In what is arguably his greatest work, America's most heroically ambitious writer follows the short, blighted career of gary gilmore, an intractably violent product Of America's prisons who became notorious for two reaso...In what is arguably his greatest work, America's most heroically ambitious writer follows the short, blighted career of gary gilmore, an intractably violent product Of America's prisons who became notorious for two reasons: first, for robbing two men in 1976, then killing them in cold blood.