I’d like to make my review of the last book short: I’ve given up on it. But I can’t help myself. I don’t even know what The Executioner’s Song is doing in the Pulitzer prize for fiction category. It doesn’t belong there. It’s a true-to-life, near-factual account, written in the form of a novel but filled word-for-word with letters and transcripts of actual events.
And really, it’s the letters that have become a problem for me. They’re overwhelmingly pornographic and violent. I can’t fathom why Mailer felt it necessary to include them to the extent he did. I’m also a bit at a loss at the length of the book. Gilmore is convicted and sentenced to death quite a bit shy of the book’s halfway point. I’m assuming the rest of the story leads us to his desire to be executed and all of the drama that goes into it, but I’ll never find out.
I even tried getting the audio version, thinking that I could just listen to the book at 1.2x speed and plow through it that way. But hearing someone read the content of the letters is even worse than reading them yourself. At least when you’re reading, you can skim right through them; but in listening, they sound even more sick, perverted, and obsessed with crude sex than one could imagine.
So I’ve abandoned the attempt, and I can’t recommend it in the slightest. It’s not just a “true crime” novel. It’s a pile of trash. And I’d say that even if I weren’t a Christian. So much of it seemed gratuitous and unnecessary. I still can’t figure out how he’s gonna fill the last 600 pages or so (I wish I had the hard copy so I could thumb through it and see how many transcripts and letters are included), but in the end, I just can’t bring myself to care enough to bother. Nor will I ever. I’ve got better things to do with my life at this point.
So even though I didn’t finish it, it goes to a permanent position at the bottom of my list.
But things are looking up (how could they not?). I’ve found a paperback of a book that caught my attention a while back: Jennifer Egan’s A Visit from the Good Squad. And the even better thing is this: after Mailer’s piece of garbage, I’m really looking forward to this one.
Stay tuned.
