THE EXECUTIONER'S SONG

Boston and Toronto: Little, Brown and Company, 1979. First printing. Fine in near fine jacket.. Inscribed first edition of the Pulitzer Prize-winning true crime novel, detailing murder and punishment in the "moneyless side of the modern West" (jacket). THE EXECUTIONER'S SONG is Norman Mailer's best-known work, "a romance of the ordinary," "an arduous, heroic response to this lumpish world" (Kellman). Mailer tells the story of murderer Gary Gilmore, an advocate for his own execution, who manages to finally put himself in front of a firing squad as the first man executed after the Supreme Court reinstated the death penalty in 1976. Painstakingly researched with interviews of Gilmore, his friends and family, police, lawyers, and a host of other people associated with Gilmore and his crimes, Mailer weaves a huge volume of details into a narrative that is dense but not overloaded. His artistry earned THE EXECUTIONER'S SONG the 1979 Pulitzer Prize for fiction, as well as glowing reviews from literary notables Joan Didion, David Lodge, Christopher Ricks, and many others. The most popular work during the author's lifetime, increasingly viewed as the work for which he will be best remembered. 9.25'' x 6.25''. Original blue cloth binding with silver and bronze titles. Original color pictorial dust jacket, unclipped ($16.95), designed by Marge Anderson with photograph by Roger Ward. Yellow endpapers. 1056 pages. Inscribed by Mailer to front flyleaf "To Saul / on the avenue / Cheers / Norman Mailer / Oct '79." Jacket with light foxing to verso. Clean and tight.