nyuuzyou/wikis huggingface dataset:
79.14

Dedication: “To Norris, to John Buffalo, and to Scott Meredith.” Discarded titles: Violence in America, The Saint and the Psychopath, American Virtue. Mailer’s title is taken from his poem of the same title published in 1964 (see 64.18), and then used as the title of chapter 15 of The Fight (75.12). In 80.1 Mailer explains this borrowing and also notes that the “old prison rhyme” that prefaces the book “is an old from my movie Maidstone (71.28) which was just perfect for the book.”
Although scrupulously factual, the book is described on its jacket, and the cover of the later softcover edition, as a “true life novel.” Validating this subtitle, it won the Playboy Writing Award for fiction in 1979 and the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 1980. Mailer is the only writer to win Pulitzers for fiction and nonfiction, the latter for The Armies of the Night (68.8). The Executioner's Song was also nominated for the American Book Award for fiction (1980 as a hardcover, 1981 as a softcover) and the National Book Critics Circle Award for fiction in 1979.
Mailer, Philip Roth, William Styron and many other writers withdrew their books from the American Book Award competitions. See article by Michiko Kakutani, “Mailer, Styron and Roth Shun American Book Awards,” New York Times, 21 March, Sec. C, p. 28. In 1999, it was ranked number 72 on a list of the top 100 works of journalism of the twentieth century by 36 judges under the aegis of New York University’s journalism department. See “Journalism’s Greatest Hits: Two Lists of a Century’s Top Stories,” New York Times, 1 March 1999, Business Section, pp. 1, 13.
Mailer later wrote the screenplay for the film version of 79.14, which was nominated for an Emmy. The four-hour adaptation, staring Tommy Lee Jones and Eli Wallach, appeared on NBC-TV on 28 and 29 November 1982. Rpt: Three sections of the narrative appeared in a different form in Playboy (79.10, 79.19, 79.33). Excerpts from five chapters are reprinted in The Time of Our Time (98.7). See 68.8, 78.4, 1979 entries, 81.5, 82.22, 94.3, and 13.2, 503-22, 528-36.
== Bibliography ==
===Reviews===
* Negative.
* Positive.
* Negative. Johnson apologized for several errors in her review in a letter to the NYRB, 21 February 1980.
* Positive.
* Positive.
* Positive.
* Positive.
* Positive. Rpt: Mailer Review (2008).
* Positive.
* 
* Mixed.
===Essays===
* 
* 
* Rpt: Bloom (2003), Mailer Review (2015).
* 
* 
* 
* 
* Rpt: Bloom (1986).
* 
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79.14a

“A Time of Compromise for Mailer.” Article-interview by Randy Sue Coburn. Washington Star, 18 October, C1. Long piece in which Mailer speaks at length about The Executioner’s Song (79.14) and his relationship to Lawrence Schiller: “The book wouldn’t have been as large if Schiller hadn’t engaged my competitive instinct. He was almost like a line coach. I found myself feeling, ‘I’ll be damned if that fat bastard will work harder than me.’ ”
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79.15

“Taking the Measure of Mailer.” Article-interview by Wayne Warga. Los Angeles Times, 25 October, Sec. 4, pp. 30, 33. On the book tour for 79.14, Mailer tells Warga, “I realized that it was what I’d been looking to do ever since I wrote The Naked and the Dead.48.2 I wanted to do an immense panoramic novel with a strong narrative thread to it, a sort of collective novel of America.”
===Note===
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79.16

“Author Calls Biography a ‘Risk.’” Article by Associated Press writer. (Albany, Ore.) Democrat-Herald, 26 October. Report on Mailer’s 25 October speech at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City on 79.14. Mailer said his intention was not to glorify Gilmore but to inspire “a sense of awe about the complexity of human nature.” Longer versions of this AP story appeared in the following newspapers: (Greeley, Colo.) Tribune (27 October); (Billings, Mont.) Gazette (28 October); (Provo, Utah) Herald (28 October); (Watertown, S.D.) Public Opinion (29 October). See 79.18.
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79.17

“Is New Mailer Book Fiction, in Fact?” Article-interview by Tony Schwartz. New York Times, 26 October, Sec. C, p. 24. Mailer, Bill Guthrie of Little, Brown, Jason Epstein of Random House, Townsend Hoopes of the Association of American Publishers and John W. Aldridge of the University of Michigan discuss the merits of calling 79.14 a “true life novel.” Mailer says, “To me, nonfiction provides answers and novels illumine questions. I think my book does the latter.” One of Mailer’s many reflections on fiction/nonfiction. See 80.4.
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79.18

“Mailer Speaks on Moral Nature.” Article by Heather Sprake. Daily Utah Chronicle, 26 October, 1. Another report on Mailer’s speech at the University of Utah. He says that he drew 79.14 from “15,000 pages of interview transcripts and court records.” See 79.16.
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79.19

“The Executioner’s Song.” Playboy, November, 136–139, 170, 193–194, 264, 266–270, 272, 274, 276–2278, 280, 282, 284, 288. Nonfiction narrative on Gary Gilmore. Illustrated by Marshall Arisman. Rpt: Appearing at the same time or shortly after the first edition of The Executioner’s Song (79.14), this excerpt is a compressed version of chapters 9–18. Second of three installments.
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79.2

“Mailer: Poor Manager.” Article by Tom Sullivan and Harold Banks. Boston Herald-American, 25 January, 1, 5. Report on Mailer’s appearance in Probate Court, Barnstable, Mass., in connection with his divorce from Beverly Bentley, focusing on his financial affairs: “My talent is to make money, not manage it.” See 78.4, 78.5, 79.3, 79.5, 79.8, 80.13.
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79.20

Letter to the editor. The Harvard Advocate 103, nos. 1 and 2, November. Robert Lowell commemorative issue. Mailer’s letter, which precedes his portrait of Lowell from The Armies of the Night (68.8), notes that he wrote about him in that book “out of a superficial knowledge and from a tangent, and so was seeing facets of him they [close friends] had long forgotten about.”
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79.20a

“ ‘Genius’ Writes Gilmore Book.” Article by Richard Barnum-Reece. (Ogden, IT) Standard Examiner, 7 November. Speaking to an audience of 2,000 college students in Salt Lake City, Mailer said, “I believe that even a punk like Gilmore has a piece of God’s substance. He contains a portion of that profoundly mysterious impulse.”
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79.21

“Private Lives.” Article by John Leonard. New York Times, 7 November, Sec. C, p. 14. Humorous article chronicling Leonard’s relations with Mailer including Mailer’s comments on Leonard’s review of his book of poems, Deaths for the Ladies (and Other Disasters) (62.3).
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79.22

“Intimations of Violence.” Article-interview by Tom Davies. (London) Observer, 11 November, 51. Mailer is interviewed in New York just prior to his promotional trip to England for 79.14. He talks about 79.14, and comments on Ernest Hemingway: “I really hated him when he killed himself. It was like your own father killing himself.”
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79.23

“Mailer Sings of a Killer.” Article-interview by David Spark. (Darlington, Durham) Northern Echo, 13 November. On the book tour in England for 79.14, Mailer tells Spark in this brief piece that “ideas are in the book only as people embody them. There are no ideas of my own in the book.”
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79.25

“Tamed—by Four Wives and Two Lovers.” Article-interview by Peter Grosvenor. (London) Daily Express, 13 November, 9. Focus of this piece is Gilmore’s character as presented in 79.14. Mailer says, “He could be mean, nasty, selfish and violent. And yet he also proved he could truly love a woman, and not every man can say that.”
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79.26

“A Murderer’s Tale: Norman Mailer Talking to Melvyn Bragg.” Interview. Listener, 15 November, 660–662; cover photograph of Mailer. Conducted in early 1979 at Mailer’s Brooklyn Heights apartment, this important interview was broadcast in a greatly truncated form on BBC’s “The South Bank Show” before appearing in the same form in Listener. Contains extended discussion of 79.14, including Gilmore’s suicide attempt, his relations with the media, fan mail, and Mailer’s views on the documentary novel. Rpt: 88.6.
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79.27

“Dick Cavett Looks behind Norman Mailer’s New Face.” Article by Craig Wyatt, Gannett News Service. Tucson Daily Gazette, 16 November. Provides a few quotes from Mailer’s two-part interview with Dick Cavett on PBS, broadcast on 20 and 21 November on 79.14. See 79.29.
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79.29

“Mailer Elated after ‘Song.’” Article by unidentified writer for Newspaper Enterprise Association. (Council Bluffs, Iowa) Nonpareil, 22 November. Another report on Mailer’s two-part interview with Dick Cavett, 20 and 21 November, on 79.14. See 79.27.
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79.3

“Battling Mailers Agree Norman’s a Genius.” Article-interview by Harold Banks. Boston Herald-American, 28 January. Mailer is quoted briefly in another piece on his divorce from Beverly Bentley, who is quoted at length. See 78.4, 78.5, 79.2, 79.5, 79.8, 80.13.
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79.30

“The Books That Made Writers.” Symposium contribution. New York Times, 25 November, 7, 80–82. Twenty-two writers, including Mailer, Gabriel García Márquez, Joyce Carol Oates, Dr. Suess, Tom Wolfe, Malcolm Cowley and P.D. James, answer the question: “What book made you decide to become a writer and why?” Mailer names Studs Lonigan by James T. Farrell, Rafael Sabatini’s Captain Blood, Jeffrey Farnol’s The Amateur Gentleman and the novels of Sir Walter Scott and Thomas Hardy. See 71.32.
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79.31

“Mailer on Gilmore’s Obsession with Life and Death.” Interview by Will Hearst. Los Angeles Herald Examiner, 25 November, Sec. A, p. 1, Sec. B, p. 8. Mailer reflects on 79.14 in this interview.
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79.32

“Crime and Punishment: Gary Gilmore.” Interview by William F. Buckley Jr. and Jeff Greenfield. Firing Line, no. 390, December, 19 pp. Pamphlet consisting of a transcript of this interview, which took place in New York City on 11 October and was broadcast on PBS on 4 November. Mailer’s longest published interview on 79.14 touches on all the major issues surrounding it. Rpt: 88.6.
File:79-32.jpg
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79.33

“The Executioner’s Song.” Playboy, December, 176–177, 192, 196, 386, 370, 372, 374, 376, 382, 384, 386, 388, 390. Nonfiction narrative on Gary Gilmore. Illustrated by Marshall Arisman. Rpt: This third and final installment from The Executioner’s Song (79.14) is a much-compressed and edited version of Gilmore’s execution (chapters 30–40), appearing after 79.14 was published. Playboy gave this and the earlier two excerpts from 79.14 (79.10, 79.19) its annual award for best major work.
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79.33a

“Night of the Norman Conquests.” Article-interview by Paul Slansky. New York, 3 December, 6. Account of ’s exchanges with a line of people at a Manhattan B. Dalton bookstore where he signed copies of The Executioner’s Song (79.14). One woman in the long line said, “This is like going to communion.” Mailer replied, “You must have sinned a lot.” Asked if he was writing another book, he said, “Always. That’s how I make my living.”
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79.33b

“An Interview with Norman Mailer.” By Judy Dempsey. The Literary Review (Edinburgh), 14 December 1979, 17–18. comments on the complexity of Gary Gilmore’s character, and also makes extended remarks about his despair about the political situation when he was writing Barbary Shore (51.1). 
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79.34

“Death, Taxes and Norman Mailer.” Article-interview by Adrianne Blue. Time Out (London), 7-13 December, 14–16; cover photograph of Mailer. Notable mainly for Mailer’s comment on 79.14 that “If I had it to do over again, I’d call it a true crime novel.”
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79.35

“Mailer on the ’70s—Decade of ‘Image, Skin Flicks and Porn. U.S. News and World Report, 10 December, 57–58. Essay. Summary of ’s views on several topics: the 70s, journalism, technology, literary perspective and the blockbuster novel.
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79.35a

BBC Interview by Roy Plomley on his show, Desert Island Discs, 15 December 1979. Recorded during the publicity tour for The Executioner’s Song (79.14), this 40-minute interview spans his career and is framed by ’s desert-island musical selections. Major points—from his early days at Harvard where he discovered the “joy of writing”; his disappointment at having missed serving in Europe during World War II, to his foray into filmmaking; his writing habits and personal life—are all discussed. Mailer acknowledges his appreciation for jazz which begins in his early career and grows in the sixties and through several marriages. Mailer states: “If there is any moment in my life that music became terribly important to me it was with American jazz, the jazz of the ’50s. I use to hang out at a place called The Five Spot. It was absolutely famous in small circles in those days. . . . We used to hear Thelonious Monk there and once in a while, Miles Davis. Once in a great while Sonny Rollins. I chose records of Sonny Stitt and Sonny Rollins, and Miles Davis because it brings back that period to me. It’s a very rich period, a period where everything started in America.” When asked about his desert-island book, Mailer replies: “Labyrinths by Borges. . . . It’s immensely complex and tremendously compressed. There’s enough in that one work, an expression of his best pieces over the years . . . to keep my mind interested for many a year.” See 81.16, 89.5a, and 07.44.
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79.36

“A Special Message to Subscribers from Norman Mailer.” One-page preface to limited, leather-bound edition of The Naked and the Dead. Franklin Center, Pa.: Franklin Library, $75. Signed by Mailer on the 30th anniversary of The Naked and the Dead (48.2). Illustrated by Alan E. Cober. In this 306-word preface, dated 1978, Mailer ponders the confidence of the 25-year old who wrote 48.2. See 98.6.
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79.3a

“At Le Club.” Article-interview by Mary Reinholz. Women’s Wear Daily, 16 February, 5. Brief account of a black tie Valentine’s Day party in Manhattan attended by Alexandra and Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., and Norris, and Mailer’s sister Barbara, who told the reporter that her brother was “very supportive” when she was growing up “short and dumpy” in Brooklyn. On the topic of larger-than-life loves, Mailer said his favorites were “Fidel Castro and Lady X,” but did not elaborate. 
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79.4

“Life with Mailer: After Four Years, So Far, So Good.” Article-interview by Judy Klemesrud. New York Times, 16 April, Sec. B (“Style”), p. 13. Focuses on Norris Church, Mailer’s sixth wife, and her life with Mailer, with brief quotes from him. First major interview with Church. See 80.13.
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79.4a

“Writer Wins for Unread Novel.” Article-interview by Cynthia Heimel. New York, 4 June, 9. Short piece about an event, attended by Mary and Margaux Hemingway, honoring Reuben Bercovitch, who won an Ernest Hemingway Foundation PEN Award for his first novel, Hasen. Introducing the author, said, “The exquisite pain of girding oneself to go out and face the world with one’s first novel.”
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79.5

“Norman Mailer: Warrior in the Battle of the Sexes.” Article-interview by Spencer Vibbert. New England (Boston Sunday Globe), 24 June, 9, 27–29. Quote-laden report on Mailer’s 2 May court appearance in Barnstable, Mass., accompanied by Norris Church and his lawyer, Monroe Inker, in connection with his divorce from fourth wife Beverly Bentley. Includes a flashback to his February court appearance; comment from his publisher’s publicity director, William Guthrie, and his editor, Larned Bradford, on his forthcoming narrative, The Executioner’s Song (79.14); and an account of his 6 May benefit reading for Harvard’s literary magazine The Advocate, at which he first read from 79.14. See 78.4, 78.5, 79.2, 79.3, 79.8, 80.13.
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79.5a

“Mailer’s Memory.” Article by Herbert Mitgang. New York Times, 1 July, 27. Mailer clarifies a 3 June Times item about why he left the William Morris Agency when he returned from WWII “with the seeds, I expect, of ‘The Naked and the Dead, namely, because his agent Berta Kaslow had left the agency, not because of money or a grudge.
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79.5b

Letter to the Editor. Boston Globe, 3 July. Mailer objects to Spencer Vibbert, in a 24 June article, calling Carol Stevens Mailer’s mistress instead of his “mate.” Mailer married Stevens in 1980, and divorced her the same year. Rpt: 14.3.
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79.7

“Norman Mailer: The Champ of American Letters Takes All the Tough Questions on Art, Life, Death, Love, Hate, War, Drugs, Etc., from Punk Contender Legs McNeil.” Interview. High Times, September, 43–47, 49, 51–53, 55, 107–109, 111, 113, 115, 117. Omnibus interview including discussion of the stabbing of his second wife, Adele, but scant comment on drugs for a magazine devoted to the topic. is only slightly avuncular with the 23-year old McNeil.
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79.8

“Novelist Shelved.” Boston, September, 91. Comic auto-obituary. Accompanied by four other auto-obituaries by Thomas P. “Tip” O’Neill, Elaine Noble, Alfred Fiandaca and Darrell Martine described collectively in a headnote as “five of Boston’s favorite people.” The five short pieces are pendants to Joel Rosen’s article about obituary writers, “The Bad News Bearers,” 91–93, 130. Mailer says of himself, “He was renowned in publishing circles for his blend of fictional journalism and factual fiction.” He also notes that he had been married 16 times and had twenty-four children and seven grandchildren, “of whom four are older than six of their uncles and aunts.” When asked why he married so often, he replied, “To get divorced. You don’t know anything about a woman until you meet her in court.” This issue of Boston also contains a profile of Mailer’s lawyer for his divorce from Beverly Bentley, Monroe Inker, who comments on the case on 116. See 78.4, 78.5, 79.2, 79.3, 79.5, 80.13.
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79.9

“Life with Mailer.” Biographical article by James Atlas. New York Times Magazine, 9 September, 52–55, 86, 88, 90, 92, 94, 96, 98, 102, 104, 107; cover photograph of Mailer. Longest biographical essay on Mailer since Brock Brower’s piece in Life (65.20). Like Brower, Atlas concentrates on whether Mailer will make good on his early promise to write the great American novel. Mailer’s family and friends are also quoted in this well-illustrated piece.
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80.1

“Mailer on Gilmore.” Interview by Kevin Bezner. Washington Book Review, January–February, 2–8. Excellent interview on The Executioner’s Song (79.14), in which Mailer discusses his narrative stance; Gilmore’s character and appeal; the source for his title and the “old prison rhyme” prefacing the book; Joan Didion’s review in the New York Times Book Review (7 November 1979); and Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood, which Mailer calls “beautifully written. It had to be because I don’t think that the two guys that Truman had in the book were terribly interesting.” Capote commented on Mailer and the “nonfiction novel” in the preface to Music for Chameleons (New York: Random House). Rpt: San Francisco Review of Books, February, 6–9, 26–27, 31. See 79.1, 80.10.
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80.10

“An Interview with Norman Mailer.” By John W. Aldridge. Partisan Review 47 (July), 174–182. Focuses on the narrative opportunities and challenges Mailer faced in writing The Executioner’s Song (79.14). Mailer again compares it with Capote’s In Cold Blood and notes that Gilmore was an appealing character “because he embodied many of the themes I’ve been living with all my life.” Rpt: 88.6. See 79.1, 80.1, 85.15.
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80.11

“A Librarian Interviews Norman Mailer.” By Ophelia Georgiev Roop. American Libraries, July–August, 412–413. Consists of notes of Roop’s conversation with Mailer before he gave the third annual Marian McFadden Memorial Lecture at the Indianapolis-Marion County Public Library, where he also read from his novel-in-progress, Ancient Evenings (83.18). His comments focus on television and libraries and the magazines he likes: Scientific American, Adventure Travel, Mariah, Nation, and New Republic. Rpt: Roop’s interview originally appeared in the June issue of Reading in Indianapolis.
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80.12

“Norman Mailer Writes a New ‘Fantasy Autobiography’ of Marilyn Monroe: Of Women and Their Elegance.” Ladies’ Home Journal, September, 93–95, 154, 156, 159–160, 162, 164. Advance excerpt from 80.15 dealing with Monroe’s marriage to Arthur Miller. Except for the addition of several paragraph breaks, the excerpt is identical to the following pages of the first edition: 143–149, 172–180, 227–228. It is followed by a “Publisher’s Note”:
This disclaimer appears in a slightly different form on the copyright page of 80.15. Lenore Hershey’s “Editor’s Diary: Mailer and Marilyn” on p. 2 of this issue quotes Mailer on his reason for writing a “fantasy autobiography” of Monroe: “I felt an obvious identity with her because she came out of nothing and achieved such notoriety. In a less embattled way, the same is true of me.” See 73.30, 80.14, 86.24, 86.25.
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