Norman Mailer by J. Michael Lennon

Author:J. Michael Lennon
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Simon & Schuster

ELEVEN

DEATH WISHES: GILMORE AND ABBOTT

Gary Gilmore was in the news at the end of 1976. The Utah double murderer had not merely acquiesced in his death sentence. Speaking to the judge at a subsequent hearing, he said, “You sentenced me to die. Unless it’s a joke or something, I want to go ahead and do it.” His determination created consternation among those opposed to capital punishment, and cultish fascination among his admirers. He received over forty thousand letters during his final months, and his face was everywhere, including the cover of Newsweek, under the caption “Death Wish.” Mailer, like half the nation, was following the story. He recalled being struck by how handsome Gilmore was in photographs. “It was an arresting face, particularly that one shot, the famous one, of the long face,” he said. Legal maneuvers followed for months, and Gilmore tried twice to commit suicide. One of these attempts led to a memorable radio report: “Dr. L. Grant Christensen said Gilmore can leave the hospital and return to Death Row if he continues to improve.” His first suicide attempt was in tandem with that of a young woman, Nicole Baker Barrett. “Nicole and I have known and loved each other for thousands of years,” Gilmore said. She was young, beautiful, and devoted to him. Mailer found the story becoming more engrossing.

On the day of Gilmore’s execution, January 17, Mailer saw Larry Schiller on the evening news. “I could see he was going through something,” Mailer said. Two days later, Molly Cook told him that Schiller had called and “wants you to do some writing for him.” Schiller had already done interviews with many of those involved, including over thirty hours with Gilmore, to whom he paid $60,000 for exclusive access. In February, he sent Mailer an interview that he and Barry Farrell had done with Gilmore. It appeared in Playboy and was the longest interview that magazine had ever published. Mailer thought it might “be the best single interview of its sort I’ve ever read.” On March 4, he and Schiller signed a contract with Warner Books for their third collaboration. It called for eighty thousand words on “the life and death of Gary Gilmore,” to be submitted no later than March 1978.

The $500,000 advance for a paperback edition, divided 50-50 with Mailer, was negotiated by Schiller with Howard Kaminsky, editor in chief at Warner Books, which had published the paperback edition of Marilyn. This money, coupled with the proceeds from the pending sale of the lower floors of 142 Columbia Heights, gave Mailer the wherewithal to take another sabbatical from the Egyptian novel. He made plans to go to Utah. Little, Brown could not have been pleased about this turn of events, not given the amount of money the firm had invested in Ancient Evenings. The lurid media frenzy that had surrounded Gilmore—his execution was featured on the front page of the National Enquirer—did little to convince Arthur H. Thornhill, Little, Brown’s president, of the story’s literary merits, and at first the firm turned it down.

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