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Remember when I signed up for the chubby chunkster challenge?  yah I almost forgot too.  But considering that I just finished a 1,072 page book I’m wondering if I’ve met the challenge. 

*The Chubby Chunkster - this option is for the reader who has a large tome or two to read, but really doesn’t want to commit to more than that. 2 books is all you need to finish this challenge.

And yes…I actually read all of The Executioners Song by Norman Mailer. I am still digesting this book. It’s really a simple story but with so much complexity contained within.  Mr. Mailer makes these horrific people seem to be people that you can somehow relate to. I mean I shouldn’t like a convicted murderer, a man who shot (for no good reason) two wonderful men.  But the book tells me so very little about the victims and somehow I ended up engrossed in the killer Gary Gilmore’s letters and writings to his girlfriend Nicole.  That book represents to me a perverse love story more so than what it probably intended. The title should have been “Gary and Nicole” or “Die with me”.  There are a million reviews online and my take is nothing like them and I would recommend that you either read it or not but skip the reviews and allow yourself to read without bias.

Having said that, I’m amazed that I read the entire thing and in about 12 days.  Of course, I was in-between classes and had no schoolwork to worry about.  I am glad to have had something to read that captured me, got under my skin, and will probably stay with me until the day I die. I can now speak about this book at parties, hopefully I’ll go to one one day where someone will talk about it.

Having said all of this, I wish this book had been fiction.  The horror of knowing it was all very real bothered me.  I do not believe in the death penalty and I certainly don’t approve of a firing squad, UNLESS….and this is a big unless for me.  Unless you harm a child, then it’s free game.  I think they should rip out your toenails one at a time and dump acid on your eyeballs then.  But for some reason I otherwise think the death penalty is barbaric and changes nothing.

But seriously…a firing squad?  There is one section of this book towards the very end that gave me the creeps and I can barely think of it without getting the creeps again.  It had to do with the autopsy of Gary Gilmore after his execution.  I think I could have lived my entire life without reading that passage.  Seriously.

I already bought another book by Norman Mailer and I’m pissed that he’s now dead and I can’t write him any letters.  Damn it anyhow.