A low-key and thoughtful appearance by the usually boisterous author of The Executioner's Song. This new novel-on the life and death of Gary Gilmore, the murderer who demanded to be executed by the State of Utah-was widely heralded as a masterpiece, and the writing of it had led Mr. Mailer to contemplate life, death, and literature. "I began to feel that I had to change some of my ideas about what literature should consist of. I've always leaned on the side that literature finally is a guide, that it explains complex matters to us, it gives us a deeper understanding of our existence. And I felt that maybe the time had come, at least for me in my own work, to do a book where I don't explain it to the reader." ... "I wanted the reader to live with this incredible complexity that's involved in not just the process of execution, but with that most mysterious fact that we live and then we die."