Executioner's Song, The - Norman Mailer [358]
"There is extremely heavy stress on the words 'to die. This means there is no way he wants to die."
GILMORE "I'll simply go out there and sit down and be shot."
MCQUISTON'S ANALYSIS
"His cyclic rate goes wild on this statement. He may be forced to do this (face the firing squad) but it's not simple-and he certainly doesn't want it to happen."
GILMORE "I guess you could say I do believe in a life hereafter, and that makes it a little easier for me (to face death)."
MCQUISTON'S ANALYSIS
"The stress patterns show that he does believe in a life in the hereafter. That is a true statement. However, it doesn't make it easier for him.
"It makes it much more difficult. He believes.
"But he feels that he is going there (to the hereafter) without the proper credentials-and he is scared."
JAN 5 4:31 P.M.
GARY GILMORE
UTAH STATE PRISON
PO BOX 250
DRAPER UT 84020
IT HAS TAKEN ME 24 HOURS TO CALM DOWN AFTER SEEING THE ENQUIRER OTHERWISE WESTERN UNION COULDN'T TAKE MY WORDS. THEY BOUGHT MATERIAL AND OBVIOUSLY USED ONLY A SMALL PART OF IT. I GUESS I SHOULD HAVE EXPECTED IT BUT IN SOME WAYS I'M STILL NAIVE. I'M JUST ASHAMED THAT THIS IS THE FIRST THAT YOU SEE BUT YOU KNOW THE REASONS WE WENT THIS WAY. THAT MARKET IS NOW SATISFIED AND WE CAN GO FOR WHAT WE WANT.
LARRY
Jan 5
Dear Larry, Just read with unengrossed interest the National Enquirer.
Very distasteful . . .
I guess people can print and read and think what they like.
But I am curious . . .
I mean, I would assume a man in your position-and your experience and firsthand knowledge of yellow journalistic papers like the Enquirer-would be able to exert more control over what is released, what is printed . . .
Or did you exert all the control you cared to?
I'm distantly curious—
Not greatly interested . . .
You see, I know the truth of the matter. And so does Nicole. And I don't have to account to anybody but myself and Nicole.
Im not a nice guy or a hero. But I'm not the guy the Enquirer says I am, either.
Larry, you can think, print, and produce according to the conclusions you, yourself, reach. I believe you are a man of some sensibility and interested in the truth.
My sole rebut to the Enquirer is this:
Everybody knows that the National Enquirer is not exactly what you would call an "unimpeachable source."
GARY
Moody and Stanger told him Gary had no larger reaction than that.
Schiller had to feel confused. This piece in the National Enquirer had impugned Gilmore's honor in death, and yet this reply was all it brought forth. Call Nicole Freckles, however, and Gary almost wouldn't speak. It nearly brought Schiller to a halt. He had to ask himself whether he was qualified, at bottom, to know Gary Gilmore?
Hey Darlin Companion-i Love you!
i am often lost here and i will be that way often wherever am-till i feel your soul wrap around me.
i am alone with myself most of the daylight hours.
But at night . . . oh, the nights i love so. i can go anywhere, do anything, feel anything and all things good . . .
Hold you close and warm with your ruff wiskery face in my hands . . . Take you to places i loved as a child, a dark little glen in the forest of pines, it was my "room" So tightly knit around with tall pine trees and forever bearing blackberry bushes, that finding the tunnel leading into it was sometimes a challenge, i used to lay in the middle of it on the soft springy carpet of warm damp sweet pine needles-gazing straight up from the walls of the trees-a crystal blue sky and watch the cotton clouds sneak by. Listen my enchanted forest talking softly in its thousand tongues.
God, how i loved that place so long ago.
i remember talking to my aunt Kathy there, she loved it. Dug a little hole in the carpet for her ashtray. And kept herself quiet and listened with me.
i went there again with you only a night or so back.
Oh crazy me.
SALT LAKE TRIBUNE
Salt Lake, Jan. 6-KUTV yesterday filed suit in U.S. District Court for Utah seeking the right to witness and report the scheduled execution on Jan. 17 of convicted murderer Gary Mark Gilmore . .