The Executioner's Song by Norman Mailer

Just to remind you that you have that more than slightly foxed copy of Norman Mailer’s The Executioner’s Song. The usual Norman as ‘this reporter’ did not write it, he was hiding behind the arras listening to the flat locutions of ‘Western voices’. And he heard them. Those that know say he got them down pat and it must have been hard for him. How could he have stopped letting Mailer be Mailer? “She really cared about being dainty”. Yes of course, but messes occurred. “She felt like a lady of leisure”. Mailer gutted the language back to kernel sentences. How can cliché have such weight? Because it is a tired bandage.

Read it, hope for a stay of execution.