Did Dave Eggers get “Zeitoun” wrong?

Sun, 09 Dec 2012 15:00:00 +0000

IN The New York Times Book Review’s July 19, 2012 review of Dave Eggers’s novel A Hologram for the King, Norman Mailer is mentioned no less than 16 times. The reviewer, Pico Iyer, rhetorically establishes Eggers as Mailer’s peer. In serendipitous publicity-charmed timing, the foreword to the latest edition (May 8, 2012) of Mailer’s The Executioner’s Song is by Eggers, published within months of the Mailer-themed review. Whether or not Iyer’s evaluation is justified, Mailer and Eggers share one other distinction: like Mailer 30 years ago, Eggers is at the center of nonfiction controversy and scandal.

At over 1,000 pages, The Executioner’s Song is considered by many to be Mailer’s best book, a Pulitzer Prize winning “true life novel” depicting the 1977 events surrounding the parole, release, and execution of Gary Gilmore by the state of Utah for murder. Mailer relied extensively on notes, documents, letters, and interviews with both the family and friends of Gilmore and his victims, bestowed to him by the part visionary, part promotion-opportunistic machine of a man, Larry Schiller.

Salon.com > The Executioner's Song

Did Dave Eggers get “Zeitoun” wrong?