Executioner's Song, The - Norman Mailer [351]
They would talk about history and the rise and fall of different people, whether it be Julius Caesar or Napoleon, and Father Meersman could see that he liked people who rose to heights and became famous, like Muhammad Ali. They would also discuss what Gilmore had read in the newspapers and magazines that Father Meersman brought him. He would say, "Hey, Padre, what do you think of Jimmy Carter?" or, "Padre, what do you think of serving food on paper plates?" To each of these questions, Meersman would reply, "Oh, Gary, whatever's fair." If he said that once he said it a thousand times, and Gilmore would answer, "Padre, there's nothing fair." Then they would both laugh. He always called him Padre.
Gilmore also stayed very aware of the aura of his public image, and thanked Father Meersman each night for the newspaper. It was certain Gary liked to talk about his case. He was fascinated the night Father Meersman brought a copy of Time magazine dated right after the first of the year, first issue of 1977 (although it came out a couple of days before the new year). In it were a couple of pages facing each other that said "Images '76," and there you could see photographs of President-elect Carter and his mother and wife, of Betty Ford, and Isabelle Peron from Argentina, and a photograph of the body of Mao Tse-tung lying in state, together with a picture of the leg support of Viking I that had landed on Mars, and Secretary of State Henry Kissinger holding an African sword in one hand and a shield in the other while out in Kenya, and a photograph of the young gymnast Nadia Comaneci, and yet, on the same two pages, was also a picture of Gary Gilmore in his Maximum Security prison whites. There he was grinning at the camera just after he'd received the date of his death sentence at the Board of Pardons Hearing. It didn't fail Gilmore's attention that in the yearly roundup of 1976, he was in elevated company.
PART FIVE
Pressures
Chapter 22
A HOLE IN THE CARPET
Farrell felt in no hurry to go back to Utah and deal with Moody and Stanger, for he was enjoying the work on what he had already. While Schiller was in Hawaii, Barry had begun to lay out the Playboy interview. To make it more readable, he trimmed the dialogue, moved paragraphs around, and added relevant material from some of Gary's written answers to the earlier interrogatories. Usually, he rewrote Moody and Stanger's questions to smooth the flow, and offer something like the flavor of a Playboy interview. He did decide, however, for his own ground rules, that he would not take anything from the letters. The interview would be built out of responses, verbal or written, to their questions.
That interview of December 10 was what he depended on most, however. Trying to get Gilmore on record over a broad range of topics, Farrell left a certain naiveté to the questions. He had been hoping for answers from which to dig out deeper questions, but figured these simple inquiries would allow Gilmore to feel superior. The results were astonishing. Gary came back in surprising volume. It looked to Farrell as if Gilmore was now setting out to present the particular view of himself he wanted people to keep. In that sense, he was being his own writer. It was fascinating to Barry. He was being given the Gilmore canon, good self-respecting convict canon. In fact, it was good enough for Farrell to begin to wonder whether the interview itself would ever get out of that tone.
INTERVIEWER As far as we can tell from your prison record, you've been locked up almost continuously since you entered reform school, and that was twenty-two years ago. It's as if you never saw any choice but to live out a criminal destiny.
GILMORE Yea, that's kind of a way of putting it. In fact, that's very nicely put.
INTERVIEWER What got you started thinking like a criminal?
GILMORE Probably going to reform school.
INTERVIEWER But you must have