Jerome Loving. (2017). Jack and Norman: A State-Raised Convict and the Legacy of Norman Mailer's "The Executioner's Song". St. Martin's Publishing Group.

Jerome Loving. 2017. Jack and Norman: A State-Raised Convict and the Legacy of Norman Mailer's "The Executioner's Song". St. Martin's Publishing Group.

Jerome Loving, Jack and Norman: A State-Raised Convict and the Legacy of Norman Mailer's "The Executioner's Song". St. Martin's Publishing Group, 2017.

Jerome Loving. Jack and Norman: A State-Raised Convict and the Legacy of Norman Mailer's "The Executioner's Song". St. Martin's Publishing Group, 2017.

OverDrive Product Record

images

• cover:
  • href: https://img1.od-cdn.com/ImageType-100/2390-1/{823AA8FC-00F8-4C5F-B596-E1D97236DDE8}Img100.jpg
  • type: image/jpeg
• thumbnail:
  • href: https://img1.od-cdn.com/ImageType-200/2390-1/{823AA8FC-00F8-4C5F-B596-E1D97236DDE8}Img200.jpg
  • type: image/jpeg
• cover150Wide:
  • href: https://img1.od-cdn.com/ImageType-150/2390-1/823/AA8/FC/{823AA8FC-00F8-4C5F-B596-E1D97236DDE8}Img150.jpg
  • type: image/jpeg
• cover300Wide:
  • href: https://img1.od-cdn.com/ImageType-400/2390-1/823/AA8/FC/{823AA8FC-00F8-4C5F-B596-E1D97236DDE8}Img400.jpg
  • type: image/jpeg

formats

1. • identifiers:
     1. • type: ISBN
        • value: 9781250107008
   • name: Adobe EPUB eBook
   • id: ebook-epub-adobe
2. • identifiers:
     1. • type: ASIN
        • value: B01J1EH08U
   • name: Kindle Book
   • id: ebook-kindle
3. • identifiers:
     1. • type: ISBN
        • value: 9781250107008
   • name: OverDrive Read
   • id: ebook-overdrive

otherFormatIdentifiers

1. • type: ISBN
   • value: 9781250106995

mediaType

eBook

primaryCreator

• role: Author
• name: Jerome Loving

isOwnedByCollections

False

title

Jack and Norman

dateAdded

2017-02-10T04:05:15.95Z

contentDetails

1. • href: https://link.overdrive.com?websiteID=141&titleID=2929896
   • type: text/html
   • account:
     • name: Sacramento Public Library (CA)
     • id: 1151

sortTitle

Jack and Norman A StateRaised Convict and the Legacy of Norman Mailers The Executioners Song

crossRefId

2929896

subtitle

A State-Raised Convict and the Legacy of Norman Mailer's "The Executioner's Song"

id

823AA8FC-00F8-4C5F-B596-E1D97236DDE8

starRating

5

OverDrive MetaData

isPublicDomain

False

formats

1. • fileName: JackandNorman_9781250107008_2929896
   • partCount: 0
   • fileSize: 7988017
   • identifiers:
     1. • type: ISBN
        • value: 9781250107008
   • rights:
     1. • type: Copying
        • value: 0
     2. • type: Printing
        • value: 0
     3. • type: Lending
        • value: 0
     4. • type: ReadAloud
        • value: 0
     5. • type: ExpirationRights
        • value: 0
   • name: Adobe EPUB eBook
   • id: ebook-epub-adobe
   • onSaleDate: 02/21/2017
   • samples:
     1. • source: From the book
        • formatType: ebook-overdrive
        • url: https://samples.overdrive.com/?crid=823aa8fc-00f8-4c5f-b596-e1d97236dde8&.epub-sample.overdrive.com
2. • fileName: JackandNorman_2929896
   • partCount: 0
   • fileSize: 0
   • identifiers:
     1. • type: ASIN
        • value: B01J1EH08U
   • name: Kindle Book
   • id: ebook-kindle
   • onSaleDate: 02/21/2017
   • samples:
     1. • source: From the book
        • formatType: ebook-overdrive
        • url: https://samples.overdrive.com/?crid=823aa8fc-00f8-4c5f-b596-e1d97236dde8&.epub-sample.overdrive.com
3. • fileName: JackandNorman_9781250107008_2929896
   • partCount: 0
   • fileSize: 7988014
   • identifiers:
     1. • type: ISBN
        • value: 9781250107008
   • name: OverDrive Read
   • id: ebook-overdrive
   • onSaleDate: 02/21/2017
   • samples:
     1. • source: From the book
        • formatType: ebook-overdrive
        • url: https://samples.overdrive.com/?crid=823aa8fc-00f8-4c5f-b596-e1d97236dde8&.epub-sample.overdrive.com

keywords

1. • value: Criminals & Outlaws

creators

1. • role: Author
   • fileAs: Loving, Jerome
   • bioText: JEROME LOVING is the Distinguished Professor of English at Texas A&M University. Loving has taught as a visiting professor at the University of Texas in Austin and as a Fulbright Scholar at Leningrad State University. He is the author of Jack and Norman.
   • name: Jerome Loving

imprint

Thomas Dunne Books

publishDate

2017-02-21T05:00:00+00:00

isOwnedByCollections

True

title

Jack and Norman

fullDescription

This is the story of an author and his apprentice. It is the story of literary influence and tragedy. It is also the story of incarceration in America.
Norman Mailer was writing The Executioner's Song, his novel about condemned killer Gary Gilmore, when he struck up a correspondence with Jack Henry Abbott, Federal Prisoner 87098-132. Over time, Abbott convinced the famous author that he was a talented writer who deserved another chance at freedom. With letters of support from Mailer and other literary elites of the day, Abbott was released on parole in 1981.
With Mailer's help, Abbott quickly became the literary "it boy" of New York City. But in a shocking turn of events, the day before a rave review of Abbott's book, In the Belly of the Beast, appeared in The New York Times, Abbott murdered a New York City waiter and fled to Mexico. Eerily, like Gary Gilmore in Mailer's true-life novel, Abbott killed within six weeks of his release from prison.
Now Jerome Loving explores the history of two of the most infamous books of the past 50 years, a fascinating story that has never before been told.

reviews

1. • premium: False
   • source: Robert A. Ferguson, George Edward Woodberry Professor of Law, Literature, and Criticism, Columbia University, and author of Inferno: An Anatomy of American Punishment
   • content:

     "Jerome Loving tells the story of a famous mistake in law and literature with great authority. He juxtaposes a serial criminal, Jack Henry Abbott, and one of our most renowned writers, Norman Mailer, in a tragic dance of affirmation and denial. Among other things, this book is a devastating portrayal of our prison system."

2. • premium: False
   • source: Frederick Crews, author of Follies of the Wise and Freud: The Making of an Illusion (forthcoming)
   • content: "Here are three impulsive, self-absorbed men--one a lionized cultural giant, the other two doomed from birth and hardened in prison to become remorseless killers. Somehow a major book, The Executioner's Song, results from their unlikely intersection. These are the makings of Jerome Loving's sad, ironic tale, at once an indictment of American incarceration and a reminder, if we needed one, that literary talent is no guarantee of respect for the lives of others."
3. • premium: False
   • source: Wai Chee Dimock, Professor of English and American Studies, Yale University
   • content: "A story of American incarceration, cross-stitched with the friendship between a larger-than-life author and his state-raised convict apprentice. Luminous, unflinching, and unforgettable."
4. • premium: False
   • source: Publishers Weekly
   • content: "Part literary criticism, part social commentary, and part true crime story, this riveting book chronicles Abbott's existence as a 'state-raised convict' who, as he recounted in his debut book, In the Belly of the Beast, spent most of his life in the dehumanizing prison system. Abbott won his petition for parole thanks in part to Mailer's support, but not long after his release, Abbott murdered Richard Adan, a restaurant manager and aspiring playwright, and was caught and returned to prison. Loving's gripping book offers a page-turning case study of the disturbing character of the American prison system and the fascinating compulsion that can drive writers to seek literary celebrity."
5. • premium: True
   • source:
   • content:

     November 14, 2016
     Norman Mailer always seemed to court controversy in both his writings and his personal life, and now Loving (Walt Whitman) offers an absorbing chronicle of Mailer’s infamous relationship with Jack Henry Abbott, Federal Prisoner 87098-132. When Mailer was writing his “true life novel,” The Executioner’s Song, Abbott struck up a correspondence with the novelist, offering Mailer gritty descriptions of prison life that Mailer used to complete his portrait of what incarceration must have been like for Gary Gilmore, the subject of his book. Part literary criticism, part social commentary, and part true crime story, this riveting book chronicles Abbott’s existence as a “state-raised convict” who, as he recounted in his debut book, In the Belly of the Beast, spent most of his life in the dehumanizing prison system. Abbott won his petition for parole thanks in part to Mailer’s support, but not long after his release, Abbott murdered Richard Adan, a restaurant manager and aspiring playwright, and was caught and returned to prison. Loving’s gripping book offers a page-turning case study of the disturbing character of the American prison system and the fascinating compulsion that can drive writers to seek literary celebrity.

6. • premium: True
   • source:
   • content:

     December 15, 2016
     In 1979, Norman Mailer published The Executioner's Song, a novel that narrated the life and death of Gary Gilmore, a notorious killer executed in 1977. Loving (English/Texas A&M Univ.; Confederate Bushwhacker: Mark Twain in the Shadow of the Civil War, 2013, etc.) offers the back story of Mailer's fraught relationship with the murderer whose story was eerily similar to that of Gilmore. At the end of his mighty book, Mailer acknowledged the "exceptional letters" from Jack Henry Abbott "that delineate the code, the morals, the anguish, the philosophy, the pitfalls, the pride, and the search for inviolability of hard-line convicts." Abbott, who said he knew Gilmore, was also a coldblooded murderer imprisoned since adolescence, reared by a punishing government. Both prisoners raged against regulation, controlling "pigs," fellow cons, and sniveling do-gooders. Gilmore had some artistic talent, and Abbott had uncanny literary skill, founded on sophisticated reading, including Baudelaire, Kierkegaard, Rimbaud, and Marx. Abbott surely sensed an ally in Mailer, who had famously stabbed his own wife. The convict's letters cemented a relationship with the celebrated author, and Mailer was an important voice in gaining Abbott's parole. Eventually, Abbott released his musings in the form of In the Belly of the Beast (1981), which became a bestseller. The morning before a positive review appeared in the New York Times, he stabbed to death a blameless waiter. He was soon captured and found guilty of manslaughter. His defense was "prison paranoia"--i.e., he was trained by the state to kill. Mailer pleaded for a brief sentence because of the killer's writerly talent, but Abbott died in prison, perhaps by his own hand. In his forthright, if sporadic report, which could have used a chronology, Loving relies on research and the available correspondence between the famed writer and the clever convict, and he reveals the odd nexus of literature and penology, the meeting of art and criminality. A sympathetic telling of the life and death of an infamous convict and the ill-fated intervention of a famed writer.

     COPYRIGHT(2016) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

7. • premium: True
   • source:
   • content:

     January 1, 2017
     

     In 1981, murderer Jack Henry Abbott won parole from prison thanks, in large part, to the advocacy of novelist Norman Mailer. A short time later, Abbott was back in prison, convicted of another murder. Abbott had just published a book of his letters from prison, In the Belly of the Beast, which Mailer had championed. Their relationship is explored in great detail by Loving (English, Texas A&M Univ.). Abbott began writing to Mailer during the time that the author was working on his book about convicted killer Gary Gilmore, The Executioner's Song. Loving demonstrates how Abbott's letters provided Mailer with an inside look at prison life which became crucial to his understanding of Gilmore's situation. There is a lot packed into this short study: background on Mailer's literary career and personal life; biographical sketches of Abbott and Gilmore; and the critical reception for The Executioner's Song and In the Belly of the Beast. Most compelling is Loving's account of Abbott's difficult adjustment to freedom on New York City's Lower East Side. Loving tends to be a little repetitive, and his digressions are distracting, but this is a worthy addition to Mailer scholarship. VERDICT Anyone interested in Mailer's writings will appreciate this work.--Thomas Karel, Franklin & Marshall Coll. Lib., Lancaster, PA

     Copyright 2017 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

8. • premium: True
   • source:
   • content:

     January 1, 2017
     In the late 1970s, Norman Mailer was having trouble writing The Executioner's Song, his book about the convicted murderer Gary Gilmore. He knew he wasn't getting the details right, wasn't capturing the feel of what it was like to live behind bars. Mailer found help from an unexpected source: Jack Henry Abbott, a prison inmate and budding writer, whose letters to Mailer allowed the famed novelist to shape his book and would also form the basis of Abbott's own best-selling book, In the Belly of the Beast (1981), written while Abbott was in prison. Soon after that book's publication, Abbott was paroled in 1981 and almost immediately murdered a man and went on the run. This engrossing book tells the story of the relationship between Mailer and Abbott (Mailer advocated for Abbott's release from prison, and was pilloried for it afterward), and the story of the creation of The Executioner's Song, which became a classic immediately after its publication in 1979. A fascinating and often moving story.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2017, American Library Association.)

popularity

13

links

• self:
  • href: https://api.overdrive.com/v1/collections/v1L1BWwAAAA2I/products/823aa8fc-00f8-4c5f-b596-e1d97236dde8/metadata
  • type: application/vnd.overdrive.api+json

id

823aa8fc-00f8-4c5f-b596-e1d97236dde8

starRating

5

images

• cover:
  • href: https://img1.od-cdn.com/ImageType-100/2390-1/{823AA8FC-00F8-4C5F-B596-E1D97236DDE8}Img100.jpg
  • type: image/jpeg
• thumbnail:
  • href: https://img1.od-cdn.com/ImageType-200/2390-1/{823AA8FC-00F8-4C5F-B596-E1D97236DDE8}Img200.jpg
  • type: image/jpeg
• cover150Wide:
  • href: https://img1.od-cdn.com/ImageType-150/2390-1/823/AA8/FC/{823AA8FC-00F8-4C5F-B596-E1D97236DDE8}Img150.jpg
  • type: image/jpeg
• cover300Wide:
  • href: https://img1.od-cdn.com/ImageType-400/2390-1/823/AA8/FC/{823AA8FC-00F8-4C5F-B596-E1D97236DDE8}Img400.jpg
  • type: image/jpeg

isPublicPerformanceAllowed

False

languages

1. • code: en
   • name: English

subjects

1. • value: Biography & Autobiography
2. • value: True Crime
3. • value: Nonfiction

publishDateText

02/21/2017

mediaType

eBook

shortDescription

This is the story of an author and his apprentice. It is the story of literary influence and tragedy. It is also the story of incarceration in America.
Norman Mailer was writing The Executioner's Song, his novel about condemned killer Gary Gilmore, when he struck up a correspondence with Jack Henry Abbott, Federal Prisoner 87098-132. Over time, Abbott convinced the famous author that he was a talented writer who deserved another chance at freedom. With letters of support from Mailer and other literary elites of the day, Abbott was released on parole in 1981.
With Mailer's help, Abbott quickly became the literary "it boy" of New York City. But in a shocking turn of events, the day before a rave review of Abbott's book, In the Belly of the Beast, appeared in The New York Times, Abbott murdered a New York City waiter and fled to Mexico. Eerily, like Gary Gilmore in Mailer's true-life novel, Abbott killed within six weeks of his release from...

sortTitle

Jack and Norman A StateRaised Convict and the Legacy of Norman Mailers The Executioners Song

crossRefId

2929896

subtitle

A State-Raised Convict and the Legacy of Norman Mailer's "The Executioner's Song"

publisher

St. Martin's Publishing Group