Subcultural engagement for the 21st Century...
Barbelith is a new kind of community (find out more)...
You can login or register.

Underground > Books, Criticism & Writing >

Prison books

16:29 / 26.11.01

Anyobody recommend any good books that revolve around being locked up? Prison, concentration camp that kind of thing. I've always found this subject very compelling. I don't really know why.

16:39 / 26.11.01

Perrrrv-o! Jack London's 'Star Rover' is a grim (and slightly weird) addition to the genre - set (I think) in ol' San Quentin. Then there's Stephen King's 'The Green Mile', of course.

07:15 / 27.11.01

Prison is important in Tom Wolfe's A Man in Full, though the book isn't set there all the way through. One of the characters goes there and reads up on Epictetus.

The Return Of Rothkoid

07:15 / 27.11.01

Tim Willocks' Green River Rising is OK - though I did read it many, many years ago. Lots of dirty sex and incredible violence. Willocks was Nick Cave's shrink for a while, I think, though judging from the author's picture on the cover, he's by far the nuttier one...

07:15 / 27.11.01

What about biography rather than fiction?

10:41 / 27.11.01

I recommend checking out various novels by Jean Genet - sort of existentialist pornography, fairly autobiographical. And, fiction-wise, 'Homeboy' by Seth Morgan.

11:17 / 27.11.01

Jimmy Boyle's diaries, too. He was Scotland's Most Dangerous Crim (TM), went to prison for (I think) murder, wrote a diary, came out, became a sculptor...

11:51 / 27.11.01

Papillon, by Henri Charriere. All about Devils island and the authors many escape attempts. Has some details that never seem to get into films of this genre, like where do they hide their money?
Its a good well written study in prison brutality, I couldn't put it down when I read it.

Whisky Priestess

11:51 / 27.11.01

Try anything to do with the Kray Twins or the Moors murderers.

Or Jeffrey Archer's latest, when it comes out.

heheheh

And if you're serious about the concentration camp genre, you can't go wrong with Primo Levi: try If this is a Man, If not now, When? and The Periodic Table. Also read Bent by Martin Sherman(?)

[ 27-11-2001: Message edited by: Whisky Priestess ]

08:00 / 28.11.01

The Damage Done: Twelve Years Of Hell in a Bangkok Prison

By Warren Fellows

'bit midnight express. Allegedly true though. Elephant football with the prisoners seems a bit harsh.

[ 28-11-2001: Message edited by: Fra Dolcino ]

08:25 / 28.11.01

House of the Dead by Fyodor Dosteyevsky is bloody wonderful. Don't be put off by the heavyweight Russian author thang - he's actually extremely readable and fully capable of making you laugh out loud in even the grimmest moments. Also Crime and Punishment by the same author (although it is longer). And The Miracle of the Rose by Jean Genet for pervy French prison fun. And The Ballad of Reading Gaol by Oscar Wilde is a must if you like a bit of poetry.

11:41 / 28.11.01

I can't believe nobody's mentioned In The Belly of the Beast, by Jack Henry Abbott.

This motherfucker was the real deal--in and out of jail most of his life, gets sent up for murder in the early sixties; while still in prison, writes an astonishingly graphic and horrifying memoir of life inside a system designed to strip away all human dignity, and of the bitter lie of the notion of "rehabilitation."

The manuscript makes its way to Norman Mailer and Gore Vidal, among others. Mailer calls Abbott a genius, arranges for the book to be published. Great hue and cry ensues over the state of America's penal system. Mailer and Vidal vouch for Abbott's sensitivity and character in a parole hearing, and Abbott is released, triumphant.

Three weeks after getting out, he kills somebody in a bar fight and goes back to prison, where, some years later, he gets shanked.

The history is both poignant and farcical: the book, though, is just as electrifying as advertised.

The Return Of Rothkoid

12:05 / 28.11.01

Jack's post reminds me - though I haven't read it - that Mailer's The Executioner's Song would be a worthy addition to the list. As would (though it's more by dint of the way it was written than by its setting) In Cold Blood by Truman Capote.

00:33 / 29.11.01

quote:Originally posted by invisible_al:
Papillon, by Henri Charriere. All about Devils island and the authors many escape attempts. Has some details that never seem to get into films of this genre, like where do they hide their money?

Y'know, I'd assumed that the film was based on a book, but I liked the film so much that I never sought out the book. Here's some th people might want to consider:

"Midnight Express": As paraphrased in the movie "Airplane!": 'So, Billy, ever been to a Turkish prison?'

"Soul On Ice" Eldridge Cleaver: Haven't had a chance to read this yet, but plan on it sometime in the future.

And yes, I did like "The Shawshank Redemption". And what about "Maus"? "The Great Escape"? "Stalag 17" I'm willing to bet most of those graphic novels/flicks were based on novels....

08:10 / 29.11.01

try and find the mini-comic cells by scot mills. i gave my copy to matsya. if i find any more, i'll pick up an extra copy for ya if you're interested. though you could pick one up from www.bubbaandsmoot.com no doubt

08:12 / 29.11.01

here y'are.

12:33 / 29.11.01

The Count of Monte Cristo, by Dumas.

Something like the first quarter of the book is set in an island prison, in which our hero spends thirty years.

16:14 / 29.11.01

Borstal Boy by Brendan Behan. Autobiographical and a good read.

03:45 / 30.11.01

Thanks for all the excellent responses and recommendations. Out of that lot I have only read Papillon, Crime and Punishment and Borstal Boy. I have now have plenty of good ideas next time I want to pick something up.

04:24 / 30.11.01

Do books of essays from prison count? Mumia Amu Jamal's Live from Death Row and George Jackson's Soledad Brother are both really good...

09:01 / 02.12.01

Try "Homeboy" by Seth Morgan. Highly literate
and well-crafted for a first and only novel.
He's dead now, and the book, which was reviewed quite favorably - even in the New York Times - may be out of print. Look in your local used book store.

foolish fat finger

22:50 / 04.05.06

I been readin a lot of these lately... 'the damage done' is indeed fantastic- a sledge-hammer blow of a book, and it makes an interesting comparison with 'hell's prisoner' by Christopher parnell- one man is innocent, the other guilty; one man approaches his incarceration with a heavy heart, the other with a spirit that refuses to be broken...

'Marching powder' by rusty young is a truly fascinating account by a convicted drug-smuggler, of very odd south american jail, where the inmates actually manufacture cocaine and ship it out...

'forget you have a daughter' by sandra gregory is very good. particularly interesting to me is when she returns to england and has to share a jail with Rose West...

'carabanchel' and 'trial by ordeal' are both worth reading. 'welcome to hell' by colin martin is a brilliant book by an innocent man, convicted of murder in Bangkok, and how he survives the ordeal.

'waiting to die' by Richard Rossi I haven't finished yet, but it is a good read, and a sad expose of the american justice system, and the indignity of having to live each day not knowing when u are to be executed. at the time of writing, Rossi, an intelligent and articulate man, has been on death row for 20 years for a cocaine-addiction related murder, and is still waiting for his death sentence to be fixed...

'borstal boy' is indeed a fine read... 'insanity- my mad life' by charles bronson is interesting, as is 'you got nothing coming' by Jimmy Lerner- a pretty funny book actually, and finally, 'love can open prison doors' by starr daily (out of print, but available to read online) is a beautiful account of a determined 'wrong-un' who finds a new spiritual direction whilst incarcerated and left for dead in 'the hole', and who uses his newfound knowledge to help other prisoners in various ways...

oh, and of course there's always Geoffrey Archer... man, he suffered! apparantly he was only allowed out twice a week, and no champagne except on sundays...

Jawsus-son Starship

08:43 / 05.05.06

I can't believe no ones brought up Eddie Bunker! If you're gonna read books about prison, then you're gonna have to read Animal Factory. Simply amazing. It's basically a hetrosexual love story between two men. And it's probably my favourite book of all time.

foolish fat finger

21:14 / 05.05.06

that sounds very interesting. I really enjoyed 'kiss of the spider-woman', the film and the book, actually. I'll look out for it. Eddie Bunker... cheers!

by the way, I hate to contradict a previous poster, but 'the executioner's song' holds the dubious title of the worst book I ever read cover to cover. seriously. it's tedious, massively overlong, mawkish, trite, trivial and badly written. in fact, it was a milestone in my reading- I never just trusted an author to pull it all together again.

the only remarkable thing about Gilmore is that he insisted the death penalty be applied to him, even tho it wasn't mandatory in that state anymore. Mailer fails to come to any significant conclusion about this, despite having a whopping 1072 pages in which to do it.

really, it's number one on the sh*tlist. number two is the Janet and John books- at least they're short.

Our Lady Has Left the Building

09:55 / 06.05.06

Jean Genet wrote books about prison while in prison, his most well known being, um, darn it, it's on the tip of my tongue, erm...

17:21 / 07.05.06

Jean Genet's most famous book is probably Our Lady of the Flowers, which he wrote while in prison (twice in fact, his original draft was confiscated and burnt). Its almost an extended fantasy, interweaving Genet's dreams about his characters with his own experience of being in prison. A good example of the positive role imagination can play in such situations, and very poetical, even in translation.

I think he also wrote a play about two men in a cell, alhthough its name escapes me.

14:27 / 08.05.06

An absolutely critical work: Malcolm X's Autobiography, which every human being should read. He is obviously not in jail the whole time, but being in jail is transformative for him; it is ironically radically freeing because it's in jail where he really begins to read. (However as you can imagine, he's not keen on the structures that land so many black men in jail, esp. in the U.S.)

Then there's Brothers and Keepers, by John Edgar Wideman, about his brother Robby serving a life sentence for murder. Wideman himself was a Rhodes scholar and is now a distinguished professor and writer. He writes both as himself and as his brother, in an effort to get an early release, and also reflects on issues of appropriation, guilt/innocence--middle class crimes vs. poor people's crimes, the whole use of the prison as a mode of punishment. The way it transforms both the keepers and the kept.

I know his "Ballad of Reading Gaol" has been mentioned, but I love Oscar Wilde's strange sad letter to Bosie, De Profundis. It's kind of painful reading; one gets so frustrated with him, but there are passages that are deeply stirring.

17:49 / 09.05.06

borstal boy
assata

parts of the autobiography of malcolm x

alexander berkman wrote a lot about prison too

21:08 / 09.05.06

One that might follow Malcolm X's biography would be Monster by Sanyika Shakur. He's a former LA gangbanger who follows the "X template" like a lot of young black men and became politicised whilst in prison. It's a horrifying book, in terms of the brutality involved, as well as the seige mentality Shakur is under while warring in the streets. It's also fascinating to see his politics develop as he realises he's been spending half his life "fighting for a bit of street I didn't even own". He went on to become a committed revolutionary in the mode of Malcolm X. Powerful stuff.

Disco is My Class War

01:07 / 10.05.06

Cast the First Stone by Chester Himes. A somewhat autobiographical prison novel about a white college boy turned thief who falls angstily in love with men, by a black writer. Brilliant but tragic.