I read the Executioner’s Song and came away with the impression that Mailer was “a moral cretin”. Of the two men that Gilmore killed weren’t any worthy of some remembrance by this “great author” ? How many pages of his door-stopper did Mailer devote to them? No sir, those young men were just putty in the hands of the artist Gilmore, like paint in Rembrandt’s hand. For a so-called deep observer of the human scene Mailer missed out on the baleful influence of Gary’s father. That man was the Devil incarnate. Mikhail Gilmore, Gary’s younger brother wrote about it in his own terrifying book Shot in the Heart.