| |
|
If there's already a thread on this, I couldn't find it, so-
Has anyone read this? It's a collection of letters that Abbott, a convicted murderer (he killed another prisoner while serving a robbery sentence, I think), wrote to Norman Mailer after hearing that Mailer was doing research into prison violence for his book The Executioner's Song. Abbott is an intriguing figure– he took it upon himself while in prison to educate himself on Western philosophy and Marxism and a whole bunch of other things. He also spent basically his entire adult life and much of his childhood in prison, much of that time in solitary confinement.
When I first started the book, I was sucked completely in. Abbott writes well and has a particular grasp of metaphor; he managed to describe the violence of everyday prison life with surprising clarity to me, a middle-class American teenager whose closest brush with the law was being told to leave the park after 10 pm. His description of solitary confinement, and of the psychological effects it had on him, was particularly effective when I first read it.
I got to thinking though: it's precisely this gap of experience between him, Mailer and the rest of his readers which means that everything he writes could be total bullshit and almost nobody would be the wiser. I don't know how much Norman Mailer actually knew about prison violence when Abbott contacted him, but Mailer says in his introduction (I don't have it in front of me, unfortunately) that Abbott contacted him and basically said, no, you've got everything wrong, here's how things really are. Abbott's command of the English language and of imagery and metaphor is, as I mentioned, excellent. He would certainly have been capable of fabricating an account of prison life convincingly, if he had some reason to.
Abbott has a few traits which also tend to undermine his case. First, he suffers from a seeming incapability of controlling his anger. His letters are filled with accounts of him responding to guards with violence, no matter the odds and no matter the consequences. He is filled with a hatred for prison guards that I find pretty much impossible to understand. Guards ('pigs') are evil, mindless, wholly without redeeming qualities; the prisoners, by contrast, apparently have a code of ethics, and, in general, are presented as the 'good guys' (though not wholly good). It's not surprising that Abbot takes the side of prisoners against the guards, but I don't for a minute believe that all prison guards are the brutish figures devoid of human feeling that Abbott makes them out to be, and I don't buy any of his other sweeping generalizations about them. This makes me question the other sweeping generalizations that he makes about prison violence in his letters. He, in fact, makes a lot of generalizations; they are interspersed with enough anecdotes as to make them seem plausible, but the anecdotes don't necessarily directly support the blanket statements he's making. It occurs to me that Abbott might understand this very well.
Norman Mailer was completely sold on Jack Henry Abbott, convinced of his literary talent and, more importantly, his truthfulness. He pushed very hard to get Abbott's letters published, and made Abbott a bit of a pet project of his after the book was published. It was through Mailer's efforts and his conviction that Abbott was a victim of an oppressive system that Abbott was released on parole in 1981, not long after the book was published. Abbott almost immediately gave his credibility a severe blow when, six weeks after being released, he killed a waiter. I'm not sure how Mailer reacted to this; it would be worth looking into. Abbott published another book in 1987 called 'My Return' which I haven't read, but where he apparently argues that he killed the waiter in self-defence. He tells this, for what it's worth, in the form of a play, which strikes me as odd and reinforces my suspicion that Abbott is manipulating his audience, though I'm not quite sure why. Anyhow, he went back to prison for life and hung himself in 2002.
So, for me, the verdict is out on Jack Henry Abbott, but I think he's highly suspect and I lean towards calling bullshit. If he is really pulling Mailer's leg, though, you have to wonder what the reason is for it. Why go to so much effort? It could be a simple desire to feel some sort of connection to society at large, but I don't think it's as simple as this. Abbott's tale of prison is one that is naturally based around control. He fancies himself a soldier of sorts fighting against an oppressive system which is constantly beating him down. His life is not his own; his story in large part is one of trying to wrest control from his captors. I think that maybe Mailer was an opportunity for Abbott to exert his control over something that could not come back to bite him in the way that the act of, say, kicking a guard– sorry, a pig– might. (There might be some element of controlling a representation of a society that is partially responsible for his imprisonment as well- I don't remember how much blame he places on American society at large for his predicament.) The target offered by a writer mostly ignorant of prison life who could be brought to sympathize with Abbott might have been too much to resist (I'm sure release couldn't have been his goal; I can't imagine he expected that to happen).
By the way, in criticizing Abbott I don't mean to imply that I don't think there are any problems with the American prison system. There are- hoo baby, there are- but it's way too much to get into now and don't really belong in a forum about books.
Anyhow- who's read this, and what do you think about Abbott's reliability? That was a hell of a first post, I'll stop now. Flame or welcome at your discretion. |
|
|
