“NO ONE BUT MAILER COULD HAVE DARED THIS BOOK”: FIRST EDITION OF THE EXECUTIONER’S SONG, SIGNED BY NORMAN MAILER

MAILER, Norman. The Executioner's Song. Boston and Toronto: Little, Brown, (1979). Thick octavo, original dark blue cloth, original dust jacket. $1400.

First edition of Mailer’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, signed on the title page by him.

Awarded the 1980 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, Norman Mailer's The Executioner's Song, "the book that many critics consider his masterpiece," follows the last months of Gary Gilmore as he awaited execution in Utah State prison—the first execution following the Supreme Court's reinstatement of the death penalty. "Joan Didion, reviewing the book for The New York Times Book Review, said: "It is ambitious to the point of vertigo… I think no one but Mailer could have dared this book. The authentic Western voice, the voice heard in The Executioner's Song, is one heard often in life but only rarely in literature" (New York Times). "First Edition" on copyright page.

Only tiny bit of edge-wear to bright dust jacket. A fine signed copy.