cover image Jack and Norman: A State-Raised Convict and the Legacy of Norman Mailer’s ‘The Executioner’s Song’

Jack and Norman: A State-Raised Convict and the Legacy of Norman Mailer’s ‘The Executioner’s Song’

Jerome Loving. St. Martin’s/Dunne, $25.99 (256p) ISBN 978-1-250-10699-5

Norman Mailer always seemed to court controversy in both his writings and his personal life, and now Loving (Walt Whitman) offers an absorbing chronicle of Mailer’s infamous relationship with Jack Henry Abbott, Federal Prisoner 87098-132. When Mailer was writing his “true life novel,” The Executioner’s Song, Abbott struck up a correspondence with the novelist, offering Mailer gritty descriptions of prison life that Mailer used to complete his portrait of what incarceration must have been like for Gary Gilmore, the subject of his book. Part literary criticism, part social commentary, and part true crime story, this riveting book chronicles Abbott’s existence as a “state-raised convict” who, as he recounted in his debut book, In the Belly of the Beast, spent most of his life in the dehumanizing prison system. Abbott won his petition for parole thanks in part to Mailer’s support, but not long after his release, Abbott murdered Richard Adan, a restaurant manager and aspiring playwright, and was caught and returned to prison. Loving’s gripping book offers a page-turning case study of the disturbing character of the American prison system and the fascinating compulsion that can drive writers to seek literary celebrity.[em] (Feb.) [/em]