second most famous example.
- Sweetie Graffiti: Gary carves "GARY LOVES NICOLE" into a tree. Later she goes back and carves "NICOLE LOVES GARY" into the same tree and he's impressed that she did it better than he did.
- A Threesome Is Hot: For a while, Gary and Nicole are having threesomes with a girl named Rosebeth. Nicole loves it and finds it very hot, but the reader probably won't, since Rosebeth is under age.
- Window Love: Gary tells his friend Vern that a prison handshake is putting your hands up against the glass. He starts doing it with all his visitors, after he has been placed in maximum security after a suicide attempt.
- Would Hit a Girl: The long section about Nicole's backstory recounts how the men in her life have hit her and abused her. Gary starts to hit her too, as part of his natural tendency towards violence.
