The Executioner's Song (148 page)

                Secondary material, like newspaper quotes, allowed a few liberties. Sometimes words or phrases were removed without inserting marks of ellipsis, and very occasionally a sentence was relocated or a paragraph transposed. It was not done to make the newspaper copy more arresting or absurd; rather the procedure was to avoid repetition or eliminate confusing references.

                Gilmore's interviews were trimmed, and very occasionally a sentence was transposed. The aim was not to improve his diction so much as to treat him decently, treat him, let us say, half as well as one would treat one's own remarks if going over them in transcript. Transition from voice to print demands no less.

                With Gilmore's letters, however, it seemed fair to show him at a level higher than his average. One wanted to demonstrate the impact of his mind on Nicole, and that might best be achieved by allowing his brain to have its impact on us. Besides, he wrote well at times. His good letters are virtually intact.

                Finally, one would confess one's creations. The old prison rhyme at the beginning and end of this book is not, alas, an ancient ditty but a new one, and was written by this author ten years ago for his movie Maidstone.

                Also, the cross-examination that John Woods makes of a psychiatrist who administers Prolixin comes in fact from an actual interview Lawrence Schiller and myself a couple of years later and has been placed in Dr. Woods's mind with his kind permission.

                Moreover, the names and identifying details of certain characters have been changed to protect their privacy. Naturally, any similarity between their fictitious names and those of persons living or dead is purely coincidental.

                It is always presumptuous to say that a book could not have been written without the contributions of certain people since it assumes the book is worth writing in the first place. Given the length of this work, however, it may be safe to assume that any reader who has come this far must have found something of interest in the preceding pages. Let it be said then that without the cooperation of Nicole Baker, there would not have been a way to do this factual account—this, dare I say it, true life story, with its real names real lives—as if it were a novel. But given the intimacy of the experience Nicole Baker was willing to communicate to Schiller then to me, I had enough narrative wealth from the start to feel encouraged to try for more.

                As has already been indicated in the last pages of the book it's the work of those interviews with Nicole belongs in the main to Lawrence Schiller. Many of them were completed before it was even certain whether I would take on the job. In the months after Gilmore's execution, Schiller would go each week to Provo or Salt Lake and there conduct two or three long interviews a day. By the time the contracts were signed and I was ready in May 1977 to commence my labor, Schiller had already collected something like sixty interviews and would yet do as many more and make countless trips to Utah and Oregon. That was the first of his invaluable contributions to my task; the other was his willingness to be interviewed himself. Maybe he wanted the best book he could get, but Schiller stood for his portrait, and drew maps to his faults. He exposed his secrets in the confidence, doubtless, that old methods revealed, he would now be spurred on to more cultivated techniques, and so he not only delivered the stuff of his visions but the logic of his base schemes, and in the months that followed, he did not feel regret, or seem to have second thoughts. If he did, he kept them to himself. Without Schiller, it would not have been feasible to attempt the second half of The Executioner's Song. A profound appreciation, then, to Nicole Baker and Lawrence Schiller.

                There are others I would like to thank with the recognition that they contributed far more than one might expect. Vern Damico, Bessie Gilmore, and Brenda Nicol are three whose names come first to mind, and their contribution was large and they gave unstintingly of their time and were always available for checking discrepancies and verifying details, as well as offering the personal flavor of their own personalities to the work. Indeed, part of the pleasure of writing this book was to make their acquaintance. In almost equal measure, I would like to thank April, Charles, Kathryne, Rikki, and Sterling Baker, as well as Jim Barrett, Dennis Boaz, Earl Dorius, Barry Farrell, Pete Galovan, Richard Gibbs, Toni Gurney, Grace McGinnis, Spencer McGrath, Robert Moody, Ron Stanger, Judith Wolbach, and Dr. John Woods, but indeed to establish such categories is unfair to all the others who were interviewed, since nearly everyone was generous in the effort to portray his or her portion of the story. Let me list their names here: Anthony Amsterdam, Wade Anderson, Gil Athay, Kathy Baker, Ruth Ann Baker, Sue Baker, Mr. and Mrs. T. S. Baker, Jay Barker, Bill Barrett, Marie Barrett, Thomas Barrett, Cliff Bonnors, Alvin J. Bronstein, Brent Bullock, Judge J. Robert Bullock, Chris Caffee, David Caffee, Ken Cahoon, Cline Campbell, Dr. L. Grant Christensen, Rusty Christiansen, Glade Christiansen, Val Conlin, Mont Court, Virginius (Jinks) Dabney, Ida Damico, Michael Deamer, Pam Dudson, Porter Dudson, Roger Eaton, Michael Esplin, Mr. and Mrs. Norman Fulmer, Elizabeth Galovan, Richard Giauque, Frank Gilmore, Jr., Stanley Greenberg, Steven Groh, Dr. Grow, Howard Gurney, Phil Hansen, Robert Hansen, Ken Halterman, Doug Hiblar, Dr. Howells, Alex Hunt, Julie Jacoby, Albert Johnson, Dave Johnston, Judge David T. Lewis, Kathy Maynard, Wayne McDonald, Rev. Thomas Meersman, Bill Moyers, Johnny Nicol, Gerald Nielsen, Captain Nolan, Martin Onveros, Glen Overton, Lieutenant Peacock, Shirley Pedler, Margie Quinn, Lu Ann Reynolds, Michael Rodak, Jerry Scott, Craig Smay, Lieutenant Skinner, Lucinda Smith, Tamera Smith, Craig Snyder, David Susskind, Craig Taylor, Frank Taylor, Julie Taylor, Wally (of the Sundowners), Wayne Watson, Dr. Wesley Weissart, Noall Wootton.

                In addition, the following: Don Adler, T. Aiken, Paul J. Akins, Mildred Balser, Mary Bernardie, Frank Blair, Tony Borne, Mark Brown, Vince Capitano, Warden Hoyt Cupp, Dynamite Shave, LeRoy Earp, Richard Frazier, Duane Fulmer, Sally Hiblar, Mildred Hillman, Dr. Jarvis, Detective Jensen, Tom Lydon, Harry Miller, John Mills, Bill Newall, Andrew Newton,  Lieutenant Lawrence Salchenberger, Bishop Seeley, Linda Stokes, Captain Wadman, Captain Harold Whitley, Tolly Williams, Dr. Joe Winter, were interviewed. For reasons of structure, they did not appear (except for an occasional reference to their name) in the pages of this book, but their influence on it was not small. Many trips were taken to Oregon State Prison to interview guards and prisoners who had known Gilmore during his many years in that institution, and the author's understanding of prison life was powerfully aided on the official side by Warden Hoyt Cupp who offered many kinds of invaluable cooperation including most specifically his own tough estimate of prison conditions, by Captain Whitley, Lieutenant Salchenberger, and security officers in Segregation and Isolation, and by Paul J. Akins, Vince Capitano, LeRoy Earp, Andrew Newton, and Tolly Williams for their recollections of Gilmore as a fellow convict. A debt of real measure is also due to Duane Fulmer who furnished a clear, well-written, and highly detailed manuscript of life at MacLaren School for Boys. These contributions, while not appearing in the book directly, formed an indispensable subtext, a body of private material, so to speak, out of which one was far better able to comprehend some of Gilmore's motivations in the last nine months of his life. To their assistance must be added the letters of Jack H. Abbott, a convict who has spent much of his life in Western prisons and sent to me a series of exceptional letters, well worthy of being published, that delineate the code, the morals, the anguish, the philosophy, the pitfalls, the pride, and the search for inviolability of hard-line convicts in language whose equal I have not encountered in prison literature in recent years.

                Mikal Gilmore was kind enough to make available his piece in Rolling Stone, March 10, 1977, about his visits with his brother, and Sam Smith allowed a tour of his prison.

                Finally, a most special word of appreciation must be offered to Colleen Jensen and Debbie Bushnell for consenting to give a portrait of their husbands, and thereby obliging themselves to relive the most shattering and excruciating hours of their existence. No interviews were more painful for subject and interviewers both, and none were more valuable to the balance of this book.

                For assistance in research and typing, thanks are due to Janet Barkas, Dean Brooks, Sister Bernadette Ann, Clayton Brough, Murray L. Calvert, Molly Malone Cook, Peter Frawley, Kathleen Garrity, Lenny Hat, Jere Herzenberg, Diana Broede Hess, Susan Levin, Francis Lorsen, Mary Oliver, Donna Pode, Dave Schwendiman, Martha Thomases, and to Mike Mattil who did a gargantuan job of styling with considerable speed and skill.

                To those who were asked to read and comment on this manuscript: Norris Church, Bernard Farbar, Carol Goodson, Robert Lucid, Scott Meredith, Stephanie Schiller, and John T. Williams: my continuing indebtedness. I would add here the name of Judith McNally, who not only read and commented on this manuscript, but did ten years of work in one as my secretary, interviewer, research assistant, and critical reader. This work could not have been written in fifteen months without her.

                Last, to the memory of that good, fine, and devoted man of literature, Lamed G. Bradford of Little, Brown, who passed away on May 1, 1979. He was my editor for ten years, and he would have enjoyed the publication of this work.

About the author

Norman Mailer was born in 1923 in Long Branch, New Jersey, and grew up in Brooklyn, New York. After graduating from Harvard, he served in the South Pacific during World War II. He published his first book, The Naked and the Dead, in 1948. Mailer won the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize in 1968 for Armies of the Night, and was awarded the Pulitzer Prize again in 1980 for The Executioner's Song. He has directed four feature-length films, was a co-founder of The Village Voice in 1955, and was president of the American PEN from 1984 to 1986. His most recent novel, The Gospel According to the Son, is his thirtieth book. The Time of Our Time, an anthology of the best of Mailer's writing, was published in May of 1998 to celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of Mailer's literary debut.

Also by Norman Mailer

The Naked and the Dead

The Deer Park

Advertisements for Myself

Deaths for the Ladies (and Other Disasters)

The Presidential Papers

An American Dream

Cannibals and Christians

Why Are We in Vietnam?

The Deer Park—A Play

The Armies of the Night

Miami and the Siege of Chicago

Of a Fire on the Moon

The Prisoner of Sex

Maidstone

Existential Errands

St. George and the Godfather

Marilyn

The Faith of Graffiti

The Fight

Genius and Lust

The Executioner's Song

Of Women and Their Elegance

Pieces and Pontifications

Ancient Evenings

Tough Guys Don't Dance

Harlot's Ghost

Oswald's Tale: An American Mystery

Portrait of Picasso as a Young Man

The Gospel According to the Son

The Time of Our Time