It is most unusual for Mailer to have his characters reveal themselves almost entirely through dialogue. Descriptions of characters are succinct and lack Mailer's typical floridity. Instead, the author reports what could be clearly heard and observed — as befits a book that was assembled from hours and hours of taped interviews with the individuals involved with Gilmore's case. Each character is scrupulously created out of his own words. Although much about Gilmore is repugnant, he becomes attractive and even heroic in his effort to preserve some part of his complex, tortured self from the confusions of the gross publicity that.....
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