From Solitary to the City

Norman Mailer’s Bet on Jack Henry Abbott

Authors

  • Jerome Loving Texas A&M University Author

Keywords:

Jack Henry Abbott, In the Belly of the Beast, The Executioner’s Song, Gary Gilmore, prison writing, violence

Abstract

While writing The Executioner’s Song, published in 1979, Norman Mailer began what he described as an astonishing correspondence with Jack Henry Abbott, who was a federal prisoner who provided insights about long-term prison and its violence, information that enhanced Mailer’s “true life novel” about condemned killer Gary Gilmore. This essay examines their relationship.

Author Biography

  • Jerome Loving, Texas A&M University

    Jerome Loving is Distinguished Professor at Texas A&M University and is the author of biographies of Walt Whitman, Mark Twain, and Theodore Dreiser, among other publications.

Downloads

Published

2016-09-28

Issue

Vol. 10 No. 1 (2016): 10th Anniversary Issue

Section

Articles

How to Cite

Loving, Jerome. “From Solitary to the City: Norman Mailer’s Bet on Jack Henry Abbott”. The Mailer Review, vol. 10, no. 1, Sept. 2016, pp. 129–134, https://mailerreview.org/journal/article/view/563.